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.
I was wondering “wait, if they can’t read that, then what do they read?” But of course they just don’t. Unless Reddit or Facebook counts as reading.
That’s actually a good question. How much do certain platforms play into literacy, I wonder?
I can definitely testify that there’s grades to it: Whenever I peruse Hacker News I feel like I’m studying for a university level exam lol
when I read it, i feel like I know why technical documentation is so stupid and obtuse instead of clear and obvious.
tech people generally have a poor grasp of how to communicate information effectively, let alone in a style that isn’t tedious and boring.
everytime i read a technical document I ask myself who the hell wrote this and what the hell were they thinking. then i re-write it for my employees in a way that is actually understandable and applicable to reality, instead of paragraphs and paragraphs of self-referencing jargon that seems to be in love with itself.
People don’t often get into tech to be writers. Also, though, I’ve found that paraphrased tech manuals usually leave out the most important bits of information whenever I have to use one.
they watch reality tv, sports, and listen to pop music. all of which is constructed at a 3rd grade level of language
adults where? all across the globe? not a bubble.
how about the 50% that can’t read live in a bubble, not the other way around?
Tldr
this is quite upsetting to read
OP is apparently not part of the hyper-literate educated elite.
Are you highly intelligent but not part of the global elite cabal of pedophile baby eaters. You should try suicide.
I’m not highly intelligent.
Is this option available to me?
You know what’s even better?
The next generation isn’t going to be able to read nor focus on anything for more than 60 seconds, and after it comes to pass there still won’t be any meaningful regulation of social media either.
They’re already regulating social media…in all the wrong ways. Age verification is just the start.
What did you think social media was made for, if not to make the vast majority of people (that have been failed by a hollowed out education system and exposed to unfettered anti intellectualism lobbying from pro oil lobbyists hitting the news like the US hit its people with crack and LSD) into unthinking easily manipulatable cattle that buy what you tell them to, think what you show them is real, and then spread that misinformation like gospel.
That and there is also an uncontrolled virus going around that literally eats your nervous system to the point where some people that caught it were physically incapable of reading.
Why do you think it’s so easy to convince people there’s a conspiracy around an Antarctic pyramid by showing them a zoomed in glacial mountain range and drawing a square around one peak?
TL;DR
TL…🦋🐿️
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.
Wot chu meen it’s not spelt Bree-UGH-nn!?
Oh right, it’s definitely not something to mock. Literacy rates should concern everyone who lives in a democracy.
I have a vivid memory of being in a high school english course with a dyslexic girl who wrote this INSANELY beautiful and thoughtful analysis of an Alexander Posey poem…
Nobody understood what it meant, and nobody engaged except to point out the fact that she couldn’t spell “conciousness”. So she stopped her presentation and walked out of the room.
Wherever she is right now, I hope she understands she was the brightest person there. And one of the only ones who had any semblance of real reading comprehension despite sometimes not being able to spell long words.
see the thing is that I’ve already misjudged how dumb the average person is. I give too much credit to people.
same thing with people being assholes. I just kind I’ve assumed that people generally want to not be assholes. nope, absolutely not, wildly incorrect. the average person doesn’t give a fuck about anything but themself at that moment
Sure, if by “average” he meant “median”
*contingent on a symmetric intelligence distribution
How mean
Man there are a bunch of math/stats nerds on Lemmy 😀
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
https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_items.asp
If you want to see some of the sample questions (from 2003 or earlier), you can see exactly the kind of questions that so many people struggle with. After reading some of the sample questions and confirming the answers, it’s kind of depressing how many people are able to get them wrong.
tl;dr heh
The irony is if you’re smart enough to read a nyt article you should be smart enough to realize what a rag it is. Unless you support genocide I guess.
Plato’s cave
Me read biggly. Me top smart person in country.
1/3 of it being caused by immigration is an angle I’d never thought about that actually makes me feel a tiny bit better
Bingo. My father is an illiterate immigrant but managed to work (in a different time) and retire early as a result. Put me through college. These statistics are depressing at face value but they’re not as awful as they might seem.
Why else do you think short form content took off and immediately became the dominant way many people get news?
There’s something ironic about how poorly this is written. I choose to believe that they’re doing it intentionally; If only to preserve my sanity.
