11–20 of 222 posts
It's interesting that one of the richest countries on earth has such low education standards
And they vote. Go figure. Maybe schools should teach literacy skills and other useful subjects. Just a thought.
You act like people that struggle with reading aren't capable of making a decision between usually only two candidates. Seriously, a 6th grade has enough brain capacity to vote in American politics. Also, schools do teach literacy but a lot of funding gets sent to private schools and suburbs while large inner city schools get underfunded. There are also racial issues, where people of other races have continued to be…
A functioning political system shouldn't only have ever have 2 viable candidates. Much less have the only viable candidates belong to one of two viable political parties, both of which have cartoonishly stable views over time.
Maybe the broken, overly simplistic US political system is a _symptom_ of shockingly terrible education outcomes. Not vice-versa. Like many of the other social ills currently ravaging American society.
And they vote. Go figure. Maybe schools should teach literacy skills and other useful subjects. Just a thought.
You act like people that struggle with reading aren't capable of making a decision between usually only two candidates. Seriously, a 6th grade has enough brain capacity to vote in American politics. Also, schools do teach literacy but a lot of funding gets sent to private schools and suburbs while large inner city schools get underfunded. There are also racial issues, where people of other races have continued to be…
It's interesting that one of the richest countries on earth has such low education standards
My impression from reading the Wikipedia article is that the U.S.’s literacy standards are higher than most other countries. I also wonder how much the immigration rate affects this stat.
Also, in the future maybe submit the primary data source, rather than a Wikipedia link that cites a Forbes article?
Relevant classic from 2009: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you-rea...
[0] Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic; although in this case “educated” may be sufficient: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
Relevant classic from 2009: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you-rea...
(To poke at this more substantively: Hanson's evidence tests L1-English reading comprehension, not how "stupid" someone is. Somewhere around 70 million Americans don't even speak English at home.)
And they vote. Go figure. Maybe schools should teach literacy skills and other useful subjects. Just a thought.
You act like people that struggle with reading aren't capable of making a decision between usually only two candidates. Seriously, a 6th grade has enough brain capacity to vote in American politics. Also, schools do teach literacy but a lot of funding gets sent to private schools and suburbs while large inner city schools get underfunded. There are also racial issues, where people of other races have continued to be…
2) If amount of money spent were actually a factor then why do we show no plausible link between literacy rate [1] and per pupil spending [2] by the government in public schools. This also doesn't account for how homeschoolers and private schoolers tend to do better in standardized testing (and other areas of academics) and yet homeschoolers spend vastly less in comparison to public and private schools (Finding a public source for spending that I am comfortable with is a little hard, so I am basing this on what I know of spending in my local homeschool groups. The test score comparisons are fairly easy to find.).
3) I think to try and simplify it down to simply the amount of money spent is disingenuous to an issue that, honestly, has very little to do with the amount of money spent and more to do with factors like like of parental involvement, politicization of schools by parents, teachers, and administrators, lack of motivation and work ethic in students, and a whole host of other issues.
4) Ultimately, and this is likely a simplification in and of itself, I think the largest factor is more about the willingness of a student to apply themselves and put in the work. A school is one of the few places where the playing field is as equal as it can be and a child/teenager does not need to be the smartest individual in the room in order to do well in school. They really just need to apply themselves. I remember reading some parenting advice many years ago about how it is better to encourage your children to work hard than it is to tell them they are smart as this helps put the value where it belongs, on hard work rather than one's natural abilities of which they have little control over.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy...
[2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-s...
Looking at the original PIAAC data source ( https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/skillsmap/ ), it looks like the level one or below counties are pretty strongly correlated with proximity to the southern border... How many of those people were educated in the US system, or are eligible to vote? Also, in the future maybe submit the primary data source, rather than a Wikipedia link that cites a Forbes article?
A more accurate metric would be "prose literacy in the individual's at-home spoken language," which would probably yield a significantly less drastic picture. Perhaps not the best one, but nowhere near as eye grabbing as "54% of Americans can't read beyond a middle school level."