- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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What is this trash article. It throws numbers out with completely no basis for doing so. I don’t even know that I necessarily disagree with them, or the thought that America is probably not as literate as it ought to be, but this article is someone yelling into the void.
So to the OP, I’m not sure how one could suggest they learned anything from this article but the author’s opinion.
The article makes several bold statements and cites zero sources. I don’t see any reason to believe it.
Didn’t I see this post yesterday but it was 81% and 3rd grade level?
It’s the greatest ignorance, very bigly stupidity! Better magical thinking like no man has seen before! Tr*mp loves the poorly educated, believe me.
Now who benefits from a poorly educated populace?
Follow the fuckin money.
Everything published at or below 6th grade reading level
Americans consume this content almost exclusively
The median reader consumes at or below the 6th grade level
even ivy league students don’t read books anymore.
College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different.
I love Vibes Based Reporting.
Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and Crime and Punishment the next. Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.
As someone who was in college twenty years ago, I’ve got to say there’s no way in hell I could make it through an entire novel in a week while balancing the rest of my course load. Either I’m reading the Cliff’s Notes or I’m not getting it done. I also ran a 15-hour course study in hopes of landing a triple major in four years (bad idea, kids!), but even with a more conservative 12-hour load, imagine this plus 3 other classes making the same demands on your time.
This isn’t a new problem. It is, perhaps, a problem that the current generation of students no longer has the cheat-codes to navigate. But doggedly insisting people were housing a 400-page book in a week and retaining it for meaningful discussion? Get fucked, dude. Nobody was actually doing that ever.
If you could come to the table talking about these novels, its because you already read them in High School, not because you consumed them in a week in your hectic freshman year.
I was in college 20 years ago too. I read multiple books per week for fun, often on top of my regular coursework. It wasn’t hard, it was just a matter of priorities. My priority was to learn. I probably read 500 pages a week on average.
Your presumption is wild. You basically think because you didn’t do the work, nobody could, or should do it. You are part of the problem here. Reading a 400 page novel is not that time consuming dude, esp in college. In my AP English class we read one every 2-3 weeks.
Rather than rise to the challenge of learning, you want to pretend that it’s an onerous requirement that nobody could possible attain. What, so you can party more, or dick around on the internet? Are you the type who goes to book clubs and doesn’t read the book and then thinks anyone who did is a stupid nerd? I’ve definitely encountered plenty of those people in my book clubs, which is precisely why I don’t do them anymore.
$20 bucks says this guys “regular coursework” was liberal arts BS lol
Some of us studied actually challenging stuff, mate
right, anyone who reads books that aren’t engineering is an idiot, right?
So what makes me stupider, my minor in mathematics, or my minor in music? because both are ‘useless’ fields.
I didn’t say you were stupid, but YOU said
I read multiple books per week for fun, often on top of my regular coursework. It wasn’t hard, it was just a matter of priorities. My priority was to learn.
So because I didn’t read extra books on the side, my priority wasn’t to learn? pretty insulting.
You are part of the problem here. Reading a 400 page novel is not that time consuming dude
Even more insults!
Rather than rise to the challenge of learning, you want to pretend that it’s an onerous requirement that nobody could possible attain. What, so you can party more, or dick around on the internet? Are you the type who goes to book clubs and doesn’t read the book and then thinks anyone who did is a stupid nerd?
Yeah, your whole comment and subsequent attempts has you coming off like an arrogant prick. The books the original poster mentioned? I read those in middle school mate, so I guess that makes me even smarter than your pretentious ass. And that’s why I wrote a snotty comment.
I used to teach. My lazy students told me I was an arrogant prick too. They usually got Cs and would leave me angry reviews about how stupid my course was and how dare I make them try hard because what is the point I was going to give them a bad grad because i didn’t like them personally.
My students who did the readings, showed up to class, wrote good papers, to enjoy my class and usually got As.
