Today, 130 million Americans—54% of adults aged 16-74—lack the literacy skills that many take for granted, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
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Red state Republican politicians fear a truly literate constituency. Reading may lead to thinking which leads to knowledge which leads to understanding which leads to Democrats.
Skills and aptitudes are nobody's fault. They still deserve a decent life just because they can't read isn't a reason to keep them low income. Many may even be dyslexic and need coaching to learn how to read.
When I was in the Navy in the 80s, all manuals were written at a 10th grade level. They did this to make them accessible to all military members.
As to school, I taught myself to read because I didn't want to have to wait to have my comics read to me. I cannot read the way most do. I see pictures.
The word 'horse' always means horse. It was a picture to me. I cannot read the way school taught us to read. When I was tested in 10th grade for my level in various subjects, my reading, vocabulary, and comprehension was a 2nd semester college juniors level. [We won't talk about the math]
The idiots at school never caught I have severe dyscalculia. That's Dyslexia with numbers instead of writing. Before I went to school I would drag my comics everywhere. When my county got a library, I threw a fit to make Mom take me there.
We do a disservice to our kids by not making sure they can read. I dragged my nephews and nieces to that same library when I had to babysit them. And got them their own cards. My niece carries her old card in her wallet. That was 51 years ago. We are failing them.
Being taught to write in cursive just makes it less likely they can read the constitution but trying to suggest only knowing how to print is bad for a largely illiterate public is not a real complaint. People need to read to develop empathy & the vocabulary many lack. It's practice, nothing else. 🙄
I mean what do you expect with the push of private schools so the wealth can afford it but a lot of Americans aren’t the wealthy. Nor do they have the resources to properly understand how to use them…
I’m not surprised, I mean your kids can stay at home and learn about geography, mathematics, history, and spelling from your mum. What’s wrong with that?🤷♀️
Uhm…. that explains Eric Schmidt MO rep who had the word Military on a huge board behind him ‘spelled wrong’ and the 🤡‘not my president’ with a reading & vocabulary level below 6th grade level😬
This is why advice on how to reach younger people is to use video, not written info. But if reading skills are poor, does that carry over to poor video listening comprehension and retention skills?
I don’t know; maybe someone on here knows?
There is a big plurality of sources of Print media & books 📚 all need focus to find and read.
TV & digital media need little focus or literacy. It’s also very ghettoised, ie divided into ideological silos.
Inside media bubbles people don’t form opinions, they’re reinforced or spoon fed to them.
To some degree, poor literacy skills lead to poor listening skills if the individual doesn't have the vocabulary to understand what is being said. But I think a bigger problem is that poor readers don't have a great ability to focus their attention, whether on a speaker or printed word.
Good point. I have no expertise in teaching reading, but focus and attention span logically seem related to reading skills and comprehension.
If you read well enough to immerse in a book, you learn things & can’t pinpoint how you know them. They become part of you. (My opinion)
That might explain a lot about the last election. I would favor more funds for education. Perhaps we would have better discourse and less legal squabbles.
More funds would be great, but the funds need to be used appropriately. The NCLBA, for example, contributed to a shift away from general learning to a focus on specific pieces of info for just long enough for students to pass certain tests so that schools could receive adequate funding. Not okay.
I’d be curious to see math literacy statistics in particular. When the media or politicians (e.g. Katie Porter) explain numbers and percentages, do most people truly understand them? If math literacy is 5th grade also, then comprehending statistics and how they pertain to each other is impossible.
That's an excellent article.
Watched the first TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon on Youtube. JFK wanted to increase spending for education and give teachers more autonomy and decision-making. Nixon wanted less $ for education and less teacher-control.
Snarkiness aside, I find this very worrying. I feel that it very important to not only be able to read and understand the written word, but to also have critical thinking skills to put one has read into context and use that to make informed decisions.
Thanks, Zag. I had coffee over xmas break with a former student who just finished his PhD at the Rockefeller Institute, and will be starting a job this spring making $230,000. I've learned not to take credit for their successes or blame for their failures!
You may not have been solely responsible for that student's success, but you contributed to it. Take that credit and wear it like a cloak. You've earned it.
As a Norwegian who lived in the US for a year I thought a lot about why Americans felt so uneducated, because people get plenty of education. What I observed was the main difference between Norway and US 20 years ago when I lived there was the intellectual culture. To elaborate….
