More (not so) fun facts:
54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level.
21% read below a 5th grade level, which is considered functionally illiterate.
High immigration numbers don’t fully explain it either, as first gen immigrants only make up about 1/3 of those with low literacy.
Immigrants typically have a higher bar/burden to surpass than any naturalized citizen; I wouldn’t ever think to even look there as a source of the problem. It’s a home grown issue.
The secret to using a semicolon is that there are no rules; people just make them up to tell you that you’re wrong.
I;can;think;of;a;few;rules;worth;mentioning
There are people in the UK that can’t spell Britain, I’ve seen so many variations.
I personally don’t mock illiteracy, I think it’s sad and a shame, I grew up on an estate with really low levels of literacy. I learned to read when I was 3 years old, I could read news articles by the time I started school.
Oh right, it’s definitely not something to mock. Literacy rates should concern everyone who lives in a democracy.
Sometimes it feels like I have to turn on that part of my brain. Like I can just do mindless reading and I can make it through something really fast. Or I can put on my thinking cap and get through something hard and understand it (takes time, re-reading, and sometimes notes).
I’d like to see the difference in my comprehension between the two modes.
I think that’s part of it. Everyday living makes people stressed and anxious. I’d like to see how they were tested.
I found the info everyone is quoting: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/skillsmap/
If you compare age groups, the 25-34 seem to be keeping the scores up. Looks like the lead in the air was keeping the scores down?
“journalism output”
Who writes like that? The entire statement is poorly written, which is ironic.
Seriously, the author was really struggling badly
This is depressing, but it also explains a lot. If people can’t comfortably read the news, misinformation doesn’t have to work very hard.
If you ever had need to wonder why the US public education system has been methodically erroded and underfunded, an uneducated populous is an easily led populous
The reason is that people don’t want to pay property taxes.
It’s not nefarious cabal, it’s the fact your neighbors hate paying taxes on their homes and vote down tax increases, such that education has been systematically underfunded for decades.
This started in the 70s. Look up ‘property tax revolts’.
Education funding plummeted, so states and the fed were expected to make up the difference, but it only made things worse and worse because their aid packages were tied to standardized testing, lower teacher wages, and etc.
I worked in my local town on the town meetings. the #1 thing that came up every year, was do we raise taxes, or do we cut school funding. They chose to cut funding 80% of the time. year, after year, after year. until the state came in and basically forced them to raise taxes, or lose their aid package. that was the only time they got raised the taxes. my dad lost his fucking shit, even though the increase was only about $150 per year, which was less than his monthly cigarette budget.
Towns with great schools, overwhelmingly have very high priced homes, because that’s how they get their money, from the property taxes on those homes. If you can afford a home that’s over a million dollars, you likely live in a great school district. If you can only afford a home that’s like 200-300K or less, you live in a crappy one.
The tax rates are often lower on the high value homes, because the overall income from those taxes is much higher.
80% of school budgets come from property taxes. the state and fed funding is very limited by comparison, and it’s mostly used for capital or other large/sweeping projects like building schools, standardized testing, etc. it doesn’t pay teachers or operating costs of the school.
teacher pay also varies wildly by district. teachers in good districts make 2-3x what they do in crappy ones. because they can hoover up all the good teachers and leave the crappy ones in the crappy schools.
Those are all true statements but I was referring to the degradation from the top levels (fed/state) pushing for private schooling and further ignoring public education despite the fact that it would be an investment into the country as a whole to improve education. Similar to how universal healthcare would relieve the already overburdened system by allowing people to take care of their problems before they become expensive and complicated problems.
While most money comes from local taxes and people hate to pay them (a different discussion on percentage of taxes for different socioeconomic groups), this could have been offset by federal or state funds to make up the difference to a certain level.
Ideally, we’d have a system that looked at the metrics such as test scores, higher education or trade pipeline, and other necessary data to find the weak spots to focus on for improvement instead of the current “if you don’t have x amount of y score, you lose funding” punishment method that only incentivises people to massage the numbers or is otherwise advantageous to more prosperous areas that can afford to meet the metric.
