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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

#31

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

sokoloff wrote: post #13
encryptluks2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Primary elections for major offices usually have more than two candidates, and tend to have more subtle rather than massive differences.

Only of value in states with open primaries.

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

#33

Post by dotnet00 »

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.

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

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

#34

Post by mrep »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #6
tamaharbor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean, I'm not jeff bezos rich but I am in the 0.1% of income for my age group according to [0] and I don't want that. Why would I want that?

Even for the uber rich I feel like they wouldn't want that. Smarter population keeps us competitive which is good for the stock market which is where the uber rich have their money and it's not like smarter population = more cap gains tax from what can tell [1].

[0]: https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-top-1-percent-and-top-0....

[11]: https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-...

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

#35

Post by rahimnathwani »

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-...

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

#37

Post by ameister14 »

lax4ever wrote: post #19
encryptluks2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1) I would be interested to see your source that says that enough funding gets sent to private schools to impact public school's ability to try and achieve the goals they are supposed to achieve. 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 homeschoole…

>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.).

That seems...off. I would actually appreciate a source there because I just did some back of the napkin math.

If you are homeschooling a kid, how much time are you spending with them doing that? If you pull that together in terms of opportunity cost, I would think it would amount to more than $12,500, which seems from your source to be the average spend per pupil.

Let's say you home school 4 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 9 months a year. That's 20 hours a week, around 720 hours total. The average American makes around $18 an hour, so that's around $13,000 a year.

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

#38

Post by ozzythecat »

dotnet00 wrote: post #33
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.

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.

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

#39

Post by gammarator »

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 website has one of the better data exploration interfaces I’ve seen on a .gov site.

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

#40

Post by nautilius »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
obstacle1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You act like people that struggle with reading aren't capable of making a decision between usually only two candidates 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_ o…

> Much less have the only viable candidates belong to one of two viable political parties, both of which have cartoonishly stable views over time. There are lots of things you can say about the major American political parties, but that they have stable political views over time is not even close to one of them. (This is, in fact, a direct consequence of duopoly, since coalition building occurs within big-tent partie…

Certainly changing at glacial speeds compared to other developed countries. Wherever else do you see people debating whether we still need statues of long lost fights, whether access to books should be strongly controlled, whether abortion is a woman’s right, etc.

Edit: health care, of course, health care.

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