Weird how that works. It’s OK if you don’t like to read man, but don’t go around generalizing that your lack of drive and interest in the topic necessitates that it’s a waste of time for everyone else.
I would guess you don’t run marathons either. Are people who run marathons wasting their time too? Or should they just take blood dope?
Literary and technical literacy are orthogonal. All you’re achieving here is to denigrate yourself.
Nah, but when someone is acting like a prat, I’ll give it right back to’em. I maintained a 4.0 GPA through medical school, and have read so many god damn books. Doesn’t make me smarter or better.
I probably read 500 pages a week on average.
Pride and Prejudice alone is 400 pages. Crime and Punishment is another 600 pages. If you have two Lit classes in the same semester, you’re going to have to double that rate or fall behind schedule. Nevermind retention.
I remember sitting in a library surrounded by books, struggling to solve the 15 problems a class Engineering Physics assigned. Just a fist full of brain-teasers day in and day out. Three of us working together managed to clear the load in a couple of hours. Then on to the next assignment, which was another two or three hours. Five classes a day, you’re lucky when you have enough time to sleep.
I’ll admit, I did a few summers at a community college and that workload was much smaller, the tests were far easier, and the graders significantly more forgiving. Crazy how little work it takes to ace an exam in High School Plus relative to a University weed-out program.
I fail to see the point of any of what you are talking about.
You weren’t taking English classes, what do you care about the workload in them?
You weren’t taking English classes
Wasn’t I? Could have sworn my transcript says otherwise.
So what are you mad about? that you had to read books in English class?
Why were you taking english class if you don’t want to read books?
Are you angry you had to do engineering problems in engineering class too? Sounds like it.
Anybody know what this nonsense says? I’m having a hard time reading it.
Hence the pivot to video.
I was really expecting this to be a video too
I hope i’m not in that 54%.
no worry u smrt man
I hope they didn’t burn their diploma.
i am smort
*smrot
fiksed that 4 u
hahahah wut a ijit
I’m surprised that 46% can read above it.
And as someone pointed out, that is basically functional illiteracy.
It’s worth noting that illiteracy isn’t simply a pass/fail test that depends on if you can read individual words. Literacy is largely determined by critical thinking skills and the ability to intuit things that aren’t directly stated.
For a good example, a large part of higher literacy is based on being able to see a piece of work, (a news article, video, book, song, etc.), and identify who the intended target audience is. Usually, the answer is not “me”. But I mention this specific example because people have become accustomed to laser-focused algorithms that only show content that is directly relevant to themselves. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc all have finely crafted algorithms that are designed to keep you engaged. And they do so by serving content that is directly aimed at you.
As algorithmic media feeds have become more common, people have literally lost the ability to identify when something is not meant for them. People used to see an irrelevant piece of media, and they would just go “oh it’s not for me” and move on. But now they tend to be surprised that they’re seeing the media, and they tend to get angry when something doesn’t directly confirm their lived experience. And they tend to take it out on the creators. We have literally seen content creators start changing the way they make their media, to avoid people getting angry when something isn’t directly relevant to themselves.
For instance, maybe I make a TikTok about the proper way to throw a football. Pretty basic stuff, right? Previously, if I left it at that, anyone who wasn’t interested in throwing a football would just move on. But now, I’d inevitably get angry comments about “but I’m in a wheelchair, what about me”, “why is this on my feed, I hate football”, “I have a torn rotator cuff, why are you excluding me” types of comments.
Now, content creators literally add disclaimers in their content, to directly state who the intended audience is. To go back to that same example, I’d probably have step 0 of the tutorial be something along the lines of “okay so this is obviously just for the people looking to check their throwing form. If you don’t like football, can’t throw a ball, or have some sort of disability that stops you from doing so, you can obviously move on.” Because if I don’t have that disclaimer somewhere near the start, I’ll inevitably get some angry comments. And those comments are being left by functionally illiterate people, who have lost (or never had) the ability to determine an intended audience.
