- cross-posted to:
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
- usa@lemmy.ml
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33% of high school graduates never read another book again in their lives after graduation.
Let that sink in.
228 million adults in the US, and 75 million of them are committed to never reading.
Sounds a lot like the voting block for a certain orange fascist…
I’d say it’s probably a lot more in line with the ones who didn’t vote at all. I know everyone likes to say “conservative dumb,” but we’re all aware there are plenty of educated conservatives, probably just as many dumb liberals. The true dumb are the ones who sit out an election. That’s “I don’t read” dumb.
I reject that. Voting changes nothing with both parties owned by the oligarchy, with one now reaching for absolute power or no, the other party was never going to stop them.
We went to great trouble to stop them and it was squandered, then the next election thrown.
No, tis those supporting the doomed to fail strategy at fault, not those not participating, because it was always going to end here without a New Deal on offer, and your precious opposition party sees it’s reason for being as preventing reform, not beating r’s, or undoing their past harms, let alone restoring the republic to it’s glory half a century back before the business roundtable infected both parties and every branch of government.
Yeah sorry this argument doesn’t matter now that the current president is sending armed goons to muder citizens. We have God damn literal brownshirts in our streets
This would not have been our current reality, but the BoTH SidEs ArE ThE SAmE crowd is incapable of acknowledging their responsibility in making this happen
You are arguing terms, after the formula is multiplied by zero. Get some real opposition leadership, or else get used to the fascist dictatorship. You knew or should have known people like Biden would fail, let alone kamala, anointed without contest 4 plus months to go running as status quo.
Instead of admitting you trusted the wrong people you listen to those wrong people in passing the buck, and blaming everyone else.
People made clear they wouldn’t vote for these democrats just because the other party is worse, biden barely pulled off 2020 and did nothing with it, vote for what? 2020 changed nothing, just slowed down parts of the plutocratic rot and fascist cancer. Take some responsibility and admit your influencers are playing you, so you can help get a winning strategy, a new deal in popular reform. Or else continue to lose, and blame everyone else despite knowing better.
But ignorance is no excuse, and following the lead of establishment democrats that see their reason for being as preventing reform, and extracting borrowed money from the government, rather than defeating the republicans and instituting real reform to improve the situations is at this point a dereliction of duty as a citizen that votes, and frankly speaks to a weak mind.
Seems like you’re adding “committed” into that stat. The people who will never read a book post high school aren’t doing so out of commitment but for a variety of reasons.
It’s also silly to pretend book readers are inheriently better. I know a few magas that read books after high school. It’s all fantasy novels but they do technically read books.
To be fair, I read little nowadays, but audiobooks where I can listen to seties while doing laundry, or trash, or DIY projects… I blasted through Cosmere 2 years ago, plus the Dresden series, Noobtown, DCC, Demon Mart, He Who Fights with Monsters last year, and this year (and past two months) the Wandering Inn series (Book 12 now). I enjoy books far more than film and tv, mostly due to speed at which I can devour the content (1.75x usually).
I haven’t read a book in like 8 years :/
Yeah, but you’re not anti-book. It’s different if you just don’t have time / energy right now. There are literally millions of people who just…like, don’t believe in it.
Yeah. I just don’t crave it I guess. i still read the news once a day.
Books are so much better than the news.
Yeah. Responsibilities suck T_T
“Uh, s-scuse me, all I see are screens, I’m just looking for something with some words in it.”
“Words?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean like in the books!? What for?”
“Just… to read.”
“Heh heh heh heheheheh… heheheheh…”
Oh so then they’re fully qualified to be ICE. No intelligence required. In fact, intelligence hurts your chances.
Thats LITERALLY what police in my area were advertising 10 years ago for a hiring event.
They had fliers for a big hiring event that said “High school diploma not required. Dropouts encouraged to apply”
I remember seeing it and saying “Well this can only end well.” in a very sarcastic tone.
As an avid audio book listener I really thought the rise of podcasts would make americans more literate but it seems like it had an inverse effect.
What’s going on in the US? Is the water poisoned with heavy metals or something? The mental decline is palpable.
