New Study: 54% of American Adults Read Below 6th Grade-Levels
New Study: 54% of American Adults Read Below 6th Grade-Levels
cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1006130
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/Last_Salad_5080 on 2023-10-03 14:21:04.
Ironic that there's a grammatical error in the headline... 6th-grade levels, surely
The tables, they turn
The great journalism of "Homeless Romantic" has really been in decline.
This is all just a simulation.
That's what the lizard people want you to think!
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.
The hyphen goes between grade and levels. Confidently incorrect.
All that does is make it extremely poorly written because of "sixth" followed by a compound noun instead of the misplaced hyphenation for a compound adjective.
What you basically just said is "it's not grammatically incorrect in that way, it's even more grammatically incorrect to the point of being nonsensical in this other, more abstruse way."
It's really important for folks to understand what is being talked about here, because I run into folks even here that are like "that's a wall of text, I'm not reading that". And that's kind of the behavior that's being talked about. Like, if you find yourself in "read the headline, not the story" you might be in this group they are talking about in this article that is linked. And do not let me come off high and mighty here, I absolutely have issues with this some times because I get all kinds of caught up with life and do not have enough time to maintain my reading habits. It is a complex issue on why there is this deterioration of reading skills. And I will likely say something to the effect of "Internet BAD!" but do know it is more than just that, it is just that is the easiest go-to for a "short" comment.
So that said. Nice little sample question one would see on a test that would test this is:
In Lions of Little Rock, two girls form a dangerous and clandestine friendship, that is challenged by racial segregation. Name, in chronological order, the multiple episodes of racist threats and violence and how they increased the tension of the relationship between the two girls.
It's not a question of "Can you read the book?" It is a question of, "Did you extract information from the book? Can you connect the dots asked in the question based on the information that you read?" Lots of people who identify themselves as literate have a lot of difficulty doing these kinds of things. So we have to understand that, this is not testing if a kid can read the word "onomatopoeia", it is testing if a person can extract useful information from written words.
All of that is different from the "eighth grade reading level" where you are typically asked things like "extrapolate what you think the underlying theme the author is trying to present." Sixth grade reading is mostly being able to put things back in the order that you read them, picking out the descriptive terms that were in the text, and identifying what the entire point was for this particular piece of work, among other things. One does not have to really get creative here, sixth grade reading is just "in slightly finer detail" being able to regurgitate what was just read. Now to get kids ready for higher reading, there is usually questions about "do you think this person at this point was feeling happy?" That kind of stuff that relies of extrapolating meaning which is usually above the "sixth grade level reading".
And it is indeed shocking how many people cannot do this. But in order to be shocked, I think people need to understand what is being tested here. A lot of social media does indeed condition folks to allow this level of reading to atrophy. The number of people who toss around TL;DR is really high and some of that is because it does not interest them. That of course is fine, but some of it is because 50% of the way through their brain is tired of reading text. AND THAT, is problematic. And really I can only touch on so much of the issue in this comment without it feeling like it is going on forever.
There are all kinds of assessment tests online that folks can review and see exactly the kind of questions that are being asked. The whence and wherefores on this matter and the causes for it happening are indeed complex and obviously I cannot cover them all here. But one big one, in my opinion, is education and its intersection with technology. Technology does indeed make lots of things easier for us, but some of those things that technology unburdens us from we should probably reexamine that relationship. Perhaps we need better education with technology or maybe we need less technology with that education, they both have pros and cons to them. There are not easy answers in this for the kind of background American education presents, which that is also an addressable matter in all of this.
It's not a question of "Can you read the book?" It is a question of, "Did you extract information from the book? Can you connect the dots asked in the question based on the information that you read?" Lots of people who identify themselves as literate have a lot of difficulty doing these kinds of things.
I'm really sorry if this comes across as a TL;DR, but there's a name for that. I'm positive you already know, but for the benefit of those interested, it's called "functional illiteracy." And it's wild, still blows my mind to this day. Like, if you're functionally illiterate, that doesn't mean you don't know how to read...it means you can read but can't understand language written beyond the basic level. There are a lot of variables involved and I'm oversimplying a lot, but that's it in a nutshell. It's fucking terrifying, to be honest, especially because it's so widespread.
