cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1006130
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The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/Last_Salad_5080 on 2023-10-03 14:21:04.
And then this links to a picture of a headline, because who’s actually gonna read the article.
Not 54% of adults in the us, apparently.
I wonder that the standard used for 6th-grade reading level is. I know that the 6th grade reading level at the beginning of the century is higher than the 6th grade reading level now.
I remember being extremely disappointed when I was in 6th grade and they had arbitrarily moved a lot of books up a reading level. There were a few in particular that I was looking forward to reading while in 5th grade that were at a 6th grade level. Then in 6th grade, I grabbed one of those books to check out but was told that I could t read it because it was now considered 7th grade and that I had to choose from the 6th grade level (which was largely the previous year’s 5th grade level).
This is infuriating. No one should be denied borrowing a book because they’re not at their “grade level”. That’s the kind of shit that contributes to people losing interest in reading from a young age.
American’s have been going down the dumbass road for a long time. And you rarely meet someone who is well rounded like you meet in Europe. Not to say there aren’t dumbasses in Europe. There are many. But Americans don’t even seem to try. Not anymore.
I’m American and have lived in Europe for 15 years. I assure you there is every level of educated/not educated (crystalized intelligence) and every level of very bright and pretty slow (fluid intelligence) over here, just as there is in every country in the world. Being educated and being intelligent are not the same thing.
Europe is not one place either, take a random Dane and a random person from Italy or Portugal or Croatia or Scotland and put them side by side and tell me thats one culture, ya know?
To your point, though, I will say that the quality of the foundational education in the US does pale pretty quickly when compared to the majority of public education systems that I’d be aware of here. I’ve been pretty embarassed about how limited my knowledge of geography and history has been at times while talking to some of my Italian, Irish and German friends.
I am friends with a primary (elementary) school teacher (teaching outside of Hamburg) and she expressed that she’s seeing a rapid decline in the students’ interest, work ethic and thus their proficiency in the past few years. She’s genuinely alarmed. We might start seeing articles like this about mainland Europe in a few years.
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
Ironic that there’s a grammatical error in the headline… 6th-grade levels, surely
This is all just a simulation.
If it were a simulation or real what would be the difference? I mean if you could replicate the titanic down to the atom you effectively have the original. Same philosophical “problem” with teleportation of a human being.
That’s what the lizard people want you to think!
The tables, they turn
The hyphen goes between grade and levels. Confidently incorrect.
How is the feet pics thing working out for you?
Quite a few pictures. Most of them troll pictures.
You hyphenate the words acting as an adjective, I e. Two-gun kid, not two gun-kid
One might also hyphenate compound nouns. Depending on context, “two gun-kids” could be correct–though it seems unlikely.
Also, in this case you should use e.g. (not i.e.). No big deal though, I knew what you meant.
The great journalism of “Homeless Romantic” has really been in decline.
77% of Americans write below 9th grade-levels, and hyphens are taught as an elective.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!!!
I absolutely believe this.
Growing up in Ohio, I feel like the 100ish people I graduated with kind of plateaued around 4th/5th grade as far as “things you aren’t forced to be good at” go.
I tried every year to explain to my English teachers that it causes me physical pain because of anxiety if I have to follow along with group reading. I’m finished with the book by the time the rest of the class finished chapter 5. I have read the same paragraph over 20 times in the time it took for one student to read one sentence. It was a long one, with a couple 3-5 syllable words, but that is just… Sad.
And nobody had any desire to improve. Boasting about how few books you’ve read wasn’t common, but you heard it a few times a year.
It’s easy to feel superior to someone when you don’t understand all their “fancy f** talk” and just assume they’re the idiot. Pfft. This dumb fuck thinks “pandering” is a word. A pan is something you cook on, dumbass.
Tbf reading sentences aloud for a group is generally much trickier than reading them (silently/subvocalized) for just yourself. You have to guess the tone, word choice, etc at the very start, and you can end up being wrong halfway through. I stumble over my words when speaking already so having to read from something just compounds that problem.
Even in conversing or working with many adults, it’s obvious their reading comprehension is abysmal.
I’ll watch someone read exactly the line that explains something and completely misunderstand.
As a former child this is nothing new to me. I remember how much I hated when the teacher had people read things out loud in English class. Hell honestly any class. The amount of people who read like every. Word. Had. A. Period. And the people who would read any word longer than 3 syllables like it was hy-phe-na-ted. It was fucking torture.
20 minutes to read one single page.