…it isn’t what is going on in the schools which is the main problem in the US, but what happens outside. There is no reading culture to speak of. Now, Norwegian are nature and sports loving people and not really intellectuals, but we do value reading still. Didn’t see that in the US. Clarify…
…20 years ago I rarely saw people with families I stayed with read much of anything. Here people would at least read newspapers, crime novels, hobby magazines. Even blue collar workers. Authors are highly regarded. Reading to children talked about a lot. Rarely see that discussed in the US.
Your astute observations track with my own. Seeing a young American reading a book in public is like spotting a unicorn.
American adults (50 years or older) tend to read more than the younger generations. My wife and I try to model for our daughter the reading of books for pleasure, but she's 16!
Daughter is getting her credential this year but taught for 2 years as a sub-including in long term assigns/high school English. Which is what she wants to do. She has been shocked at the level of reading comprehension of many of her students. Some,in high school, are simply functionally illiterate.
There's a strong correlation between the omnipresence of smart phones (70% of American teens own an iPhone) and the decline in reading and writing skills. Even on the Advanced Placement level. My AP Language students' performances peaked between 2011 and 2014. There's been a steady decline since.
Beg to differ, a majority voted for Trump, and they were responding to speeches delivered at a fourth grade level. And the "conspiracy" lectures would not stand up to a literature research at a sixth grade level.
Unfortunately your information is not surprising. People keep trying to figure out why trump has so many followers. This helps explain it. The republicans began attacking education decades ago. This is the result…and brought us trump.
Pam. I totally agree with you. That’s why I parsed comment by saying It helps explain. It definitely is not the only reason, or probably even the primary reason. Yet, it is eye opening. How do you inform people about complex issues when they are such poor or non-readers?
Patience and talking in simple terms. It really is like trying to teach about a technology topic to someone that hasn't been exposed to it. Use descriptive but dimple language, give examples, state the thought in multiple ways until you see the lightbulb go on.
I would totally agree with you, yet having patiently tried repeatedly to explain issues to people multiple times, they have to be receptive to listening. I find that too often they have soaked up lies and rhetoric and have no interest in hearing facts or truth.
No. About 20% of society is dyslexic and struggles with reading and is likely part of this statistic. Lack of ability to decode words on a page does not mean those people have to remain uneducated however. There’s plenty of ways for people to be educated through audio means.
A lot of people didn’t vote because they didn’t like Harris’s stance on Israel or Trump and so they abstained. Not me, because anyone would have been better than the Cheeto.
I do not understand. Do we graduate fewer students, graduate students who do not have required skills, do reading skills degrade over time, or has the measurement become meaningless?
Agree with Tyler. In CA students go to the next grade without remediation regardless of whether they meet academic expectations or not. It's "social promotion." We don't have funding for remediation, support teachers, summer school, smaller classes, etc. It's horrible!
The travesty of our times is not fully supporting and robustly funding our public school education system. Yet we give out participation trophies like candy.
I dropped out of high school, and I'm on disability. I read all the time. If they take Libby, I'll be screwed. But my mother taught me to read at 3. I read library books on tape. My friends don't read at all.
My cousin teaches in the Maine Community College system. Even with free education, classes get cancelled due to low enrollment, and many kids that do enroll can’t perform and finish the class.
That’s not really surprising.
There has been an effective campaign to dumb down Merica ahead of a coup. They need foot soldiers to obey without questioning - not independent thinkers that challenge authority.
Just like the church in the Middle Ages. That only took 1,000 years to overcome.
Explains the election of DJT. It’s so sad what has happened to education in this country. Mostly because parents do not prioritize it at home and they do not support the teachers.
Three and four year-olds are flunking speech screenings for Head Start. There is a frightening conflagration of mediocrity and lowering of standards across so many domains simultaneously that portend the inexorable collapse of an empire. Have a nice day.
Cuba has a 99%literacy. Compare that to a good part of US States..mostly RED STATES ..It should tell you that those " COMMUNISTS" are doing something right.Tell that to those who know nothing rethat wonderful island and the wonderful people in there.
"Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."
"Joe and Rita had three children, the three smartest kids in the world. Vice President Frito took 8 wives and had a total of 32 kids. Thirty-two of the dumbest kids ever to walk the Earth. OK, so maybe Joe didn't save mankind, but he got the ball rolling, and that's pretty good for an average guy."
Some people just did not have access to consistent education. For ex., Knew a man who attended 18 different schools by 10th grade. He quit in 11th as soon as he could go into army with parent signature.