The boomers are aging and lead poisoned. Education system is spotty. Poor areas have less tax revenue, leading to worse schools, and that creates a cycle.
People are addicted to social media and it’s literally rotting their brains. 15 second video clips with the same background audio playing in a loop.
I think it is a lot of things happening concurrently.
If they could do you think Trump would have gotten elected TWICE! nevermind he probably still would have…
Or Obama for that matter.
What a brainless thing to say
You found one of the 54%
ez block
I enjoyed Obama’s books. Have you read any of them?
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.
I always wonder how these things are determined. Does a 6th grade reading level mean that you cannot read above that level (simplifying here), or just that you generally don’t read above it? Never in my adult life have I taken a survey/test that would generate the statistics like this that we always see, nor do I know anyone that has (which isn’t to say that they aren’t happening). If the media being generated for me is written at a lower level, and that’s what they are basing these types of statistics off of, that’s not reflective of my abilities. Don’t get me wrong, my country is beyond fucked, but I’m not really a fan of how the author of this article tried to make their point (and I’m not just talking about the reading level statistic).
This is an op-ed disguised as a news story. It doesn’t even tell me who did the study, doesn’t tell me where to find it, gives me nothing, and then goes off on some very politically charged tangents.
It says Americans are dumb though, so to the top with you!
It’s been a while since I read about it, but if I remember correctly it’s roughly the level medication directions are written in. Simple, direct language that’s hard to misinterpret. People at that reading level can read levels above it, but struggle to comprehend it.
That kind of seems like the responsible thing to do with medications regardless, remove any possible ambiguity. I can read well above these levels and when I create standard operating procedures I attempt to do the same thing. Clear, concise, repeatable, and limit jargon as much as possible. A network admin, system admin, help desk person, or someone fresh off the line might need to follow them one day and I can’t assume they have the same foundational knowledge or environmental familiarity that I do. What I do is also a lot less important and has a far narrower reach than medication.
Used to work at ATT. They used a goddamn dictionary tool for their abbreviations. And some were used for five things or more. You had to read them in context to differentiate. A damn nightmare.
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.
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.
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.
That explains a lot
Clearly the DOE has been doing a great job for 40+ years, reducing the average reading level
Class content is determined almost entirely at the local or state level, not the federal. How well students in Mississippi read has almost nothing to do with how the DOE has been doing, because what kids in Mississippi (and every other state) learn is determined by the state.
And much of it isdetermined by Texas, one of the most regressive and oppressive state
Funding does impact what, how, and by whom kids are taught. A large portion of education funding is federal.
It appears from my searching 8-10% is federal funding did you see a number somewhere else that was much higher?
I reviewed a bunch of sources from a quick (and not extensive) search, and it looks like it may vary by district, but I’m seeing sources (across different years) with averages as high as 13% and as low as 8%. I don’t know where I was getting my number, but I thought it was more like 43%. Even 13% is shite. 8% is abysmal. So sad.
You were probably thinking of state funding. That’s often right around 43% with the rest being local funding.
Mississippi is subject to the same funding standards as every other state, and is miles behind everyone else. What they choose to do with that money locally is what is affecting outcomes, and it’ll be that way as long as curriculum and standards are set at the local and state level.
I’m not arguing that state and local levels don’t have any impact. There’s no doubt that they do, but imagine if federal funding was double or triple what it is now. The outcomes could be so much better, even in places like MS where the government is actively working against its people.
Edit: I also agree with where you seemed to be heading, which is that there should be some national minimums both or education content and how funding is spent.
blanket federal funding wouldnt mean shit to the bottom states, it would just be ratfucked into the local robber barons coffers like everything else is currently.
fixing mississippi starts by removing the slavers-sons running the state like it’s their personal piggybank, same for pretty much all former slave states.
Hence the pivot to video.
Meanwhile I vividly recall my 2nd grade teacher giving me a weird look for reading Stephen King in the classroom.
“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.”
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.
I googled a map of US literacy by county. Interesting view.
I’d love to see a combo map of literacy and who the county voted for in the last presidential election by county.
I mean, I know how it’s going to read but still.
