“These are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words. Four words!” Darius Williams, a teacher at Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, was overcome with emotion on only the second day of the school year when he discovered that several of his high school seniors could not complete a simple literacy exercise. In a viral video filmed during his lunch break, a tearful Williams described how, even after guiding students carefully through a reading assignment and nearly supplying the answers himself, many of his 17- and 18-year-old pupils still could not complete a four-word sentence. He emphasized that the same students were fully capable of expressing sophisticated ideas and engaging in thoughtful verbal debate. Their difficulty appeared only when they tried to convert those ideas into written language. The emotional video has spread quickly across social media and drawn attention to what many education specialists describe as a widespread literacy crisis in the United States. Some online observers have pointed to the influence of technology, citing research that links increased use of artificial intelligence tools with declining literacy skills among young people. Others have criticized educational policies that discourage holding back struggling students. Still others have stressed that the roots of the problem often lie in limited parental support at home. Williams’s visible distress has highlighted the heavy burden carried by public school teachers as they work to close large academic gaps and equip students with the basic skills required for adult life.