Read to your kids, folks! And talk to them about it afterwards!
Read to my kids? Why would I want to turn my kids gay with WOKE READIN BOOKS?!
/s
You’ve indirectly highlighted the biggest issue I have with referring to literacy as “x-grade reading levels”. Literacy skills stack on top of each other and, sometimes, in slightly different orders. Calling them by a grade level makes people associate these skills with certain educational levels in school when, in reality, you only learn these skills from repetition and growth. I wish there were (and maybe there are and I’m just not familiar with them) clearer distinctions for these types of skills that meant more than “x-grade” which is practically meaningless to most people and harmful for those struggling with reading and comprehension.
You’ve indirectly highlighted the biggest issue I have with referring to literacy as “x-grade reading levels”.
There are standards of complexity that are set by grade level.
Here's a resource with a great breakdown
Combines these with reading standards for various grades, and the metric makes a lot of sense. To say someone reads at a 5th grade level means they are technically literate but struggle to find true meaning, subtle concepts, and likely have a limited vocabulary.
Well that sounds like semantics that you take exception with, on how particular educational groups define things. Your frustration is well founded but misplaced on me. Indeed all things build and in different orders for different people no doubt. However, in the context of educational reporting at the government level, these are the labels that are applied in the various reports. And as all things, those things roll down hill.
clearer distinctions for these types of skills that meant more than “x-grade”
There are, but politics being what they are, those labels are less meaningful labels to folks that arguably have the most power to change the course of things (that last part is strictly my opinion, sorry/not really sorry I injected it here). In short, I concur with your observation.
The amount of people on this very site who cannot parse comments they have an emotional reaction to is staggering.
Lots of people are going to laugh at this and not realize it is describing them.
Lots of people are going to laugh at this and not realize it is describing them.
Why not both lmao
"This"
wall of text
I'd just like to note for the record that your post wasn't a wall of text. Not only does it have paragraphs, it is also well-structured in its information delivery and you use connectives well, constantly answering "why am I reading this sentence (or subordinate clause)" in the first couple of words. This is not only easy to do (if you're used to it), it also takes enormous load off the reader by not having them divine erm "train of thought context", and actually follows natural speech patterns. But it does require that your thoughts are organised, that you can write the whole thing in one go, or you will have to go back and massage everything down to size. Which brings me to
TL;DR
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead".
Or, differently put: Writing skills are actually just as if not even more atrocious across the board. Another reason for tl;drs are people who are paid by word count.
I read your first paragraph then skipped the rest of whatever you're going on about. It's about saving your time in a world where there's near infinite amount of content to be able to read, it's a skill to know what's worth reading.
Right. I find myself doing this, yet I'm still able to read and consume whole chapters at a time in university textbooks
I agree to some extent, but honestly the time spent on reading lemmy/reddit/Twitter/etc could almost certainly be spent on more important literature. I'm not going to pretend that a few minutes in a sea of wasted hours really makes a difference.
The other thing that needs to be acknowledged here is that literacy has overwhelming been trending upwards over time. As grim as this is, it's actually fantastic news when we look at where we used to be.
but some of it is because 50% of the way through their brain is tired of reading text. AND THAT, is problematic.
Yep.
This reminds me of how often people mistake skill for "natural talent".
"Natural talent" exists, but someone without any particular natural talent who still has spent thousands of hours doing a thing is going to run circles around someone with "natural talent" who never put time and effort into practicing.
And I think when that skill is "reading", people don't power through the moments when their brain rebels, gets frustrated, or gets tired. So they hit that block, and don't push through to overcome it. They go do something else...but they go do something else every single time. So a block that would be frustrating but minor in the big scheme of things gets codified in one's mental image of themselves.
And once you have this idea that you are or are not something--that conception can turn into a huge mountain to overcome.
(As an aside, our parents have huge influence on if we think we "are" or "are not" something. It's very worth it when you think you "can't" do something to go back and look at your life and check if that voice in your head is yours, or if it's the internalized voice of a parent who didn't know what the fuck they were talking about!)
