How bad are childhood literacy rates? • Hacker News Board

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#71

Post by WillAdams » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

Wild_Dolphins wrote: post #57

WillAdams wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, back before writing became prevalent, Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience watching a performance, then afterwards, writing down the entire thing from memory. Similarly, _The Metamorphoses_, and _The Iliad_, and _The Odyssey_ were part of an oral tradition and their structures were created to as to facilitate memorization and recitation --- how many poem…

>Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience... writing down the entire thing from memory. This would have been VERY difficult as Shakespeare wrote plays in iambic-pentameter, a form of decasyllabic verse; which could be considered a kind of very-loose 'checksum'. The audience member who was pirating-Shakespeare plays would have to recall the dialog-from-the-play absolutely…

Actually, iambic-pentameter functions as a checksum, making it easier to arrive at the correct text.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#72

Post by WillAdams » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

goosedragons wrote: post #67

WillAdams wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, Jerry Pournelle claimed in his "Chaos Manor" column from _Byte Magazine_ that he and his wife had developed a system for teaching even adults to read in short order using a video game/tutorial system and playing games seems to be pretty much universal on devices. Why can't things such as Khan Academy be included in the school curriculum, allowing children the chance to work at their own pace? The best s…

I don't think most students are self-disciplined enough to do that. Motivated adults are very different from unmotivated children.

Can't the teachers/school system impose the necessary discipline? (in terms of encouraging/monitoring usage)

My kids had access to texts/resources which I only dreamed of when I was young (too much time reading Hermann Hesse's _The Glass Bead Game_ which they seem drawn from):

- https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

- https://www.motionmountain.net/

- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/...

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#73

Post by ryao » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #65

ryao wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can learn this outside of school. People who learn English as a second language do. Forcing it on me as a child meant that I did not learn English properly, until well into my adulthood. I am a native speaker in my 30s and I am still finding faults in my English education that need correction. One of the most recent ones I have found is using “pet” as a past tense. The correct past tense is “petted”. If school…

Well colloquially "pet" itself is a past tense. Depends on the register of the language. And "wrong" is also an adverb. It would help if the educators explain when to use "wrong" vs "wrongly" vs "wrongfully" since all could be adverbs; or you could read enough to figure out the subtle differences.

I had recently looked up “wrong” to check out of curiosity, and DuckDuckGo only said it was an adjective, so I had stopped using it as an adverb. It turns out that the dictionary states it is an adverb, but you need to click to go to an actual dictionary to see that since the definition given by DuckDuckGo is only a partial definition. Thanks for making me double check.

That said, I read dozens of English books per year. I am well past the point of diminishing returns for benefits from more reading in English. Reading more books only increases my reading speed , which I have noticed is now 2 to 4 times faster than others around me.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#74

Post by tartuffe78 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

WillAdams wrote: post #72

goosedragons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most students are self-disciplined enough to do that. Motivated adults are very different from unmotivated children.

Can't the teachers/school system impose the necessary discipline? (in terms of encouraging/monitoring usage) My kids had access to texts/resources which I only dreamed of when I was young (too much time reading Hermann Hesse's _The Glass Bead Game_ which they seem drawn from): - https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm... - https://www.motionmountain.net/ - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elemen…

Teachers need parents to help impose that discipline at home, which doesn't happen anymore. My wife is a teacher (high school) and lots of parents side with their child now when it comes to not doing their homework (Well they said they did turn it in), or cheating (No they didn't cheat why would you say that).

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#75

Post by TinkersW » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

ryao wrote: post #13

When I was young, I was amazed at how they would try to teach us English grammar and spelling, then have us read books like Huckleberry Finn that undid 6 months to a year worth of English language education. When you are young and you do not really a firm grasp of the right way to do things, being forced to spend substantial time “reading” books that show the wrong way is counterproductive. It was like having a const…

For me, books like Huck Fin were how I learned English, I don't think we even had grammar lessons(some weird teaching style that was popular in CA at the time).

I personally did not find the slang & creative language used in such books confusing.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#76

Post by DangitBobby » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

codificare wrote: post #9

The article tries to claim that we should take those claims with a grain of salt because people have been complaining about kids' literacy rates since time immemorial. The difference is that now it is measurably true. I also think that anecdotal evidence is evidence nonetheless. If teachers active for many years start to ring the bells they are probably onto something, even if the official statistics are yet to come.

I reject your characterization of the article.

The author of the article starts by acknowledging a historical bias that generations have apparently always had against each other. They then explore, keeping an eye on their own potential biases, the evidence that literacy genuinely appears to be lower in younger generations. I don't know what more you could possibly ask from them.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#77

Post by GregDavidson » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

I learned to read by being read to: typically on a relative's lap with the book in my lap. They were not trying to teach me how to read, but my language centers took care of the job, just like they did for spoken language, long before schools could muck it up. Reading has always been fast and effortless for me, requiring no conscious attention - again, just like spoken language. Much later I studied the linguistics of language, grammar, spelling systems, etc. which revealed the wonders of our natural language skills. I recommend the natural method for everyone. Be sure to check for eyesight problems, though.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#78

Post by mrangle » Fri, Jul 18, 2025, 1:13 AM UTC

ryao wrote: post #45

mrangle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be generous, what this meant is either that you were below the reading level for the book or you misunderstand the core skill of reading and using style in the English language. Reading and understanding when rules are broken leads to knowing when they can be. We don't skip Shakespeare because the language is funny and archaic. Reading these authors is both a part of style and content literacy for the English lang…

There is a difference between understanding a book’s contents and being able to read the book without having it rewrite your understanding of the English language such that you have no idea what is correct and incorrect because your grasp on that was tenuous in the first place. Children are expected to avoid being rewritten at stages where they are extremely impressionable and are easily rewritten and then they are b…

No, it's all a part of learning to read and understand language.

If a child is having that much trouble with it, which would be unusual at grade-level, then the book is above their level. At that point, the child should probably be screened for a delay.

How this generally works is that young people ingest these books, and by doing so their language ability increases to be able to flexibly understand (and use, if stylistically appropriate), non-standard grammatical forms.

Re: How bad are childhood literacy rates?

#79

Post by 7thaccount » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #56

7thaccount wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Phonics is great and how you learn to read, but there is a limit in my opinion. The below is a little long winded, but covers my recent experience with my daughter. I taught my daughter to read when she was 4 and she was reading ~30 page books in kindergarten. Nothing outrageous, but she was pretty far ahead of her class that were still going over ABCs. This was outside of a few other kids who had parents tha…

> Agreed. Phonics is great and how you learn to read, but there is a limit in my opinion. The below is a little long winded, but covers my recent experience with my daughter. My experience matches yours: My child is now 5.5yo, and reads books up to 8 pages in one sitting, consisting of 3 paragraphs per page, with maybe 12-20 words per paragraph. No pictures in any books. Here is the conversation between myself and th…

That must have been a pretty frustrating conversation. It sounds like your kid is doing great!