With all that, you also have to get the buy-in of the average taxpayer who only knows “gubment raised muh taxes!” instead of looking at it looking term.
I think I’ve rambled enough on it for the moment. Hope it made sense
I don’t know about this. I’m a teacher, and I’ve taught poor kids and wealthy kids. The way I see the home value/education value thing is that, to some degree, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
There are always exceptions, but generally the pattern I have seen is that educated people who are successful and have money also want their children to be educated and successful. These parents have steady jobs, often with good hours, so they can help with homework or pay for tutors or services like Kumon to supplement their struggling kids’ learning. So even if schools in the rich neighborhoods don’t get a lot of funding from property taxes, they still perform fairly well.
Uneducated people are less likely to value education for their kids. My husband (also a teacher) heard a father tell his son that the kid shouldn’t try to go to college “because you’re not better than me.” The kid was close to the top of his class and could have won some competitive scholarships.
Parents who struggle to make ends meet are more likely to work jobs with odd hours or even multiple jobs, so they’re less likely to have time to sit down and do homework with their kids. Tutors are an extravagance they cannot afford.
There are a lot of factors at play in the overall literacy rate and public education quality issue that is at the heart of the original post. Personal greed versus the public good (in the form of opposing property taxes) is a part of it, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Family values, local and state politics (I’m looking at you, vouchers and charter schools), and even the consistent undervaluing of “women’s work” all play a role in school funding and the general level of literacy in the population at large.
Especially seeing tons of people never doubt what they read and headlines nowadays are distorted as fuck.
Its both because people don’t want to be intellectual because its depressing and alienating to be smart around a bunch of dumb people, but also the rich and powerful do not want us to be smart either.
I myself wish I was fucking stupid. I’d be happier.
No no no, you wish you WERE fucking stupid. The subjunctive mood is a little off beat, but the good news is you could be closer to your goal than you think!
Reminds me of the church of sub-genius (being a full genius would be exhausting)
Yeah. There are negative social consequences to being intellectual and pursing mental self-improvement. One of them being, people hate you.
Socially successful people now that you have to play stupid to get people to like you. You also say/embrace stupid shit to make other people feel like they are smart…
Just like if you are physically large and strong, people are also afraid of you and you have to be very careful about your body language because it will terrify people. You have to act all modest and downplay your size for people to feel comfortable around you.
people don’t want to be intellectual because its depressing and alienating to be smart around a bunch of dumb people
This sounds like a cope someone would come up with to explain why they watch Joe Rogan.
Is that something Joe Rogan has said? I legitimately don’t understand what you are saying here.
Are you saying I’m coping about actually being stupid? Because I am stupid in certain ways. Just not in the ways that I wish I was.
So sure, I am coping… just not because I listen to Joe Rogan because I don’t.
Have you not spent time around groups of people and been painfully aware that what they’re talking about is incredibly simple and vacuous? And wanted to rip the flesh off of your face in sheer frustrated boredom but you just nod and be polite?
I’ve also been around people smarter than me, and I find it way more enjoyable. I’m the likeable dumb guy, learning things about what the experts around me know about.
I wasn’t trying to call you out or anything, I was just making a joke about how people who listen to Joe Rogan are stupid. Idk if he’s actually said that, but if he has, then that’s hilarious. It fits my mental image of him perfectly.
Have you not spent time around groups of people and been painfully aware that what they’re talking about is incredibly simple and vacuous? And wanted to rip the flesh off of your face in sheer frustrated boredom
Again, not trying to dunk on you or anything, but are you autistic? I’ve never met anyone like this IRL, only le redditeurs trying to be edgy online, but I suppose someone on the spectrum might actually feel that way in some situations? I legitimately don’t know, and am not trying to use “autistic” in a derogatory way here.
As an example, I’m the only software engineer in my social circle, and don’t ever feel like that around people even when they’re saying really stupid things about a topic I’m an expert in. If you find yourself getting frustrated with people in those situations, I think it’s a sign that you have shitty social skills, not that you’re smarter than everyone.
Have you ever been trapped in a conversation with your racist, MAGA uncle? I’m assuming he meant that.
