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54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

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Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#101

Post by merpnderp »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76
throwntoday wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't get what civil discourse is supposed to achieve. Discourse should be no holds barred. If your points can't stand unfiltered scrutiny maybe they're not as solid as you think. I consider HN somewhere between 4chan and reddit. People here are actually smart (unlike reddit, which appears to attract angsty teenagers more than anything) and willing to engage in discussions outside of the status quo. It's…

Richard Hanania had some interesting comments about this ( https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/reflections-on-2021 ) > When I’m on Twitter, how rude should I be? > I tend to admire thinkers who are civil and think less of those who are rude. Usually, I try to emulate those I admire and not those I don’t, but I actually think there’s an intellectual case to be made for rudeness and snark as long as it’s used in defe…

It’s hard to get someone to not only change their mind, but openly agree with you that they are wrong and you are right, if they hate your guts. I’m always perfectly happy to change my opinion when discussing things civilly, but I’d never admit I was wrong to an asshole.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#102

Post by atian »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #87

I couldn't write a coherent sentence until I was 24 years old. A couple years after high school I discovered reading starting with "Cannery Row" however it still took significant effort to learn to write despite thousands of hours of reading. Once I understood the basic mechanics of grammar, fitting words into meaningful structures became second nature. I still can't spell the word coherent without assistance from a…

This is pretty common. We usually do not need to write correct sentences to each other. I am only now learning how to write well.

The gist is that it probably doesn't matter. Culture does a lot of work in letting us communicate in fragments.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#103

Post by User23 »

sambroner wrote: post #9

It's hard to tell from Wikipedia what the 6th-grade reading level is and how its measured. Google points me to Flesch Reading Ease. Not a very precise formula... If I remember correctly, the NYTimes is written for the 8th-grade level. Similarly, many hospitals/healthcare facilities don't allow writing above the 8th-grade level. So, expressive, detailed, and stylized writing are all easily possible at the 8th-grade le…

Not only that but is the 6th grade level what it used to be?[1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/California-Sixth-Grade-Reader-Pournel...

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#104

Post by wonnage »

pseudo0 wrote: post #15

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?

That wouldn't explain the pattern in the South, which is basically exactly the distribution of former slave areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_in_the_American_Sou...

Socioeconomic status probably best explains that one, and is probably at least a component everywhere else.

In any case, the geographic visualization on that page suffers from the same problem as electoral maps, where areas with very low populations (e.g the Texas border) occupy lots of visual space. The problem is really much worse in the South due to higher populations.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#106

Post by jeroenhd »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #87

I couldn't write a coherent sentence until I was 24 years old. A couple years after high school I discovered reading starting with "Cannery Row" however it still took significant effort to learn to write despite thousands of hours of reading. Once I understood the basic mechanics of grammar, fitting words into meaningful structures became second nature. I still can't spell the word coherent without assistance from a…

> People are hostile when I say there isn't such a thing as a learning disability but rather only teaching disabilities

There is such a thing as dyslexia, and that cannot be fixed by teaching better. You can still form sentences, apply grammar and tell stories without writing, but the reading+writing part is a major problem for some people. Your story of beating the challenges of your bad early education can't and won't apply to all others who struggle.

Having said that, I do believe that some lazy teachers like to mark failing students as disabled more often than necessary because that way the student's failings aren't a result of the teachers' lacking abilities, but rather an inherent flaw in the students themselves that they have no control over. The general knowledge of the existence of learning disabilities has helped many kids get the resources they need, but has also to them being used by the lazy or incompetent to completely write off children that couldn't keep up.

This, combined with the utter disconnect between the way many words are spelled and pronounced in English, is a recipe for disaster that will likely continue to ripple through the education system for years.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#107

Post by gshubert17 »

elil17 wrote: post #73

This seems false. The linked article that Wikipedia cites Forbes attributes that claim to the Department of Education, but doesn’t point to a specific report. The linked article does talk about a specific reading comprehension test called the PIACC, but that’s not the same as reading levels.

The first sentence in the Wikipedia article cites a link (citation #1) to https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf "Report on Adult Literacy in the United States" published in July 2019. This is a two-page PDF that describes the survey, literacy levels, and has links to additional references.

The second Wikipedia citation is to a Forbes article.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#108

Post by _carbyau_ »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76
throwntoday wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't get what civil discourse is supposed to achieve. Discourse should be no holds barred. If your points can't stand unfiltered scrutiny maybe they're not as solid as you think. I consider HN somewhere between 4chan and reddit. People here are actually smart (unlike reddit, which appears to attract angsty teenagers more than anything) and willing to engage in discussions outside of the status quo. It's…

Richard Hanania had some interesting comments about this ( https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/reflections-on-2021 ) > When I’m on Twitter, how rude should I be? > I tend to admire thinkers who are civil and think less of those who are rude. Usually, I try to emulate those I admire and not those I don’t, but I actually think there’s an intellectual case to be made for rudeness and snark as long as it’s used in defe…

Rudeness may "win" the right to represent a side but does little to convince the "opposition".

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#109

Post by thebigjewbowski »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #87

I couldn't write a coherent sentence until I was 24 years old. A couple years after high school I discovered reading starting with "Cannery Row" however it still took significant effort to learn to write despite thousands of hours of reading. Once I understood the basic mechanics of grammar, fitting words into meaningful structures became second nature. I still can't spell the word coherent without assistance from a…

I definitely get what you mean. I was always able to do math to a satisfactory level but it didn’t come quite as easily until I learned how to think about it properly.

Only my calculus teacher in college’s methods really clicked with me and then I magically got it.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#110

Post by jakear »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #83
jakear wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that the article I presume you got that from [1] states: > Acceptable answers include statement such as: > To enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community; to improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community; and to enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community. Which is not only grammatically incorrect, but grammatically incorrect to the point of message-shatter…

Any individual statement from the list will suffice. This is already clear in the Overcoming Bias post, but it's equally clear in the source, which says this: > Correct Answer: > Any statement such as the following: to enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community; to improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community; and to enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community I…

What "source" is this? I found https://nces.ed.gov/Pubs2007/2007480_3.pdf, which is considerably more clear as it lists the three statements as entirely separate list items:

> Any statement such as the following:

> To enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community

> To improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community

> To enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community

I truly disbelieve you can claim in good faith that that is "equally clear" as:

> Acceptable answers include statement such as:

> To enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community; to improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community; and to enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community.

I think interpreting the semi-colon'd sentence as a single "statement", especially given the ambiguity introduced by their grammatical error, is entirely reasonable. I was genuinely unsure as to the correct interpretation. Who's to say that the correct edit is adding an `s` to the end of `statement` versus adding an `a ` to its beginning?

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