let's talk about this

I saw the following tweet/video over at Instapundit, but I don't think it proves whatever point people think it proves.

A high school senior in Philadelphia made a video series asking fellow seniors to read a simple sentence written in english and they're incapable of completing the simple task.

If you go to his IG (handle on right side of the video) you'll see he makes tons of seemingly humorous… pic.twitter.com/gWKTdkEfGf

— Mrgunsngear (@Mrgunsngear) May 3, 2026

At Instapundit, the poster who linked to the above wrote: "THIS IS MESSED UP." In the tweet itself, we see this comment:

A high school senior in Philadelphia made a video series asking fellow seniors to read a simple sentence written in english and they're incapable of completing the simple task.

If you go to his IG (handle on right side of the video) you'll see he makes tons of seemingly humorous videos like this but this one went viral for obvious reasons and now the school is saying he may not be allowed to graduate from the charter school due to the videos.

The school seems completely fine with students not being able to read but they're not okay with the public seeing that they can't read.

Telling...

I guess we should forgive the above commenter for writing english instead of English and for his very poor command of punctuation (I see at least three comma errors; let it be an exercise for the reader to figure out—after the shit-ton that I've written about commas—where those three commas ought to go and why. Answers that don't provide a why don't count.).

I saw a few scattered comments in response to the above video, and some of those comments expressed sympathy for the students. Here's one such comment:

I'm going to have to stand up a little bit for these kids. "Gauche" is one of those words you can read and know but not hear, like "synecdoche," so you can't pronounce it. And "silhouette" is used incorrectly (according to OED), so saying what the sentence means is an impossible task.

I wrote this in response:

I was going to (limply) defend these kids myself, but from what I've found out, the way the term "silhouette" is being used in the sentence comes specifically from the world of fashion, referring to the shape or outline of the clothes. When I read the sentence, I myself was hard-pressed to see/say what the sentence meant. At first, I thought it meant "She wore a shadowy outline of clothes," maybe meaning a bare suggestion of clothes. Like a bikini or something.

But in terms of which French-derived words the kids ought to be familiar with, they should certainly know how to pronounce "silhouette." If they've taken French, they also ought to know how to pronounce "gauche."

If the video's overall point is that the kids have been poorly educated, the guy could've chosen a better sentence that has the word silhouette in it. Otherwise, if his point is just that the school has failed them, then he's actually siding with the students. But accusing the school of a failure to teach brings up a whole 'nother set of issues regarding just whose fault it is that the kids have learned so little. Is it the teachers' fault? Is it the lazy, inattentive, cell-phone-addicted students' fault?

If I'd had the chance, I'd have talked to the guy about his methodology and clarity of focus. What exactly is he aiming to do in making such a video? He's asking the students for two things: (1) read the sentence through with proper pronunciation, and (2) state the sentence's meaning.

As a former teacher, I'd say that my own emphasis has always been on testing students only on what they've learned. Have they learned fashion-related terminology like "silhouette of clothes"? While for me, the sentence is easily phonetically readable, I still had trouble grasping the meaning of a "silhouette of clothes" until I went and looked that phrase up.

This topic is ripe for a long and detailed discussion.

So the sentence that the camera guy wants students to read is this: She wore a silhouette of clothes that were extraordinary but somewhat gauche. He then asks the students to read the sentence aloud and to state what the meaning of the sentence is. Have you ever heard the phrase a silhouette of clothes before? If yes, then congratulations: You work in the fashion industry, where the phrase is apparently common. For the rest of us, though... Speaking only for myself: I had to look that phrase up. Sure, I could read the sentence aloud with good pronunciation, but even I had trouble with the sentence's meaning.

I don't think the above video is in the same class as those KeroNgb videos I keep putting up (and I've questioned the thinking behind those videos as well)—the ones where the guy goes around Georgia campuses asking students basic questions in an effort to show how stupid the students are. While I find those interviews depressing for what they show about the state of American students' knowledge, I'm not convinced that they show the students are stupid, per se. By the same token, this video doesn't really prove the kids are stupid or that the system has somehow failed them. It's a different animal from the KeroNgb videos because it doesn't ask basic questions: Instead, it's just one fairly advanced question. (Or am I stupid for not knowing a common fashion term and for thinking the question is advanced?)

By the way, synecdoche is pronounced "sih-NECK-duh-kee." I did a post about the frustrating distinction between metonymy and synecdoche long ago in 2012.