Why hello there, hyper-literate fellows. Fancy exchanging some five-syllable words? Perhaps a few phrases? Or cock jokes? Cock jokes are nice too. I am hyper-literate, you see, so my cock jokes are veeeeeery long
May I introduce you to the phrase: bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
It bounces when you say it
This must be why people think trump is a literate genius
This is how Trump got elected twice. His ramblings actually make sense to a lot of people
they don’t have to make explicit sense.
that’s where smart people get it wrong. the average person doesn’t care about the content of what is being said. they care about the tone. the average person doesn’t listen to words, they listen to the mood of the speech. Trump rambles nonsense, but he’s consistent in his confident tonality and people like that. he also doesn’t come across as talking down to his voters, the way democratic politicians almost always do.
also applies to popular films, songs, and etc. general audiences love stupid shit because it’s relatable. they are turned off by shit that is more sophisticated because it’s scary and strange.
It’s got electrolytes.
Is this why you can’t say almost anything (besides regurgitating cliché pre-approved tropes) without being misconstrued, taken out of context, turned into a strawman, and attacked as a position completely different from the one you were taking?
I swear, I knew this was coming the moment I noticed that people were calling basic literacy and writing ability “elitism.”
I was in a college English Composition class, of all places, and people were shaming me for insisting on using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It was an Honors course too, if I remember correctly. Like, why the fuck are you here if you really feel that way?
And why are colleges even admitting people who can’t formulate basic sentences; at least without serious remedial courses before the 101 level. These people are graduating with degrees without learning anything, because professors are too afraid to fail them.
And I got all but chased out of campus for getting A’s. It’s not “favoritism” or “privilege,” I just knew how to write.
It’s not elitist to have basic standards.
I think it’s a combination of a) schools passing everyone they can out of misguided empathy and funding tied to graduation rates, and b) universities with a financial incentive to accept as many warm (paying) bodies as possible.
Yeah, it ultimately boils down to the commodification of education, but it think there are also aspects of being allergic to anything perceived as elitism, and being terrified of accusations of discrimination.
I mean, holding everyone to the same basic standard isn’t discrimination. Even if some people from marginalized backgrounds don’t meet that standard. In fact, it’s kinda racist to assume those people need the handicap, as if none of them can meet the basic standards unless they’re lowered…
Amazing how you parlayed an undifferentiated critique of adult reading levels (one that specifically mentioned that immigration, i.e. “brown people”, wasn’t the cause of the low percentage) into an attack on affirmative action. If you knew what you were talking about/weren’t being disingenuous, you’d know that “holding everyone to the same basic standard” is the goal of affirmative action. Because people of color often require higher credentials to receive attention at equal levels to less skilled yet less visually-ethnic applicants.
This and the previous, hyperbolic remark that you were “all but run off campus” because you were being a grammar nazi makes me believe it wasn’t just the “grammar” that was the issue.
Amazing how you assume “doesn’t meet the basic prerequisites for the educational program” means “brown people.” You racist or something?
I on the other hand understand that “brown people,” as you say, are perfectly capable of meeting the same requirements as everyone else, so it’s patronizing to act like they need those standards lowered.
Affirmative Action is about securing positions to qualified candidates who would otherwise be looked over due to their demographic/background. It’s not about lowering standards to let anybody in because (as you seem to be assuming) “brown people are too stupid to meet the same standards.” If that’s what you believe Affirmative Action is about, then you’ve fallen for right-wing propaganda about it. Good job.
Also, it doesn’t make me a grammar nazi to believe everyone in a college writing class should be able to formulate complete sentences in the language the class is instructed in. It’s on the education system to prepare future college students for that, and if they can’t do it in 12 years of primary and secondary schooling, then that’s a failure of the system. And you’re not doing anybody any favors by saying we should let that slide just because you don’t believe brown people can actually do better.
Potentially this user takes issue with affirmative action; it’s hard to say. I read the comment you responded to as referring to the lowering of academic requirements for inner city public schools.
Thank you! It’s literally a disservice to marginalized communities to assume “oh, they can’t handle the same standard so we need to lower it for them.” Aside from being racist.
