Gen Alpha may still years away from deciding whether to pursue a college degree, but one California student is already getting a head start.
Ten-year-old Honey Cooper spends part of the day learning about fractions and the solar system as a fourth grader at Kimbark Elementary School—and the rest of it as a dual-enrolled student at San Bernardino Valley College, taking a college-level art class.
“She is very, very, very brilliant,” Kimbark Elementary School Principal Brittany Zuniga told local TV station KTLA. “She is dedicated. She is passionate. She loves learning.”
The youngest of five, Cooper taught herself how to read early on and quickly became a stand-out student at her school. She does math at a seventh-grade level and reads on par with high school seniors, according to her mother. Cooper has also already begun narrowing her career prospects, eyeing a future as a surgeon, artist, or fashion designer.
One of the biggest differences between her two classes, she said, is size—33 students in elementary school versus just 12 in college—but she’s found a rhythm that keeps her grounded.
“It really is a lot, but if you really balance it, it can go really smoothly,” Cooper said to KTLA.
According to her mother, Honey’s home life is relatively typical—with one exception. While she struggles to keep her room clean, she steers clear of screens, preferring physical books instead. That puts her squarely at odds with her peers: children aged 8 to 18 in the U.S. now spend an average seven-and-a-half hours a day watching or using screens, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
“One of the beautiful things that I think that this entire story really demonstrates is that when you raise the bar for students, they will reach it,” Zuniga added. “And they will even blow your mind and exceed it.”
If she stays on the traditional timeline, Cooper will graduate high school in 2034 and college in 2038.
Reading is on the decline—even as it remains the top habit among the highly successful
Cooper’s preference for books over YouTube already places her in a shrinking minority.
Last year, two in five Americans did not read a single book, and reading for pleasure has plummeted about 40% over the past two decades. Yet many of the world’s most successful people credit reading as central to their curiosity, critical thinking, and leadership. A JPMorgan survey released last year of more than 100 billionaires found that reading ranked as the top habit elite achieves have in common.
Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is one example. He spends two to three hours a day immersed in audiobooks (he switched over from physical books after he discovered AirPods). He typically rotates between history, biography, and material in new subject areas like artificial intelligence.
“If nothing else is going on. I’m always listening to something,” Andreessen said.
Add it up, and Andreessen logs nearly a full 24-hour day of learning every week—shaping the way he invests, builds, and thinks.
Alison Taylor, a professor of business and society at NYU’s Stern School of Business said being deeply well-read is becoming something of a luxury good—rare, valuable, and impossible to fake.
“Having intellectual credibility, being well read and so on is definitely one thing money can’t buy, so the ultimate status symbol,” she previously told Fortune.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are falling behind their parents—and technology may be to blame
A 10-year-old taking college courses has always been an outlier—but Cooper’s story lands at a fraught moment for American education. Mounting evidence suggests Gen Z and Gen Z Alpha are falling behind their parents, with many students performing below pre-pandemic levels.
One in three eighth graders scored “below basic” in reading on last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress report—the largest share in the exam’s three-decade history. Among fourth graders, 40% landed at that bottom level, the worst showing in 20 years. Math scores have followed a similar downward trajectory.
For years, edtech was positioned as the solution, with school districts across the country rolling out laptops and tablets to students. But according to neuroscientist and former teacher Jared Cooney Horvath, the approach may have backfired.
“This is not a debate about rejecting technology,” Horvath said in testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation earlier this year. “It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works. Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them.”
Artificial intelligence adds another layer of uncertainty. While its use is growing among students and educators alike, it’s uncertain whether there are proper guardrails for learning.
A recent Brookings report found that the qualitative risks of AI—including cognitive atrophy, “artificial intimacy,” and the erosion of relational trust—currently overshadow the technology’s potential benefits in education.