Kids read like that because they know if they make a mistake they will get a lower grade. Better to be slow and correct.
This happened all the way through highschool.
I don’t know in that case.
Yeah, this was torture in grade school. I figured it would get better in middle school.
Then it was torture in middle school and I thought it would get better in high school.
Then it was STILL torture in high school and I thought it would surely, surely get better in college.
Then I got to college and there were still mofos reading. like. this.
I am an engineer who oversees a team. Most of them can’t write more than a coherent sentence. Code and analyze data, sure, but put together a coherent paragraph? Not really.
I never had patience for that and would just read ahead and ignore the person speaking.
I was shy-ish and didn’t participate much, but I would often volunteer to read aloud. It was easier for everyone that way, since one of the few things I was exceptional at was reading
I also couldn’t stand reading along with someone who couldn’t. It was too painful
This is such a huge percentage that it has to be incorrect, right? Over half of American adults can’t really read? Or am I just vastly underestimating a ‘6th grade level’.
6th grade is what? 10 years old.
I wouldn’t expect them to be reading War and Peace, but they should be able to easily read The Hobbit or Harry Potter.
They’re not on Spot the Dog, or putting their fingers under the words as they go.
6th grade in the states is 12-13. 10 years old is about 4th grade.
Oh, I was thinking it would be the same as the UK system.
Even better then. I was reading Lord of the Rings by that age.
deleted by creator
Looking up the lexile scores, LOTR is written at a 5th or 6th grade level. Same with most of the Harry Potter series.
6th grade is 11. Unless you have a weird birthday or got held back High School starts around 13-14 years. Maybe you started late? That benefits a lot of kids but most kids graduate highschool at 17/18 not 20.
Or I misremembered. Sometimes your fellow commenters on Lemmy make mistakes.
Definitely happens.
Don’t think so, I have a 9 year old who turns 10 in February in the 4th grade in the US. They’ve never been held back, started at the right time etc. That puts us 8 years from graduation, at 18.
edit: I’m tired and didn’t read your comment correctly. You are right. We’ll start 6th grade at 11. Leaving so everyone can point and laugh. Sorry!
No shade at putting fingers under the words as they go, sometimes with some fonts and especially fine print it can be easy for your eye to jump up or down a line.
I’d wager it’s a solid mix of both. A 6th grade level is probably marginally higher than you’re expecting it to be. However, it gets much, much worse than you’d expect in a large portion of the US.
6th grade level is not too bad. A lot of people graduate school and don’t continue reading a lot, or just aren’t inclined to be good at reading.
6th grade isn’t bad at all. It is about the same level of reading as a TV sitcom. A person with a 6th grade reading level may be limited in regards to higher education, but reading won’t be an issue in their day to day life or even most career paths. If you aren’t challenging yourself by seeking good media and active reading, it is pretty likely that you will fall to around that level.
I had to look this up because I was thinking the same thing.
Sixth grade reading entails understanding plot structures, narrative voices, character developments, and the use of language. Students also compare and contrast themes in articles and stories. In the process, your child’s vocabulary should grow by leaps and bounds.
From https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/sixth-grade-reading
I can’t find any definition for 8, 9, or 10th grade reading.
I found this, where the definition comes from, it the definition is based on a score on a test and doesn’t always seem to have a set of criteria we can look at. https://www.justrightreads.com/reading-levels-explained
I can’t find any definition for 8, 9, or 10th grade reading.
Check common core standards. For example, grades 9-10 should be able to
Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
and also
Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).
It makes sense. It makes so much sense.
How can you follow an evolving political situation if you struggle to understand and track how stories develop over time?
If Fauci says one thing about COVID and then, 1 year’s worth of research later, he said something different that is going to completely confuse these people. They are literally incapable of understanding how stories evolve.
That’s hard for me to empathize with because that seems like something fundamental to the human mind. It seems like something that everyone should be able to do. But apparently that’s not true.
I even see it a lot here in comment threads. People can’t connect ideas and context in things that they’re responding to, and totally miss the entire point. I used to think they were just trolls but now I think it’s truly poor reading comprehension.
To play devils advocate, is this really a huge issue? As a construction worker friend of mine put it quite plainly, Most Americans don’t really need to be able to read anything more comprehensive than street signs to do their jobs, a 6th grade reading level is pretty proficient, maybe a bit slower but it gets the job done
Edit: a lot of you seem to be taking this weirdly personally, just read further and pretend I’m not attacking you directly
That’s great within the context a construction worker’s job.