It’s funny how that commenter assumed I was talking about affirmative action, though. Almost as if they assumed affirmative action means lowering educational standards.
Expanding opportunities for disadvantaged youth to enter educational programs they qualify for? Good 👍
Allowing anybody into an educational program that they don’t even meet the basic prerequisites for, because you’re afraid to deny someone who could blame prejudice? Bleh 👎
It’s not that hard to comprehend.
brown people… attack… disingenuous… nazi
the spiral hypnotizes
The whistle calls
affirmative action is fucked up, and often undermines itself. it should be done away with, and often it’s used by well-off minorities to secure educational resources that they already have in abundance from their wealth and deny less affluent whites.
it should be replaced by economic affirmative action. which is far more equitable and would benefit poor minorities more.,
it’s effectively dead right now anyway. how that changes enrollments is yet to be seen clearly.
I agree strongly. Putting a thumb on the scale and unevenly lowering the bar in order to achieve equal success rates for everyone causes more problems than it helps.
Yeah, I wish more people could see that instead of crying racism any time someone raises the concern. Because it does not help disadvantaged communities, it only excuses the failures of the education system to adequately serve those communities.
yeah but it looks good on paper when you are judging people and districts by metrics like graduate rate.
the problem with education, broadly, it has become reduced to a system of gaming performance metrics by which it’s measured.
it isn’t judged by the individual students, or even individual schools.
is it elitist to expect the majority of your population to be able to run a 6 minute mile?
is it elitist to expect the majority of your population to be able to run a 6 minute mile?
Statistics says yes: https://runninglevel.com/running-times/1-mile-times
Long numbers short: You have to be in the top 20% to be able to run a 6-minute mile, if you somewhat regularly run.
Running a 6 minute mile is not the same thing as reading a basic news article, and framing it as such is disingenuous.
No, it’s EASY for you. Just like it might be easy for someone who is genetically gifted to run 6 miles without any training.
for most human beings, it takes lots of training to attain these abilities, and life-long training to retain them. if you stop training, your body degrades in weeks, and in months all your training is lost. your mind is similar. use it, or lose it.
your assumption that read is so easy, is what’s elitist. it’s like if you were an Olympic running and wondering why some average 30 year old can’t keep up with you, IT’S SO EASY BRO.
If you weren’t elitist you’d be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and realize how HARD reading is for them, to them it’s like running. it’s painful, difficult, and not desirable in any way to do it unless they absolutely have to.
the only it becomes enjoyable, is when you’ve turned it into a self-reinforcing habit, which the vast majority of folks won’t ever do and takes a lot of time and effort. running takes months of work before it becomes ‘rewarding’ and for some people, it never does.
your ‘basic standard’ is like expecting the average person who can’t run a mile without feeling like they are dying, to run a half marathon. that’s what you don’t understand. could they run a half marathon? yes, but it would take a year or more of training, and for them to run it well, as in like in 2 hours? it would take years.
you’ve been running you’re entire life on a daily basis and you expect other people who never jog to keep up with you or you look down on them as lazy and pathetic. That’s extremely elitist
No, it’s EASY for you. Just like it might be easy for someone who is genetically gifted to run 6 miles without any training.
Are you implying that the reason I’m literate is because I’m “generically gifted”? I’m sorry, but that’s a wild take. I’m literate because I went to school where they taught me how to read. I didn’t enjoy it all the time. I didn’t learn to appreciate reading until later in life. But it’s not too much to expect schools to teach people to read at a basic literacy level.
for most human beings, it takes lots of training to attain these abilities, and life-long training to retain them. if you stop training, your body degrades in weeks, and in months all your training is lost. your mind is similar. use it, or lose it.
Yeah, that’s called a K-12 education. If you didn’t complete that or a qualified substitute, or you got to the end of your schooling and still couldn’t read or write basic sentences yet somehow graduated, then you don’t belong in college. Hence why I said they should be required to take remedial courses before the 101 level.
Allowing primary and secondary schools to fail in that basic expectation is doing a disservice to everybody. I don’t care how many mental hoops you want to jump through and excuses you want to make, if a person is illiterate then they need to fix that before they should be admitted into a college-level education program.
