Gen Z is the first generation to be dumber than the last one.

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to shedding light on issues pertaining to making America smart again. These include, among many topics, school choice and parental rights. This podcast is dedicated to reversing the deeply disturbing trend known as the dumbing down of America. Now, here's your host, Educator.

and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

Hey, everyone. Dom Giordano with you. Big week here. Welcome into old school, new school,

next school. Our mission, if you're new, is each week we're trying to make America smart again.

We got a great guy today that's dedicated to do that. We push back against the crippling,

dumbing down of America. Our weapons, school choice, for example, and also just parental rights.

If we have those two things, we're going to stop at least the dumbing down of kids. With adults, that's going to take some more. So I was able to get on and talk with, you're going to hear Dr. Jarrett Cooney Horvath, a PhD, MED, neuroscientist extraordinaire. He testified before the U.S. Senate recently, and I found him in the New York Post because he says for most of the 20th century, cognitive performance steadily improved.

across generations, right? Parents handing off the kids who are going to be more advanced in school, right? Well, he says now, beginning in the mid-2000s, this trend plateaued, and then it reversed. Not just in America, but we're in America, and we're worried about American kids. So he's saying this generation, in quotes, is dumber than previous generations, not just due to COVID. What else is involved here? Well, what's involved are the screens.

It's constant technology replacing writing and books, etc.

You know, when I was still teaching, I coined a word for what we were starting to see,

illiteracy. You know about illiteracy, right? Someone who can't read and write,

you know about functional illiteracy. They do it on a very low level.

Illiteracy are people that can read and write, sort of, but choose not to read. They avoid reading.

And in school, they don't have to do that much of it. Everything is screens and phones, etc.

So I'm going to play you this interview with Dr. Jarrett Cooney-Harvat, in which he lays out exactly what he told the U.S. Senate. You as a parent or grandparent ought to take notes on this, even tell other people about it. You can Google this guy afterward if you missed some of it. He is one of the best guests we've had on Old School, New School, Next School, laying out something that we all suspect. I asked him about cell phone bans, but I also asked him about school children.

And he got my point. He says, you know what? There are schools in the country now, private schools. That's where school choice comes in that are going back with a novel idea to pen and paper, meaning getting away from the constant technology, the screens. Oh, isn't it wonderful? Every job is going to be a coder in the future and actually counting on the basics. But once again, if you don't have that ability to get to these schools,

then you're stuck in what are the marching orders of most of the public schools still

which is more and more screens and now AI I ask him about AI and the threat that's there then after that I'm going to give you an update on the big beautiful bill school choice program now three Democrats are reconsidering waiting till you hear this news but first here's famed neuroscientist Dr. James Cooney Harvath laying out what's happened to America

How is this generation, in quotes, dumber, dumber than previous generations? Here's the interview. America, it's almost an oxymoron. But somebody has actually pinned this down. He testified before the Senate recently. Henry and I saw him in the New York Post talking about the upcoming generation as a generation that is the first among Western nations that has not only plateaued but declined.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MED, somebody with vast knowledge in this area.

And he is a neuroscientist and educator looking at his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee.

And I wonder if they heard the call of this, how bad it is.

Doctor, thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me on. It's great to be here.

Well, you know, the New York Post called this the dumbest generation.

All right, that's fine. And, you know, that's tabloid style, but we get it. I think it's accurate. What's the data, though? Where do you come off saying that? How vast is it? How do we know that?

Yeah, so I would say they're not the dumbest generation ever. It's so harsh. They're the first generation in recorded history to underperform their parents, to go in a downward slope. So we've been analyzing cognitive development for since really the late 1800s.

And these are things like how good is memory, how good is attention, critical thinking, literacy, numeracy. And every generation has outperformed their parents. Every generation has gone up. If you just look at general IQ, say each generation has about six more IQ points than their parents until Gen Z comes along. This is the first generation really to plateau. And as you said, then start to reverse where now they're underperforming us in basically every measure we have. And so everyone, like you said, everyone's been fighting to figure out what is going wrong. Is it diet? Is it exercise?

And yes, it's all of these things, but from a school standpoint, if you align when states widely adopted digital technology with learning within that state, you almost see an immediate drop. So realistically, what's changing is the tools we're using in schools are just not working for learning and cognitive development right now.

And that mission isn't out there, I would argue. And I think you suggest in the testimony here to AI on the horizon, which I as a former teacher and just what I do now, doctor, I'm on the negative side with AI and the stuff that's going to come out of this. And I could see schools adopting more of this and thinking double and triple down. They cannot or have the will to solve these low expectations and achievement. So we're going to go on another binge for 10 years with AI, I would think.