(Both people who were belittled as "stupid" and those who were constantly called "smart" can end up kinda "malfunctioning" later on, thinking they can't do something. The ones called stupid think they can't do something because "they're dumb", while the one called smart has been conditioned to fear not being 100% perfect, so they don't even start because minor, genuinely trivial failures loom as large as the destruction of the entire earth in their minds!)
I definitely feel that, especially when you see people define themselves as "readers" or "not readers". There's no way that there isn't a book out there for every person, but we aren't always great at connecting kids with what actually motivates them to read and reflect. The Grapes of Wrath is an incredible and ever-relevant book, but there's no way I could've appreciated it as such in high school. I know the same is true for many others because it was notorious for being a drag at my school. It just takes time to develop the critical reading skills and life experience that make you appreciate something like that, and not everyone has that by 6th grade or even graduation. I just don't know how you go about continuing that education.
Me: oh man, adults can't read??
Also me: let me find a comment that sums up this article for me.
On a serious note, great summary, cleared a lot of things up.
I'm not convinced that social media causes a loss of reading skills. I suppose it is possible but I would want to see some studies on the topic. Anecdotally, I do find myself reading less than I used to. I took a number of English lit classes as electives purely for fun and enjoyed reading a number of fun works that I think would hopefully qualify me as reading above a 6th grade level. But that was many years ago. I haven't done a lot of reading in the last decade except for news articles about everything going to hell. Of the few books I have read, I read them for pleasure and each was lightweight, not too much analysis and explication required, one rather challenging history book about the lead up to the first world war notwithstanding, though it's difficulty is due more to more complex sentence structure and arcane vocabulary, and less to its erudite discussion of an already complex topic. Nevertheless, I don't believe I have had any difficulties demonstrating far beyond mere functional literacy you described despite my infrequent reading of anything longer than a news article or Reddit post. Still, this is anecdotal and so I would be interested to see if any scientific evidence exists to connect a loss of reading skills with disuse and to what degree those skills are diminished.
Bruh, I ain't reading all that. You crazy?
I read all of this. I am definitely guilty of looking for a TL;DR. I absolutely believe my overuse of technology has caused my reading and writing skills to deteriorate significantly and my memory as well. I struggle with remembering and analyzing. I have never been a good book learner though. I suspect I have a learning disability that wasn't quite bad enough for intervention when I was in school aside from special reading training in grade two or three.
I am definitely guilty of looking for a TL;DR
In the context of social media, this isn't really the same problem of not wanting to or being able to read longer stuff in general. There are countless screeds from any number of sources that you wouldn't want to waste your time going through (not saying the above poster is one of them), so getting a general sense of a longer post is an important skill.
Being able to work through edited prose in detail is also important, but remember that it's very different from what we all encounter online. In the immortal words of someone who probably wasn't Twain or Pascal, "I did not have time to write a shorter letter."
A long time ago I reasoned that the poorest least educated of us would be functional illiterates for whom a separate glyph based language would be created. A smiley face does not require reading comprehension or analysis, nor does it produce a populace that asks questions.
I don't think the landholders who run this shit want more than fifty percent literacy from the serfs who will be beholden to their grandchildren. Too many smart serfs would endanger their legacies, and too few would render the industrial collective serviced by their human capital uncompetitive.
The next few decades will be about them figuring out just how many smart motherfuckers they need, and how to keep those firecrackers too frightened to start a revolution. They'll be minmaxing the hell out of us.
I think you make some valid points. I like to imagine most of us have other interests and projects we are engaged with and my be less motivated in some areas when we engage with other things. This is almost always the cause if my headline hot take behavior or unwillingness to read a text wall. I'm primarily here for the inadequate dopamine hit of social media; not as much for the personal growth potential.
I think the primary issue is an education system that makes reading and learning a nuisance and chore. This is a problem that can be solved in the coming decade with the use of technology, but it will take a serious overhaul of the entire system. There is no room for proprietary software and exploitation in education. The entire system should be standardised on open source software, funding should be allocated to run a small independent and offline AI server and the teacher's role should be divided between the AI system and a traditional group oriented role. This will allow individualized education without exploitation. An AI agent that is specifically designed for this task and paired with the teacher's supervision makes it possible for each child to follow the path that best suits them. They can read any book they want that meets certain requirements. They can progress at their own pace. Issues can be identified long before any current teacher is capable of spotting. Most importantly, this is not about AI as a product or replacing the teacher in any way. This is making use of a tool, and doing so ethically. This kind of thing can not be done for profit or by contractors. The privacy of such a system should be of paramount importance that is not possible long term with any company focused on profitability. The only people with access to the AI should be the students, parents, and teachers. Even IT staff at the school should not have access to the AI logs and data, and there should be no persistent storage long term. It has to be a tool that is used by the teacher only.