Agreed. The person who was talking about it referenced media literacy and being able to discern valid sources from, effectively, propaganda.
Critical thinking skills were more to the point of the “functional illiteracy” label.
And god damn that example hits home because the worst of social media posts are exactly that. The Reddit “um akshually” guy who wonders why a simple statement post doesn’t include every possible extrapolation because it has to be a one-upmanship game instead of a clarifying question.
Critical thinking skills aren’t completely dead in America, but they are on life support and I’m not sure it’ll survive.
Our university system is hell bent on eradicating it the past few decades. It used to teach them.
Now critical thinking is considered dangerous and offensive and harmful, and the students who are suppose to be learning it, are opposed to it because it ‘hurts’ them to have their raw emotional pre-conceptions about things challenged.
Anti-intellectualism has always existed in the US but I’ll take your word about universities since I haven’t been in one since the 90s.
But honestly kids back then weren’t much better.
There has been a major cultural shift in the past decade, starting in the early 2010s towards creating ‘safe spaces’ at universities, and students refusing to learn critical thinking skills and replacing them with quasi religious dogma, of a leftist political bent often. It is very new that this type of thing is going on at universities.
Relatedly, grade inflation is also rampant again. 60% of Harvard undergrads get straight As last year. in 2005, 25% of of them did. Failing or getting bad grades is basically impossible at universities these days unless you are deliberately negligent. Showing up and making minimal effort usually gets you a B or higher. Because being lazy and getting a C would ‘traumatize’ a student these days, so it’s not allowed.
There are some great books about it. Coddling of the American mind is probably the most popular.
Also students don’t study anymore. Average study time is like a dozen hours a week now. It used to be 30+ 2-3 decades ago.
Yeah. Thanks for this comment. This is true, insane, and the problem on so many ways.
I get so many ‘drive bys’ on my comments these days form angry miserable people who can’t understand what I’m saying and are offended by it, or offended on behalf of someone else. Being offended by things not intended for them, not talking about them, or do them, is a badge of moral righteousness these days for many people.
In real life I’m also seeing this bleed into people approaching me to tell me how stupid I am for reading in public and/or the book that I’m reading is insulting to them how dare I be in their visual field!
It’s insane.
Mapping this to age to help.
“The internet” says grade 6 = 11-12yo, which for my reference is Year 7 in NZ, or the first year of intermediate (Y7 and Y8; between primary and secondary school) which is a fairly low bar.
So I checked the OECD and we are basically average; just above the US in the 2023 data. So better but not much better.
To be fair, newspapers back in the day aimed to write for a 6-8th grade reading level here in the US.
At this point though, I’ve been told that this is basically functional illiteracy here.
the vast majority of people don’t need advanced reading skills.
and those that do, typically only need them temporarily during their college years.
Where i live tons of people have advanced degrees, but outside of work/college, they see reading as boring and stupid and have no interest in it.
And vote at a 5 yr old level.
I’m European and already figured this out the moment I got on the internet 🤣
It’s not our fault we’re stupid. It’s the fault of capitalism.
Capitalism or not, books exist… Read one
The rest of the world isn’t much better to be honest. 6th grade reading level isn’t even that bad. The amount of people who can’t read at all is more worrying
“Are you smarter than a 6th grader?”
“What? That seems like such a low bar to make a whole game show off of. Wouldn’t it have basically a 100% rate of contestants winning? I mean, they’re using adults. Might be a bit more interesting if they use a bunch of 2nd graders that are said to be gifted.”
(Show comes out)
“…so it appears I was wrong, and this country is fucked.”
(Decades go by, and we’re now in present day)
“See? We’re fucked.”
Good lord I’m sick of hearing about that big dumb country. The post filtering via keyword doesn’t seem to work reliably on Eternity, might switch apps. But will deffo just take a break from the fediverse I think. Get outside innit.
you could post about European illiteracy rates, you know?
but nah, you just want to bitch about Americans.
