For all the attention Generation Z gets, we need to start talking about Generation Alpha while there is still time to save them from their older siblings’ dismal futures. Born between 2010 and 2024, Gen Alpha is the youngest living age demographic with its members ranging from toddlers to younger adolescents. Most still have all of high school ahead of them and none have entered the workforce as adults.

American twelfth graders, who are on the younger side of the Gen Z cohort, are at their lowest reading proficiency levels on record. Our broken education system has enabled that steady decline over the last two decades as K-12 schools push forward failing students who cannot read, and college curriculum has made it possible to earn a degree without reading a whole book. Poor literacy levels have, of course, led to a national crisis with writing ability.

This confluence of trends — combined with the rise of AI — risks Gen Alpha’s future success in work and in life. The good news is that the solution is found at home. Parents can make the home life more conducive to their children’s future success by prioritizing off-screen reading … yes, physical books. Reading books is vital to keeping children ahead of the AI curve. And the home is where children need to become good readers so they can go on to become good writers.

Writing is the necessary transferable skill young people must perform to apply critical thinking, self-awareness, and logic to their jobs, tasks, and everyday lives. Lack of proficiency in the classroom leads to lack of accountability and responsibility in adulthood.

It is impossible to be a good writer without being a good reader, which makes fixing reading proficiency all the more urgent for today’s elementary and middle schoolers. As generative and agentic AI reorganize the workforce, high social and economic status will not be won by those that can simply use AI well, but those who think better than AI and can apply the technology in the production of new knowledge.

The urgency is today. A grown adult with poor reading proficiency is already lost and will spend the rest of his life behind the curve of those that can read, write, think, and do better. That string of verbs is not a list — it is a sequence of inseverable skills necessary to achieve success. If that prognostication seems bleak, that’s because children who use AI to do schoolwork do not see the pitfall lying beyond short-term convenience.

Children’s futures may come to resemble Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which the lower castes of menial workers toil under the elite few who are capable of intelligent output. AI does not create new ideas or knowledge; it produces and iterates content based on past information and results. It yields answers derivative of other people’s intellectual labor without activating or engaging critical reasoning skills in the user.

The solution is for children to read good books that stand the test of time and have complex sentence structure. Reading early and reading often in childhood unlocks intellectual and productive potential later in life. Parents should replace at least some of their children’s screentime with good books. The number of books children read is less important than the quality of stories they read. They should mix non-fiction with fiction. The topics and sub-genres do not matter. It is the complement between truth in fact, and truth in expression that helps cultivate minds and critical reasoning.

Millennials are the parents of Gen Alpha and their childhoods model how to select rewarding books in a digital age filled with screentime. Millennials grew up on Reading Rainbow and Wishbone. Reading Rainbow brought children’s books to life with lively narration and Wishbone retold William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Walter Irving, and other great authors. 

Parents can find worthwhile books about the animals, fantasy settings, sports, historical figures, and situations depicted in their children’s favorite shows, movies, and games. That is the strategy Reading Rainbow and Wishbone deployed: limited but enriching television content as a tool to catalyze lifelong love of reading and intellectual exploration in children. 

Technology has crushed the inner drive and desire to read, and AI is poised to turn that absence into personal failure on a mass scale. Meeting children where they are with a physical book can transition them away from complete dependence on digital technology for entertainment. Exposing children to slightly more literature can open up their worlds and increase chances for success.

I already dubbed Gen Z as the “Wasted Generation” in early 2024, and that still holds true. But if nothing changes substantially, Gen Alpha will suffer from more severe and longer-lasting consequences than the arbitrary concentrated learning-loss Gen Z underwent during COVID-19.

Even with the lightning speed of President Trump’s educational reforms, it will still take years for reforms implemented today to take hold and reverse prevailing trends. Let’s focus on where we can make a long-term difference for most people. That focus needs to be on Gen Alpha. Let’s help them now while we can. Cultivating and encouraging reading at home is the best way for parents to set their children up for success in our brave new world.

* * *

Zachary Marschall, PhD is Editor-in-Chief of Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform and an adjunct assistant professor of arts administration at the University of Kentucky.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now.

With growing threats to higher education and state government, Wisconsin Republicans have a plan to put the Badger State at the forefront of combating Chinese Communist Party influence.

Five Wisconsin Republicans unveiled a series of bills this week to keep CCP influence out of state government and institutions of higher education. If the legislative package is passed, national security experts say that Wisconsin would become a state leader in combating China. 

“We can all agree and should be able to rally around the fact that we should not be supporting or doing anything to support organizations, such as the Chinese Communist Party, that seek to undermine the foundational things that make America exceptional,” Senator Patrick Testin told The Daily Wire. 

The bills would block partnerships between the University of Wisconsin system and China, prevent state agencies from contracting with companies controlled by China, ban critical telecommunication companies from using equipment manufactured by foreign adversaries, crack down on transnational repression, target illegal organ harvesting, and protect genetic data from countries like China.

The lawmakers behind the legislative package include Testin, Senator Cory Tomczyk, Representative Daniel Knodl, Representative Clint Moses, and Representative Alex Dallman.

Testin said that the CCP wants “to embed themselves in every element and sector” to “essentially extend their tentacles and their influence.”

The higher education bill would ban the University of Wisconsin from entering into “a collaboration agreement, academic partnership, or research partnership with a college or university based in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or Qatar,” according to a draft shared with The Daily Wire. 

There would be an exception if a federal law enforcement agency performs a national security assessment. 

Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now.

A recent House report listed over a dozen Pentagon grants to the university worth tens of millions of dollars that raised concerns over links to China. The university also has relationships with Southeast University in Nanjing and Nanjing University, both of which have been assessed to have medium to high risk in terms of Chinese defense ties. 

Another bill would stop state agencies from contracting with organizations that are headquartered in certain countries, like China, or are controlled or majority-owned by the Chinese government or the CCP. 

A third bill would prohibit “telecommunications providers from purchasing, renting, leasing, obtaining, or maintaining critical telecommunications infrastructure that includes equipment manufactured by a foreign principal of a foreign adversary.”

Another bill aims to protect the genetic data of Americans. It would ban “the use of genetic software from foreign adversaries in medical and research facilities, the storage of any human genome sequencing data within the borders of a foreign adversary.”

State Rep. Clint Moses told The Daily Wire that the intent of that legislation was to ensure that genetic data was not being used for biological warfare or other “nefarious” purposes. 

Another measure part of the package would prohibit “coverage of organ transplantation and related care under health insurance policies and the Medical Assistance program if the organ is transplanted in or originates from a country known to have participated in forced organ harvesting.”

There are between 25,000 and 50,000 people in China every year whose organs are harvested against their will, according to some estimates. 

“When you start looking at what some of these countries are doing, particularly in China, where they’re getting organs for transplant usage, obviously from inmates, prisoners,” Moses said. “I think, [Americans] would find that absolutely shocking and atrocious, because it’s a humanitarian issue. It’s a crime against humanity.”

The final bill in the package would give more teeth to law enforcement in punishing those engaging in transnational repression. Other bills aiming to prevent foreign adversaries from owning land in Wisconsin and to keep Chinese software off state devices are also working their way through the legislature. 

Michael Lucci, the founder of the national security advocacy group State Armor, said that Wisconsin would become the model in the Midwest for targeting China if all of the proposals pass. He said states need to take increasingly strong action to safeguard themselves. 

“Over time, the breadth and scale of the threat has become more apparent and it has grown. It’s become clear it’s quite large,” he told The Daily Wire. “Therefore, the American response, which is both federal and state, needs to expand and become more forceful.”