The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, highlighted a viral TikTok video from a middle school teacher to underscore what he calls a deepening national education crisis.
On Monday’s edition of his talk radio show, The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Leahy discussed what he describes as a foundational crisis in America: the “failure” of the U.S. education system from kindergarten through college.
He argued that the current education system is failing to teach foundational skills, leaving students unable to read, write, do arithmetic, or reason at required levels.
The viral clip he highlighted features an eighth-grade history teacher who reports that only two of her roughly 110 students read at grade level, while most read at kindergarten- to fourth-grade levels.
“I teach eighth-grade history, and I have 110-ish students. Two of them are reading at grade level right now,” the teacher said.
She described severe deficits not only in literacy but also in basic thinking skills, explaining that students cannot make simple inferences, follow multi-step instructions, or process straightforward questions.
“It’s not just literacy, and it’s not just lack of content knowledge. It’s not just critical thinking skills. It’s basic thinking skills. My students can decode almost nothing. They cannot apply inference. They cannot process questions that are longer than a sentence. They cannot connect cause and effect. They can’t track multi-step ideas like in a political cartoon. And it’s scaring me a little,” the teacher said.
The teacher in the video further noted many students seem unable to complete any task unless it’s written in a multiple-choice format, leaving them confused or immobilized when faced with open-ended instructions.
“It’s like they don’t understand because it’s not written in a multiple-choice format,” she said.
The teacher concluded by declaring, “These kids have a frightening ability for information to go from their eyes to their hands and not pass through the brain.”
Leahy said that the teacher’s account confirms his long-standing warning: when students fail to master reading, writing, and arithmetic by fifth-grade, they reach eighth-grade effectively unable to learn at all.
The teacher’s TikTok video, Leahy said, is vivid evidence of an education system in breakdown.
Tune in now to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show – your AMERICA FIRST news talk!
– Watch LIVE here on X
– Watch LIVE on Roku
– Listen on Spotify
– Listen on WENO AM760 in Nashville
– Read more at @TheTNStarhttps://t.co/4XwYTVcnE7— Michael Patrick Leahy (@michaelpleahy) December 8, 2025
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
