I actually wanted to post this to clarify how points about it ought to be made, it’s pretty old and people know about it. Education resources in the USA are really unfairly distributed. It’s not that Americans are so evil because they’re stupid, it’s part of their de facto apartheid state’s continuation. Americans support bloodthirsty imperialism in order to hoard the education funding via property taxes in little enclaves. You’re not going to educate them out of killing you. They don’t care if you watch One Piece, and many don’t recognize this deal won’t be doled out to new generations on the same level, and will always get worse.
Of course, the educated and wealthy Americans are unusually stupid, globally, but I don’t think anyone is doubting that right now.
I ran into a guy on here the other day that didn’t know what the word “you” meant so I’m not surprised.
it was 3rd grade level in 2003 so that’s… an improvement…
I guess this has to do with 60s and 70s when the most educated people protested against Vietnam War and against capitalism.
Then they started a very long anti-intellectualist campaign with mad scientists, nerds as losers, and anti-vaccination campaigns.
I know this to be true at some level, because it can be measured, and there are laws around it. Government publications have to be written for a certain grade level. I know military manuals are 8th grade.
I recall reading in a separate study that true literacy, that is, being able to read, comprehend, and make inferences about a text, is at about 10% in the USA. Even those 10% are being mis-educated - taught various myths about history and economics. Without historical materialism, one really lacks the ability to comprehend the broader picture, even when one is ostensibly able to read and comprehend.
Of course, this is by design. Why would Capital want workers capable of understanding the world or their place in it? The brain drain will continue until the empire collapses under its own contradictions.
The fight for real education remains a workers’ rights issue. There’s a reason anarchists in spain used to offer it to workers.
One of the most insidious forms of disinformation in America right now is the anti education push. Many workers aren’t mad that they didn’t get enough out of their education, they’re mad they had to spend so much time and energy being taught things they don’t use for a living
This explains so much about ‘merica
It’s amazing that so many people read so much online and text so much now, but the reading levels have dumped so much. Like, everyone reads more crap now than when I was growing up, but I read at a 5th grade level by the time I was in 1st grade. I know our education sucks more, but I still figured people got enough practice in at simply reading.
That’s the difference between quantity and quality. What are people actually reading? Comments on various social media? High quantity of low quality. That’s probably making their reading comprehension degrade if anything
I used to work as a spell checker. I got fired for no raisin.
I keep seeing this and it’s not clear to me if this is general literacy or specifically English literacy. 21% of USAmericans speak English as a second language (or specifically “a language other than English at home”), which has to weigh on these statistics right?
Not enough to explain it away. Even if every single one of them were counted that’s still a large number of English-as-a-first-language speakers who are reading below a 6th grade level. It just seems like something that’s important to consider.
Appreciate you bringing that up it’s very relevant to dealing with some teacher lib racism in the immediate future as well
I’d want a supplemental study on the reading level of ESL folk in their first language. Furthermore the gauge of literacy isn’t simply knowing how to pronounce words or the alphabet or whatever, it’s a measure of broader skills like the ability to retain and parse information. Reading a graph is also part of general literacy. Someone who could read every word of the first page of a book out loud, but then they’re unable to summarize it, or unable to answer questions or make a response would be someone functionally illiterate.
Someone who’s ESL and has a hard time parsing English, but still able to retain information they read in English, is far more literate than a native English speaking American who reads like a 10 year old child.
Well… I guess under Trump you could skate by with an A1 reading level.
It’s obvious when you listen to their dictator.
Sad. How disgraceful. Total disaster. Tremendous disgrace.
EDIT: Seriously, I’m not a native speaker and recently someone asked me my level of English compared to one. I wasn’t sure how ro reply. It depends which native speaker. Do we count the accent? Because I’m pretty sure the president of France has a better English vocabulary than the US dictator.
Maga is evidence of this
Yeah, well, at least I don’t spell Almanac with a K
It’s Armagnac you uncultured swine!
I’m not really sure what 6th grade level actually means, but when I was in 6th grade I was able to read pretty much anything I wanted to if it was just standard English (like I probably couldn’t understand some paper full of medical jargon or old stuff like Shakespeare, but I could read a novel or a newspaper just fine.)
Before handheld device convenience, my personal experience with Shakespeare/Chaucer/Plato (stuff assigned in middle school, high school (gymnasium), college {university), after a first class coaching for the unit language ~5-10 minutes, and reading aloud/discussion about what the author said in the first few paragraphs, it was fairly easy to catch on fairly quickly, but I did use the college dictionary and a notebook to write definitions, pronunciation, use in my own modern sentence as I went because writing it down helps me remember.
Local newspapers and popular magazines are generally around 5th - 7th grade reading level so they can reach a broad audience.
I wonder if this ties to media and social media literacy as well, though poor education on its own could explain that.
It’s often interesting to me that in both media and social media, the more informative they are the more atomized they are. Lemmy > reddit > facebook/x, dropsite > jacobin/guardian > msnbc/bbc
just enjoy my recent conversation on this very subject.