This explains a lot, not just #TRUMP BUT #Brexit, too!
#KaiserDunning!
#POTUS #POTUS47 #MAGA
#BrexitReality #Brexitdisaster #BrexitShambles
#JamesOBrien #Eduction #Literacy @mrjamesob.bsky.social
Actual teacher interaction makes all the difference at the same time... is there a platform like Khan Academy that can give some online beginner reading education for adults? Sesame Street helps for kids, but something for adults?
Well because of the WWE it's about to get sooo much worse. Pretty soon everyone will sound like concussions patients🤤. When you dumb, you're easily manipulated😄.
This might be an apt explanation of why we are all here politically. You think a totalitarian government wants to keep their subjects well educated. That’s a big nope.
Probably why the voter turnout is always so low. Those 130 million Americans are afraid they couldn’t pass the literacy tests. Oh who am I kidding they wouldn’t even know about literacy tests. What school actually has American History and Civics in the curriculum anymore?
This is why I told my grandsons that if they learned to read well, and comprehend what they read, they would never be dependent on what others tell them. They are all very good readers and the 17yo wants to be a history professor.
Sounds like a postWW-II plan by the elite worked. Separate the classes, find a scapegoat below the poor whites, and take over the oldest democracy without firing a shot.
They hold to the delusion that rich = smart and successful...
They can't even fathom the idea that you could inherit millions, much less billions, with ZERO work, no clue how to survive, and literally dependent on everyone else.
Even worse, they don't realize that most of these, stole from them!
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Well it has done Trump no harm.
Serfs don't need to read.
Sad state of affairs
Add a drop of social media mind control and power is complete
As to school, I taught myself to read because I didn't want to have to wait to have my comics read to me. I cannot read the way most do. I see pictures.
They can get cookies as a reward for reading and writing cursive!
I don’t know; maybe someone on here knows?
TV & digital media need little focus or literacy. It’s also very ghettoised, ie divided into ideological silos.
Inside media bubbles people don’t form opinions, they’re reinforced or spoon fed to them.
If you read well enough to immerse in a book, you learn things & can’t pinpoint how you know them. They become part of you. (My opinion)
They WANT TO FLEECE the sheep!
They want very cheap labor and they want idiot consumers.
#MoneyFlowsUp
Watched the first TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon on Youtube. JFK wanted to increase spending for education and give teachers more autonomy and decision-making. Nixon wanted less $ for education and less teacher-control.
Parent/child reading stories at schools
Snarkiness aside, I find this very worrying. I feel that it very important to not only be able to read and understand the written word, but to also have critical thinking skills to put one has read into context and use that to make informed decisions.
American adults (50 years or older) tend to read more than the younger generations. My wife and I try to model for our daughter the reading of books for pleasure, but she's 16!
".. adults aged 16- .."
There has been an effective campaign to dumb down Merica ahead of a coup. They need foot soldiers to obey without questioning - not independent thinkers that challenge authority.
Just like the church in the Middle Ages. That only took 1,000 years to overcome.
It’s about maintaining power after all, and you can’t propagandize a highly literate society.
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia describes it: “…you first make thieves and then punish them for it…”
The amount of basic level English I've had to explain to people 15 years older than me is astounding.
130-million divided by 244.6-million is 0.53147997.
Fucking 53% of 'Mericans "lack the literacy skills... "
Who are the "many" that "take for granted" literacy skills?
2) That doesn't mean they're dumb. How do we reach them?
#KaiserDunning!
#POTUS #POTUS47 #MAGA
#BrexitReality #Brexitdisaster #BrexitShambles
#JamesOBrien #Eduction #Literacy @mrjamesob.bsky.social
This isn't about a full solution. It's more curiosity about what could help, especially in areas that have less resources.
THEY WANT IDIOTIC CONSUMERS AND CHEAP LABOR!
#StealingFreedom #StealingMoney
That is 40% of the US total population.
#oligarchy #idiocracy
It's equivalent to an elementary school playground of intellect.
Shocking.
And Tik Toks next I see...
A ‘brave new world’…
We have an undereducated civilian population that is believing bullshit spewed at them by a lying felon.
Yeah it's going to be an unusual four years America
They can't even fathom the idea that you could inherit millions, much less billions, with ZERO work, no clue how to survive, and literally dependent on everyone else.
Even worse, they don't realize that most of these, stole from them!