But what about outside the job? Things like taxes, being able to determine the truthfulness of things you read online, etc?
Is this guy just working 24/7 with no need to read outside of work ever?
But what about outside the job? Things like taxes, being able to determine the truthfulness of things you read online, etc?
That was what I was going to comment. Especially that second part. It makes me wonder if it all isn’t by design. Well, yes, it is.
I mean, for some people, that’s really not a priority, I’ve seen it plenty of times where people get by just fine being able to read but not dissect the text, tax papers are broken into simple clauses and with clear instructions, if that’s a problem you can hire someone, if you’re reading online articles you probably wither don’t care enough to verify or trust the source because you chose to read that article, there’s plenty of other ways to get your news, like TV or audio, those have the same problems as written news.
Now of course a good education is important, but If you’re a redneck living in the sticks and not really concerned about things beyond your sphere and your car, and able to navigate polite society, I would argue that’s your perogative. You’re an adult and you have found your place in life just fine you have good friends, a good job and , a 7th grade reading level simply isn’t that important. A 6th grade level is still pretty competent, hell, you could still probably even get through college with that, albeit with some troubl.
saying “no need to read whatsoever” implies half of people are straight up illiterate. They can read just fine, they just won’t be parsing literary elements or huge multiple paragraph spanning articles if they don’t want to
Well if our democracy is predicated on the idea that the populace governs itself, then the populous is being governed by people with a sixth grade reading level.
Man, don’t you hope for a richer life than just being able to do things for your work though?
Personally I do but my point is, plenty of people do not, and they’re perfectly happy that way.
I’m struggling to imagine that.
I’m sorry? I mean, despite what you think, their absolutely are people out there like that, they exist because they felt they learned enough and stopped learning. Nothing is stopping these full grown adults from going back to school or trying to improve themselves at home, they just. Don’t.
I don’t mean I don’t think people want to go back to school, I mean I don’t think people are happy to just work and be able to do not much else. Like I’m sure most people like playing an instrument or dancing or something.
It matters because being a responsible citizen in a democracy requires having good enough critical thinking and reasoning skills so as not to be easily misled or manipulated by bad-faith actors. If you can’t read well, and it’s not due to something like dyslexia, it speaks to your ability to follow complex ideas and fact-patterns and themes which in turn means that you’re more likely to make poor political decisions.
Maybe if we actually paid teachers and gave funding to education this wouldn’t be a problem. Education in the US is god awful.
You know what Education in the US craves? Electrolytes…
not entirely surprised
Yeah, I’ve walked outside. I don’t need a source for this one.
I’ve spent 1 day in a Facebook philosophy group. I’m not sure there’s any hope left. If I didn’t have to be on Facebook for local call for art announcements I would run so far away.
Everyone surprised by this really baffles me. As someone who went to school here I thought it would be closer to 60%. Ever heard of “no child left behind”?
Read to your kids. Use big words around them.
My girlfriend accused me of being a pedophile. I said, “Hey, that’s a pretty big word for a 10-yr old.”
This was funny when Jimmy Carr told it.
Bob Saget was funny
Yeah, say things like “Oh how droll, your lexicon and command of the English language is quite lamentable. Perchance your parents taught you little and never thought to embiggen your vernacular?”
Also lmao iPhones don’t recognize that embiggen is an actual dictionary word 😂
I use giga huge word sounds hella
Your unenlightened vernacular is apparent scoundrel. Face the folly of your simplistic lexicon.
That’s because it’s from the simpsons.
Actually, no! The Simpsons used the word and was the reason it was actually put into the dictionary, but originally the word was used in a book from some dude in 1884 by the name of C.A. Ward.
Ok, but if the Simpsons didn’t get the word from that book and came up with the concept independently, and then popularized it, it’s still valid to say that it came from the Simpsons.
Explains a lot
It feels like a low-blow but… Yeah.
Here’s an article with more details about the study: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy#:~:text=by EMILY SCHMIDT | March 16%2C 2022&text=This means more than half,of a sixth-grade level.
Dr. Iris Feinberg, associate director of the Adult Literacy Research Center at Georgia State University, points to under-served communities with “print deserts,” poorly funded schools, and little internet access as being the places where the people with poor reading skills live. She also called it an inter-generational cycle of low literacy, so it’s not just a recent problem with people not wanting to read.
wait yall can read?
What did you say?
Why u hurt our brain with thing that not screenshot of headline or tweet