And they're hoping that that's going to save the day. And what they're doing, really, for the last 10 years is, as we know things are going down, rather than fixing those things, we're just redefining our tests. So we're just testing different things to make it look as though we're not going as far down. And that's what's going to happen with AI, too, is people are going to say, well, kids can no longer write, kids can no longer read, so why don't we just test editing? Because, hey, they can, ChatGPT can spit it out on essay form, they just have to edit it. But you're spot on.

So if AI can be said to be good at anything, it's for expert offloading. Basically, like it takes statistics. I'm really good at statistics. I can do it. It's going to take me about two hours if I do it by hand. So I use AI to do it in two seconds. But it only works because I can immediately vet the output. Whatever it says back to me, I have enough knowledge to go, yep, that's right or no, that's wrong. I need to type something else in. But the tools we use as experts to make our lives easier are not the tools a child should use to learn how to become an expert.

When they use AI, it's the number one way to make sure they don't understand the process, they won't understand the material, they can't vet the output. It basically just becomes a giant copy-paste, which we've been battling for centuries, whereby we know they're not learning the content, they're just making output. And that ain't good for a kid.

I'm a big fan, big supporter, do a podcast on this with a lot of big people on school choice. Are there schools offering the choice now to move away from this? I haven't seen that because they're afraid, I think,

that parents and others are still saying, wait a minute, that's too old fashioned. What about computerization? What about the jobs of the future? And isn't that funny to think that we need to teach kids today? Like my six year old needs an iPad. Otherwise she won't get a job when she's 26. No, K through 12 general education teaches kids how to think and learn. And when you know how to think and learn, you can now adapt to any tool that comes your way. This is why Gen Z is less digitally literate than millennials and equivalent to Gen X. Gen X,

was never taught how to use a computer, but they're fine because they know how to think and learn. So as these schools kind of veer towards more tools-based training, teach them how to use tech, kids' understanding of tech and ability to use it is actually going down. So you're right, there are some schools that are definitely pulling back from the tech, a lot in the independent sector, a lot in the charter sector. But kind of as you're saying, it's pretty quiet right now, just because I think no one wants to be the first to stand up, raise their hand and say, we're done.

But with that said, if you look towards Australia, so Australia, the first country to ban social media under 16, they're also the first country where entire school districts, Catholic networks are banning tech. They're saying, no, you know what? Hundreds of schools at once. This wasn't working. It was a failed experiment. Let's go back. So keep your eyes on other countries. And I think we'll eventually follow suit here in the US. Doctor, are there any in the United States? So charter, you are saying some are going down that path because it takes a lot of education.

And you're my point guy on this. You're the first one I've seen that really, well, the doctor, the Hyatt, that talked about the generation, loneliness, the things with phones and all that. Is the phone ban taking effect? Is that something you're suggesting here would be helpful? That's at least, yeah. You can look, there are many states that have now done full phone bans at school, which to me, I always said, that's the lowest hanging fruit. That is wonderful. But that's not where, that's

got to be the first step that cannot be where it ends. Because if you give a kid a small screen and they do crazy stuff, do you really assume that if they're on a slightly larger screen, they're going to do anything less crazy? So the difference between a phone and a laptop or a tablet is basically nothing in schools. So you're right. I think we've made our good first steps by passing laws saying no smartphones. But now seven states, I think nine states now have at least started proposing bills on ed tech to say, we're going to limit usage in younger years. We're going to allow, I think Vermont has a

an opt-out bill where parents can say no. Regardless, if I'm in public school, I do not want my kid to use tech. They're legally allowed to not say that if the bill passes. And some states are doing safety bills whereby new ed tech, new products have to pass some sort of basic research, some sort of evidence base before we're going to use it. So it's happening. It's just give us about three more years, I think you're going to see a big swing.

Tell me how that works at the screen. You know, we're going through here in Pennsylvania, for example, that schools are now mandated again. They haven't put it into play yet to use cursive. And this brings up the whole thing that you have generations that can't read cursive, can't write all the intellectual skills that sort of go into this also. But it's slow work. It took a lot to convince him that kids should be able to write cursive.

And you got to remember, most of the things we learn, especially early years in school, are what we're going to call gateway skills. Like a kid will say, I'll never use cursive. Yeah, probably. But what we're doing is we're training your fine motor skills, which will allow you to learn other things later down the track. If you skip this now, there is no down the track for you. So a lot of those skills where people say we don't need to use those in the current workforce, you're missing the point. To get to the skills that we might need in the future workforce, creativity, critical thinking,

you need to lock these basic skills down first. So going back to cursive, cursive is one of the most controlled finite motor skills you can learn. And if you learn to do that, learning to type is one of the easiest things in the world you can do. So do the hard work first and then move it into the easy world of computers seems to be the smarter move on this one. Doctor, we're coming up on the sixth anniversary of COVID, the lockdowns. Well, that'll be a little bit later, but we're pretty close to it.

beginning, but the idea, didn't that help to prove what we're talking about?

