Our Children Are Not Behind — They are Becoming
Children aren't falling short of standards. Standards just haven't caught up to them.
Every generation has its educational panic. In the early 1900s, it was that immigrant children would “never catch up.” In the 1950s, it was that American students were falling behind in science after Sputnik. In the 1980s, A Nation at Risk warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity.” And now, we are told—again—that children are behind.
Behind in reading. Behind in math. Behind in social skills. Behind in life.
But when I look at young children today, I don’t see a generation falling behind. I see a generation moving differently — and adults still trying to catch up.
A Historian’s Reminder: Progress Never Looks Like Progress at First
If you step back and look at the long arc of education history, every time society redefined what it meant to be “ready,” children appeared to struggle until the adults built systems that matched who they were becoming.
When universal schooling was first introduced, it took nearly two generations before most children could read and write fluently enough to meet the “new standard.” When we shifted from memorization to critical thinking in the 20th century, it took another generation for that to show up in classrooms.
That’s the rhythm of educational change. First comes the disruption. Then comes the disorientation. Then comes the alignment.
We are in the disorientation phase now.
The Pandemic Didn’t Break Learning — It Accelerated Evolution
COVID didn’t erase children’s capacity to learn. It rewired the environments where learning happens. Children became fluent in self-direction, in using technology as a bridge to people, and in navigating uncertainty with curiosity.
Those are profound adaptive skills — just not the ones we test for. When we measure today’s learners against pre-pandemic yardsticks, of course they look “behind.” But that’s like judging the first electric car by how much gas it holds.
If we instead measure them by how they problem-solve, connect, and persist, the data look very different.
The Real Risk: Teaching a Generation to Doubt Itself
The narrative that children are “behind” carries consequences far deeper than test scores.
When we tell young children that they’re not where they “should” be, we risk shaping their approaches to learning — their confidence, curiosity, and willingness to try. Those are the muscles that power all future growth. Once they weaken, remediation gets harder, not because the child can’t learn, but because the child stops believing learning belongs to them.
And children don’t grow in isolation. They learn inside families, communities, and classrooms — ecosystems that reflect the messages adults repeat. When teachers are told they’re failing, they teach under stress. When families hear their children are “behind,” they question themselves. That anxiety seeps into the next generation of learners we depend on to evolve.
Strengths Grow Where They’re Named
This is where we can choose a different story.
Instead of deficit-driven talk about loss, we can adopt the language of adaptation and emergence. We can recognize that the children sitting before us are the first generation growing up fully in a post-pandemic world: digital, diverse, interconnected, and emotionally aware. They’re already showing us what the next version of learning looks like.
Teachers who nurture that growth, those who meet children with curiosity instead of comparison, are not lowering the bar. They’re raising it to meet the future.
The Two-Generation Horizon
If history teaches us anything, it’s patience. True educational consensus — the moment when new standards feel “normal” — takes one to two generations. Let me say it again: one to two generations. That means we may not fully understand this era’s impact until the 2040s, when today’s preschoolers are raising children of their own.
But here’s the hopeful part: what we do now will shape not just test scores, but the emotional inheritance of that generation. If we treat this as a period of failure, we’ll hand them our fear. If we treat this as evolution, we’ll hand them their confidence. The way we talk about learning, the way we support teachers, the way we interpret struggle matters so much more than we can measure.
What We Can Do Right Now
Reframe progress. Celebrate growth in adaptability, empathy, communication, and creativity; not just academic benchmarks.
Support teachers as innovators. Encourage them to experiment, reflect, and design for what’s emerging, not just what was.
Speak strength into children. Notice effort, kindness, curiosity. Those are predictors of lifelong success, not distractions from it.
Hold the long view. Remember: the first generation under any new standard always looks like the hardest. That’s how evolution works.
Closing Thought
The story we tell about this generation matters. We can keep describing children as “behind”—as if the race is fixed and they’ve stumbled off the track. Or we can recognize that the track itself is changing—and they’re the first ones brave enough to run it. And to the teachers running beside them—thank you for seeing what’s possible before the rest of the world does. You’re helping a new kind of learning take shape.
We are not losing ground. We’re shifting ground. And if history is any guide, that’s exactly how progress begins.
