That’s a lot of numbers without any citations. I mean, it feels right. But please take the minute to add your sources.
Not to rain on the anti-US sentiment here, but this isn’t far off from most other western/developed/colonial/whatever (aka members of OECD) countries. I don’t know what study they’re talking about in the article, since they never cite their source, but here’s the results from a similar survey from 2013 (PIAAC study).
In terms of literacy, only 6/24 countries are reading at Level 3 (roughly equivalent to what other studies describe as “above a 6th grade level”, it does not track 1:1 since again I don’t know which study they’re using initially) and the remainder are reading at Level 2 (I feel comfortable describing it as “at or below a 6th grade reading level” based off the criteria used in other studies).
The US for sure has an education problem, but it’s not as dire as this article makes it sound. In the above PIAAC study, the difference in literacy is only ~20% between the top score of 296.2 (Japan) and the bottom of 250.5 (Italy), and at 269.8 (USA) is only ~10% behind Japan in terms of mean score. We should absolutely be doing better, we’re among the worst for non-starters and < Level 1 (illiterate and partially illiterate respectively), but when looking at the values in context we’re not really doing all that egregiously compared to other OECD countries.
A nerdy side note:
I question the relevancy of the < Level 1 statistics, as the controls for partial literacy do not appear to have been robust for non-native speakers of the survey languages. This may have been by design, but given the high rate of invalidation due to language incompatibilities seen in other studies, I am hesitant to draw conclusions from that value without a clearer understanding of the methodology. Partial literacy due to language incompatibility is extremely easy to mask for basic questions, but imho should differentiated better from partial literacy among native speakers.
It is unfortunante that this was propably planned in order to result in a workforce that doesn’t question things.
I hope i’m not in that 54%.
no worry u smrt man
i am smort
I’m European and already figured this out the moment I got on the internet 🤣
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
It’s not our fault we’re stupid. It’s the fault of capitalism.
I wonder what the numbers are for other countries. I think a lot of people tend to get dumber after school’s over. Atrophy of the brain.
Adult literacy rate of my country is 99.8% which beats most of the world. But it still feels like there are a LOT of idiots with no critical thinking skills, no functional reading ability, etc.
I dont know if its because I’m getting older (Nearly 39 now) and I don’t read outside of using a computer but I feel like my overall vocabulary, spellying and grammar get worse and worse by the day. Feel like I need brain training.
agreed.
you should read more physical books and less online commentary.
you have two vocabularies, active and passive. passive vocabulary is trained on daily interactions. active vocabulary comprises of long-term language you have learned over your lifetime. usually activated while you are reading.
if you read social commentary daily and it’s written by people who have a 6th grade vocabulary, you’re atrophying not just your passive but active vocabularies.
give it a shot for a month, you’ll see an improvement.
spellying
Q.E.D.
Boy buddy do I fucking believe it.
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.
Now who benefits from a poorly educated populace?
Follow the fuckin money.
Just enough to win elections
Hence the pivot to video.
I was really expecting this to be a video too
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…
Hey just FYI, that statistic is bullshit
Even Brewer, the author of the infographic, publicly admitted in 2012 that he couldn’t back up any of the statistics and asked people to stop sharing it. Brewer claims to have used statistics from a survey by an organization called the Jenkins Group, though the group itself says the statistics were incorrectly attributed to them. Brewer has never been able to provide any other source of the numbers he used in the infographic.
The questionable statistics seem to have originally come from a 2011 Mental Floss article, which claimed to have taken them from a Jenkins survey from 2003. Mental Floss has updated the original article saying they have no idea where the statistics came from, either.
Committed to never reading, or just never made time for it?
I think it’s been over a year since I picked up a book. I actually love the book* I was reading and I’m only like a 3rd of the way into it. It’s just… hard to make time for it. Worst bit is, I’m not even working every moment I’m awake anymore (I should be, my ex put me deeeep in debt, like 3 or 4 national median annual pre-tax incomes worth of debt that I want to pay off within the next 3-4 years), it’s just that gaming, youtube, scrolling lemmy, are easier timewastes to accidentally sink into, whereas reading has to be a deliberate decision. So now I’m in a situation where I don’t read because it feels like a waste of time in my present situation, but due to stress, ADHD and everything else, I still waste time on a lot of things that are arguably much less rewarding than reading would be.
* “Guards! Guards!” by Terry Pratchett. I wanted to read the entire series, bought 3 books at first. Then met my ex, became a dad and got guilted into taking out tens of thousands in loans, installment plans, etc. Over 2 years later I still haven’t finished the first book I started :/
‘Books are for fags’ is probably what they think
Books is*…
*Them books is fer
Not cool, dude. There are very few words I self-censor, but that’s absolutely one of them.
Not sure if their comment is related / deliberate, but the image in the article is from the film Idiocracy
In the film, the people of the future speak real slow and dumb. When they hear the time travelling protagonist speak in a vanilla US West Coast accent, the narrator describes them as thinking he sounds “Faggy and pretentious”, there are multiple points in the film where future-folk tell the main character “you sound like a fag”
I had a teacher in high school (in Ohio) ask me if I was English. I don’t sound even remotely English, I’ve just always generally spoken in complete sentences and occasionally use multi-syllable words.
That’s right. They literally say “books are for fags” in the movie several times. It’s a direct quote.
What I believe they mean is that the same people who’d use it as a demeaning slur and something to avoid are the same who would never touch a book after not being required to do so … And likewise vote for people who’s entire platform is fear mongering and hate towards the “other”.
If I talk about people being racist against African-Americans, I still don’t drop n-bombs. Not acceptable.
Sure retsrd
Tell me you’re one of the 33% who don’t read without telling me.
New user tag, yay!
don’t be retarded
Wow edgy
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.
In a typical modern democracy, turnout for general elections is usually around the 80% mark. I don’t think the difference can be explained just by Americans being “dumber.”
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.
I haven’t read a book in like 8 years :/
I used to read. I used to love reading. What happened to me? Now I just buy books for them to sit on my shelf collecting dust :(
i am the same, then i found Libby and now i borrow multiple audiobooks a week and listen at work/doing chores etc. i am almost back to reading as much as i did in high school :)
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.
The news sucks now. Every article is what the president says, the few remaining news sources have gone way downhill and they mostly just gave up last year. Less reporting, more bullshit.
More pushing admin lies, fairness bias, ect. I want to read events not the play by play on politicians talking shit. Nytimes eats bags of dicks.
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…”
I bet you more than 50% of teachers hear a fact like that and say “Well clearly we need to force them to read as much as possible while we can.” And that’s the real problem.
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).
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.
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.
I really thought the rise of podcasts would make americans more literate
How? Podcasts are literally just people talking.
Seriously, there has to be some systematic pollutant that is affecting our behavior to make us compliant. Plenty do, herbicides are endocrine disruptors for instance, but one of the many has to be making us accept being robbed and abused by the rich and state without protest.
That and taxoplasmosis, a parasite that inhibits the fear center between rodents and cats spread by feces, but all mammals can get it and some estimate a third or even half of the population could have it. Rodents with it lose their instinctual fear of cats.
I am not joking, this is some 1984 type shit, past generations would not have accepted all of this.
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.
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.
