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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

#141

Post by thelettere »

zzt123 wrote: post #126
travisjungroth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

"The problem of educating the educators is a problem which the democrat forgets in his enthusiasm for educating the pupils."

Except now we don't even have the latter. We've just accepted that the least qualified individuals in our society are charged with doing what is arguably the most important work outside of governing, and with a laughable wrong headed course of training.

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

#142

Post by missedthecue »

I'll never forget the time a few years ago when I was on a support call with a client who happened to be a member of the administration staff at one of the largest school districts in the US. After about 20 minutes of frustration, I realized that the problem was that she couldn't read, and she was trying not to admit it. I got the hint and figured out a different way to solve the issue. I looked through her files and sure enough her signature was literally an illegible scribble with a smiley face.

And this was a member of the staff. In a school district! Blew my mind.

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

#143

Post by whatshisface »

zzt123 wrote: post #126
travisjungroth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

I don't know which side is right but I'm detecting a distinct lack of objective criteria or empirical evidence in this debate. What's a sixth grade reading level? Are the majority of US adults capable of that? How do you teach someone to read at a sixth grade level - other than simply having them practice? Can someone reach a sixth grade level only to later fall below it as their skills atrophy by voluntary disuse though adulthood?

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

#144

Post by hervature »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #78
jeffbee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it is interesting to look at questions that most people failed. Apparently in the 2003 round of evaluations only 16% of participants could answer the question "What is the purpose of the Se Habla Espanol expo?" after reading this short magazine article. https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_imgtxtequiv.asp?Imageid=164

I would question how many people "failed" to answer this question because of poor literacy versus a lack of domain knowledge in the subject matter. The article is full of sales and marketing jargon that most people -- in my experience -- just don't have experience with.

I cannot even find one piece of jargon in that passage. Here is a list of marketing jargon [1]. Just because you are not exposed to a topic does not make any conversation about the topic contain jargon. If I say "baseball is a sport where you use a bat to hit a ball to score points", the word "bat" is not jargon because we only use that definition in the context of sports.

[1] - https://www.precisionmarketinggroup.com/blog/a-quick-glossar...

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

#145

Post by mrep »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #131
mrep wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think smart people are going to work for tips because their employers don't pay enough I'm not a waiter and hate tipping but don't most waiters like tips because they earn more with them. It looks like the US has the highest paid waiters in the world being 25% more than malta and 50% higher than the UK which are the second and third highest paying countries for waiters [0]. > Or smart people will work for IS…

"It looks like the US has the highest paid waiters in the world" Consider how much tip you will make as an attractive flirty woman vs someone who is unattractive, regardsless of food and service. I feel those people shouldn't feel like they work at a strip club.

> Consider how much tip you will make as an attractive flirty woman vs someone who is unattractive, regardless of food and service.

~4% difference according to this article [0] and still thus 21% more than the next highest paying country.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/pretty-waitresses-earn-bigge....

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

#146

Post by wayoutthere »

MBCook wrote: post #91
karaterobot wrote: post #18

Based on the level of reading and writing comprehension in the average HN thread, I would say we should practice more humility than I'm seeing in this thread so far.

Agreed. The Reddit discussion on this is full of anecdotes, questions, first had experiences with the school system and how this happens, etc. HN? Attack the article. And that’s the nicest comments, the ones that don’t attack the people with reading issues.

HN is not the smartest place on the internet. It just has a high concentration of engineers and tech money men overwhelmingly skewed to a very narrow demographic (white men 35-45, high earners, mostly in the bay area). There’s nothing wrong with being a high income white man 35-45 living in the bay, but there’s nothing particularly insightful either about discussions between them — especially when it comes to situations most of them would not have experienced.

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

#147

Post by wayoutthere »

ozzythecat wrote: post #38
dotnet00 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I honestly thought the people here would be better than this

The irony is that HN posters are vehemently against social media, particularly FB. The reasons I’ve read are all about the general negativity, pessimism, false information, etc. While HN submissions are generally held to a higher standard, the general comments/discussions are equally toxic. Apparently FB is such a cancer and everyone else is such a problem - but we’re actually part of the problem.

HN is just heavily moderated. It’s the same dumpster fire as the rest of the internet, just with dang’s yay/nay filter applied.

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

#148

Post by josephg »

zzt123 wrote: post #126
travisjungroth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

Both exist. Teachers make a huge difference, and there is absolutely a range of ability amongst students. (For dozens of reasons)

When I was teaching programming I realised that by best students were going to become excellent programmers regardless of what I did. Like, if I literally didn’t teach them anything and left them to just goof around quietly on their computer on their own, they’ll still end up great. Teaching still matters. (Maybe more). But the difference is 10/10 meets expectations and 20/10 exceeds them.

Weaker students essentially could not learn the material without both of us working really hard to get them over the line. For the weaker students, the default is failure unless a lot of things go right.

And so as a classroom teacher you have the devil’s choice - who do you pay attention to? In a large classroom some people inevitably get ignored or fall through the cracks. And in school the problem compounds year on year. Learning issues tend to take a lot longer to fix than they do to create. Didn’t learn calculus last year with everyone else because your home life is a mess? Now the only way you’ll learn it is with 1-on-1 time with an overworked teacher. That didn’t happen? Now you have panic attacks when you think about it. And home life is probably still a mess.

I’m not apologising or excusing anything. But it is a hard problem. I don’t believe the same philosophy of teaching which created this problem is equal to the task of solving it.

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

#149

Post by djkivi »

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…

On that linked Wikipedia page, the major western countries (e.g. Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Switzerland, UK, US, ...) don't appear to have any data listed.

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

#150

Post by Elof »

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…

Have you ever looked into Dyslexia? I was diagnosed around thirty and it explained a lot and helped me figure out how to operate in a society that isn’t designed for my brain type
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