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

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

#121

Post by newsbinator » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

HEmanZ wrote: post #53

Wikipedia happily reports that North Korea has a 100% adult proficient literacy rate. Cuba has a 99.9% rate. Brazil 98%, all leaps and bounds beyond any western country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_... The US is certainly behind much of the world in education, but these metrics are really hard gauge accurately. Diving in to where these numbers come from and how they compare to the rest…

Learning to read Korean (even North Korean Hangul) takes about a weekend.

They can easily get 100% literacy rate by the end of kindergarten.

That’s the benefit of a logical writing system that has few exceptions.

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

#122

Post by romwell » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #100

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. People are probably hostile because you're going against scientific consensus and saying a range of disabilities that affects millions of people doesn't exist.

The parent is right though. All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education".

The lack of ability to benefit from this farce in millions of students isn't surprising; and it can be absolutely address with better instruction and individual approach.

I say this as a former instructor, math PhD[1], and also a person with ADHD[2] who persevered through a fair amount of failing grades on the way there.

The #1 reason[3] I ran away from academia was that the system simply doesn't allow one to teach the right way. It's a conveyor-belt manufacturing process with the model 9-5 worker as the intended results, and if you don't fit the mold — tough luck.

One has more leeway in teaching topics courses, but even world-class professors don't get away with not teaching intro/foundation courses, which are as rigid as they're atrocious.

And K12 is where souls go to die. An enthusiastic teacher will burn out in just a few years, and come back with PTSD and a 1000-yard stare.

Anyway. The OP's statement should be seen as "learning durabilities are not an obstacle to a good instructor" — which, in the vast majority of cases, is true.

[1] https://romankogan.net/math

[2] https://romankogan.net/adhd

[3] The #2 reason is that the industry pays 4x as much; #3 is the 2-body problem; #4 is ..., oh wait, I'll be here for a long time if I keep going.

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

#123

Post by StockHuman » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

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…

That's indeed motivated reasoning; insulting people closes them off to your ideas. In the context of the internet, where there's no pre-existing relationship of respect towards you, no one being insulted is inclined to pay attention regardless of your truth claims.

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

#124

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

jakear wrote: post #110

thaumasiotes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The source is the same one linked in the post you're trying to slam. The URL has changed from http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_question.asp , as written in the post, to https://nces.ed.gov/naal/sample_items.asp . You can easily find the question by using the Text String Search field.

> I was genuinely unsure as to the correct interpretation. Who's to say

You're arguing at the level of this handless guy now. https://xkcd.com/169/

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

#125

Post by beebeepka » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #101

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why? Your argument boils down to "I don't admit defeat to people I don't like". Strikes me as incredibly dishonest

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

#126

Post by zzt123 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #100

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. People are probably hostile because you're going against scientific consensus and saying a range of disabilities that affects millions of people doesn't exist.

We’re talking about learning basic stuff, not top tier postgrad stuff. The article is about the majority of American adults being unable to read prose at a sixth grade level - that is, years before SF suggests teaching algebra.

That is absolutely a massively distributed pedagogical failure of outstanding degree. Unless the average adult is so mentally disabled that acceptable-or-above teaching should result in this outcome.

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

#127

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

tamaharbor wrote: post #4

nomorecommas wrote: post #3

And they vote. Go figure. Maybe schools should teach literacy skills and other useful subjects. Just a thought.

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean, millons of people die unneccesarily, its the problem of the entire species.

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

#128

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

The English language is very difficult to read and write because its sounds have only a vaguely poetic relationship to their various representations on paper. For historical reasons it's a language that not only borrowed 95% of its words, it will borrow another at the drop of a hat, and in its American form will insist that the proper way to both pronounce and spell that word is the way it was pronounced and spelled in the language it was borrowed from (if they use a Roman alphabet.)

All the talk in this thread casting the blame on "standards" being lowered is bizarre. I'm not sure how pushing more poor kids to drop out is going to make people more literate.

edit: the real shame comparatively should be how high Chinese literacy is when faced with an equally difficult writing system. China isn't at all confused about whether public education is a good thing, though, so you'd expect superior outcomes there.

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

#129

Post by kjeetgill » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

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…

I'm no genius by any means, I get into this topic a bit with a few friends of mine who exhibit this genius/jerk persona. They're great, sincere, loyal, and friendly in a million ways too: love em to death. I want to emphasize this because I don't want the jerk label to be too much of a dismissal.

I can agree that for them I think "jerk-ness" is really connected to dive and passion to be deeply informed and meaningfully correct. Everything else can feel like a distraction, or extra, or dancing around the point. And they can typically take being proven wrong gracefully because they respect correctness.

But I also find it (playfully) funny when they jump through logical contortions, ad-hoc speculation, just-so thinking when it comes to defending these things. If anyone had come to them with arguments structured so arbitrarily they would have ripped them to shreds for being unfounded and self-serving.

My take: Being a jerk is just as much a personal/emotional quirk. The challenges they have with managing the different odd logics of "emotion-y" things make valuing civility for others BUT ALSO to logically frame a convincing path for why they should be bothered to do anything different.

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

#130

Post by DarylZero » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #111

rahimnathwani wrote: post #35

In California, Many schools in Califonia use an unproven/inferior method/curriculum for teaching literacy, based on the work of F&P.[1] [0] https://caaspp-elpac.cde.ca.gov/caaspp/DashViewReport?ps=tru... [1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2021/11/19/fountas-pinnell-...

Folks - it is not the schools - it is the kids and the situations they are raised in. The schools are nearly identical everywhere. Even crap schools, if you put those teachers in an upper middle class setting, they would shine. And the most talented teachers in the nation, put into one of those violent inner city schools - would not magically make the the kids pass math. The kids grow up with single/no parents or one…