If they can’t or won’t do that, then I’m sure there are plenty of blue collar jobs that they’ll thrive at. But pretending literacy shouldn’t be a basic requirement for college is wildly absurd.
No, you’re just privileged af and you don’t understand that other people aren’t as privileged as you, and you think other pepole not living up to your standards is a fault of theirs, or societies.
which is typical of most privileged people. rich people also don’t understand why everyone else is so poor. fit and healthy people don’t get why other people are fat and unhealthy. so on and so on.
You are totally blind to the circumstances of your life that allowed you to become you who are, because most of what you are is entirely circumstantial. You don’t understand how little opportunity most people have and how the vast majority of the population has. Or how little colleges care about anything other than making money.
You’re adding a lot of layers and assumptions to this that aren’t there.
If someone isn’t literate, then they’re not qualified for higher education. You can focus on the actual problem, which is the education system failing to adequately support students in disenfranchised areas. Fixing that would help them qualify for higher education and get a leg up, so that they could enjoy some of that “privilege” of literacy that you accuse me of having.
But no, instead you want to say anyone who’s literate is an elitist, and we shouldn’t give a shit about the educational outcomes of marginalized areas because expecting those poor marginalized kids to learn how to read is just too much. Do you have any idea how patronizing that is?
I’m not the one denying that students in impoverished areas are capable of learning how to read and write. All I’m saying is that if they want to pursue higher education, they need to be able to read and write. It’s not that controversial. And their K-12 education should prepare them for that. If it doesn’t, that’s a problem.
You calling me “elitist” is a distraction from the problem, and that doesn’t serve students in marginalized areas who are being failed by the education system. If you want to just coddle them and say “It’s fine, you don’t need to be literate. Literacy is for the privileged elite,” then you are the one actively harming their future and obstructing them from gaining this “privilege” that you seem to despise so much.
for most human beings, it takes lots of training to attain these abilities
That’s exactly what you and pretty much everyone in Northern Amerika and Europe did in school. Training your reading and writing skills, increasing your vocabulary, practicing reading comprehension…
Sure there are some that have it easier than others, but a 6th grade reading level is the equivalent of getting winded after a 100m stroll on even ground. At that point its detrimental to your own wellbeeing and day to day life. (The few percent that have an actual disability are excluded here)
American schools, especially poor ones, don’t do this. Rich ones, do.
I wrote at about a 7/8th grade level, and that was considered genius for my high school. When I went to college I had to re-learn how to read and write, because it never was taught to me beyond an 8th grade level. My A+ in high school translated to about a C- in college.
I took AP English classes… it didn’t matter. the standards at my high school were extremely low, because it was poor. And mine wasn’t even THAT bad. The parents are often even stupider than the kids, but the ‘floor’ of education in the USA is extremely low due to poverty and anti-education culture that is the default outside of a handful of elite and wealthy zip codes.
Further, my family and the culture of my community… punished me for my academic ‘success’. The teachers, students, and my own family members, HATED me for not being as stupid and dumb as they were and not actively embracing it. It was look down on, shamed, and resented.
Anyway, the rich and the poor in the USA are living in totally different moral, educational, and financial universes. For rich people, reading at 8th grade is ‘a failure’ for poor people, it makes you an ‘egghead’ that they hate.
That’s obviously a disservice to students in disadvantaged backgrounds, so why are you trying to argue against me when I’m saying we shouldn’t lower the floor further just to permit the education system to continue failing young people while fixing their metrics to look more successful?
because you can’t force people to be something they can’t or dont’ want to be.
The education system cannot rescue people from themselves. You can’t rise them up from the top down.
They have to want to improve themselves.
If the foundations of freedom in our society were built on everyone being able to run a 6 minute mile, then by-god everyone needs to be out there everyday, rain or shine, hoofin’ it.
are you serious? that’s not how any of this has worked, or ever worked. our society was, is, and will always be run by a small group of elite people.
the question really is, what do those elite people believe in? do they believe in the general welfare of everyone, or do they only give a fuck about themselves?
history shows us that this goes back and forth, and usually when the elites stop giving a fuck the society collapses or has a revolution and wars. then in the post revolution/war period things get broadly better, but eventually after a generation or three it erodes back to the elites only caring about themselves.