You cannot educate kids in that manner. It was disastrous. And the problem was we should have gone back to school a lot sooner knowing what the stakes were versus the risk. It's pretty clear to me how much was lost.

Yeah. And you're right. The countries that had shorter lockdowns or no lockdowns way outperformed everyone else.

When we all went digital, I imagine that started as a band-aid, right? We had nothing else to do, so we might as well do it. But then COVID ended and no one ripped the band-aid off. And it's like they didn't learn from the... If you... Let's say I'm a tech developer and you say, we're going to shut down all schools and use your tech. That's my time to shine. That should have been when Ed Tech stood up and said, look, we can do it. And what happened was they faltered completely. Everything went down, yet we never turned our back on them.

So I think you're right is is if we didn't learn our lessons from COVID, we're going to learn it over the last five years that learning has gone down, even since COVID. So as bad as it was, then it's not gotten any better. It's getting worse because we're just running the same mistake again and again. Now, are you working on a book? Is there more material other than this testimony in New York Post? Where do we find you? And where do we find your work? Yeah, what are you doing? I released a book a couple months ago called the digital delusion. And that that lays out all the data and not just the data, because I

I always say it's one thing to know that tech harms. It's another thing to know why tech harms learning. And so it lays out all the mechanisms as well. How does learning work and why does tech not align with that? So again, the digital delusion, if anyone wants more data and arguments, that's going to be the place where I've kind of put it all together. And parting area, doctor, you're saying that some now we're seeing, you mentioned Vermont. What happens if a kid's parents sign out, though? How does a kid keep up? How do they grade them? What happens?

the school, let's say I'm a teacher with kids who have opted out. I now, as a teacher, have to develop both digital and analog ways to teach my class. And what you see is in that situation, after a couple months, the teachers who are making both digital and analog tend to only start making analog. They make all their kids go analog because they start to recognize it works better. It's more aligned with what I want. So it's actually a really good move to try and get all teachers to rethink, hey, look how much better it was when I was using textbooks. Maybe we go back to that for

Well, doctor, thank you so much. I encourage you. We'd love to talk with you again as this develops. Absolutely. Thank you. Keep up the great work. All right. That is big time stuff. I hope that you'll listen to it. Take notes. Tell grandparents, parents, schools. I would challenge anybody to what this guy said. This is not the root cause of this. And what are parents to do? Well, we went through that. And in future weeks, we'll go through it a little bit more here on Old School, New School,

Now, I mentioned that big news. We've talked about the big, beautiful bill. And under the big, beautiful bill, come 2027, all states that opt in to get this new money will millions of dollars for students to make a choice through nonprofits in their state. So far, I think we've reached around 2526. Only one Democrat, and he's a pretty progressive Democrat. Governor Polis of Colorado has

done that. All right. But now, just in the last couple of days, now three Democrats who point blank when this was going on, three Democrat governors, that is Governor Josh Green of Hawaii, which is very liberal, Michelle Lugin Grisham, also, I would say, a progressive, and Tina Kotek, I'm not sure how progressive, but liberal at least, of Oregon, previously told Education Week, they wouldn't

in school choice expansion included in President Donald J. Trump's big, beautiful bill act that passed Congress last summer. But since those initial statements, now all three of them, all three, after Jared Polis did what he did, they are now reconsidering. So think about that. If these three do that, it'll put tremendous pressure on people like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who's a national president.

What will he do? Why are they doing this? Because Paulus has made the point,

are you that captive of the teachers' union? Do you hate parents and kids that much?

That money will go to other states. That's what Paulus said. This is big news here. And we'll follow up on this each week. We'll also follow up on trying to do something that used to be relatively easy, making America smart again.

So remember that name, James Cooney Harvath, the professor, the neuroscientist we had on, laying out exactly, scientifically, what happens to these kids. This is the first generation that is behind previous generations. And he says, it's not mainly due to COVID. That's another problem. It's due to the choice to turn America's kids over to just computerization screens, technology.

and writing and reading are making a comeback.

And the school choice movement should embrace that.

Now, if you have a question for me, a follow up, get this guy back again, which we're going to do.

Send me an email.

It's domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com.

Domshow at AOL.com.

Thanks for listening this week.

More follow up next week on this whole idea.

How did America get so dumb?

Yeah, you can say the word dumb, because it is. It's the dumbing down of America. And we got a potent guy. I would put this guy as the czar of fighting dumbness. That's my proposal from this week. You get more next week. Have a great week here. Old school, new school, next school. Old school, new school, next school with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.