You make elites care by having leverage over them. You get leverage and power through various ways, but one of them is a majority of the population being able to understand when the wool is being pulled over their eyes. My point is not that people need to bootstrap, it is that they are powerless without reading skills (in agreement with most of this thread). If they want to be able to protect themselves/ have rights, then they need to arm themselves with the tools to defend those rights: basic logic, reasoning, and reading.
You will never be able to guilt someone with power into giving it up. Maybe a few of them innately have no desire to hold onto it, but the vast majority of people that have clawed their way to the top were… Well, willing to claw others.
It may be hard, and the odds may be stacked against them, but we need to fucking get the underprivileged there if we want to survive. Or you cater to their current state of ignorance and reap the rewards.
Allowing those political elite to permit schools to fail to bring students up to a basic level of literacy does not help the working class. That only helps the elite, which is why they’re so intent on defunding, degrading, and dismantling the education system.
History shows us time and time again, that every successful revolution has been led by educated people.
The political elite doesn’t care about the working class. They are disgusted by their existence.
The only people they want to help is themselves, and their children.
deleted by creator
The see and say method really did a number on this country.
Sometimes I will read a particularly insightful article from a scientific journal that a lot of sources have been referencing lately, and find that I can’t quite follow all the high level technical jargon discussing the topic, and I’ll feel just the smallest bit insecure about my level of intelligence.
But then I see posts like this and it all goes away lol
Field-specific jargon is so niche that it should hardly count. Even if you’re in the same field, you might not be familiar with the tests and metrics they’re using if it’s not your area of research anyway.
jargon is always changing. it’s used as a social sorting mechanism more than anything else. it’s used to signify something is new or special or different or ‘more advanced’, when that is rarely true.
which is precisely why it makes you feel inadequate. it’s designed to do that, to make you feel like you aren’t ‘smart’ and exclude you from the in-group who uses the jargon.
it’s also why marketing companies love jargon. it plays all over people’s insecurities and group-belonging.
Another day, another time I have to copy-paste this comment clarifying the 54% stat:
For clarity: this is based on piaac test results. The literacy test results are sorted into 6 categories (1-5 and <1) for comparing the distribution internationally. 54% of Americans score less than 3, compared to top-scoring Japan and top-english-speaking Australia at approximately 35% and 45%. The task description for level 3:
Adults at Level 3 are able to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. They can identify, interpret or evaluate one or more pieces of information, often employing varying levels of inferencing. They can combine various processes (accessing, understanding and evaluating) if required by the task . Adults at this level can compare and evaluate multiple pieces of information from the text(s) based on their relevance or credibility. Texts at this level are often dense or lengthy, including continuous, noncontinuous, mixed. Information may be distributed across multiple pages, sometimes arising from multiple sources that provide discrepant information. Understanding rhetorical structures and text signals becomes more central to successfully completing tasks, especially when dealing with complex digital texts that require navigation. The texts may include specific, possibly unfamiliar vocabulary and argumentative structures. Competing information is often present and sometimes salient, though no more than the target information. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information, and often require varying levels of inferencing. Tasks at Level 3 also often demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate text content to answer accurately. The most complex tasks at this level include lengthy or complex questions requiring the identification of multiple criteria, without clear guidance regarding what has to be done
I could not find which source originally cited level 2 as “6th grade” equivalent, though the oecd recommends against drawing that parallel
This is a really complicated statement to refer to test questions that probably say shit like “The ball is blue on Tuesdays. It’s Saturday today. What color is the ball?”
More realistically, it would be stuff like
The sign over a parking spot says no parking Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Select the times and dates that you are allowed to park there.
9:30 AM, Tuesday
8:00 PM, Sunday
5:15 PM, Thursday
12:00 PM, Monday
Exactly. Show me an example question for this test and then we’ll talk
https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/piaac/piaac-released-items.html
Scroll down for samples.
rainbow color, because ball is gay on Saturday and it’s only blue on Tuesdays because of cisheteronromativity that is enforced at it’s workplace.