To be clear, I am a hobbyist working on such a tool for my own self education with the computer science curriculum. This is about AI agents. This is not about a raw AI LLM. An agent is a collection of LLMs connected through a code base, and connected to databases. This does not rely on the model training alone for answers. This is a system where the final answer is checked and reviewed multiple times and verified against accurate sources before a final reply is made. Most people here are likely unfamiliar with this and what it is capable of doing.
This is the inevitable future, it is only a question of how long it takes people to adapt to the new potential. This level of individualized education has only been available to the ultra rich, but it is now possible for everyone at scale.
Hard tl;dr from me, dawg
Hey go easy. Some of us have ADHD.
It's not that I don't want to read a wall of text, but simply that I'm incapable of doing so.
Read to your kids. Use big words around them.
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 😂
My girlfriend accused me of being a pedophile. I said, "Hey, that's a pretty big word for a 10-yr old."
Bob Saget was funny
This was funny when Jimmy Carr told it.
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.
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 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
I got in trouble for correcting other kids that didn’t grasp phonics. In first grade. I was a little asshole but I was just trying to help. Also it was painful as hell.
Hooked on phonics worked for me.
... I'm actually not cracking a joke. One of the few memories I have from when I was very young (under maybe 6 or so) was going through hooked on phonics material.
In my college years, while not focused on language or communication (I'm an IT technician, specializing in computer networking) I became obsessed with the English language and it's been a long term study for me. I'm still learning new things all the time despite English being my only fluent language. The nuances of when to use what terms despite each term being roughly equivalent (such as: what is the difference is between "affect" and "effect"), and other such oddities and specifics. College didn't really tell me anything new about the language I speak, but dealing with everyone's terrible use of the language, and being misunderstood many times because of poor structure or word selection caused me to want to step up so I can reduce how many follow ups I have to deal with to clarify myself.
I find most people are almost unnecessarily terse, leaving out important context that they think is obvious and assume that everyone who receives their message will make the same observation, when it's not an obvious thing at all to many; this assumption is extremely common and often it's not something that even crosses into the minds of those doing it. Such assumptions often lead to misunderstandings and are the basis of more than a few ha ha funny jokes in sitcoms, all of which I find rather cringe.
As a society, we abuse language severely. By extension, otherwise mundane situations can turn hazardous or even lethal if a misunderstanding happens; and many leave a lot of the context, and a fundamental understanding of context, to the assumptions of the reader/listener. It's really dumb IMO.
If the literal majority of people are reading at a 6th grade level, the society in which we live should be making efforts to improve that. Bluntly, I shouldn't need to "read between the lines" to understand what you want me to do.
I never had patience for that and would just read ahead and ignore the person speaking.
As much as I'd love to jump on the "stupid Americans" bandwagon, this seems to be a big problem not only in America. After the reddit exodus and before I had a good setup for lemmy, I used Facebook for a short period. Most of my stuff there is from US, UK and Norway, and the number of people in the comments who can barely put together a coherent sentance is astonishing. Far below 6th grade level by any standard.
It looks like there's at least some bias as they only counted English literacy.
This is basically a map of how many Mexican immigrants each state has. I agree the English bias is not great because not speaking English doesn't make you dumb.
It would be interesting to see the same data, restricted to participants whose first language is English.
I want to look at the eyes of a person who set a white colour on the scale to 12% value.
well since america's literacy is so bad it seems they had to put 12% as the baseline
It’s basically Americas official language, let’s not pretend it isn’t.
If you go to school in America, you're obviously going to learn and be taught in English. There's a lot of immigrants that don't know any English. I interact with a lot of them, and they'll even have their 6 year olds translate for them. It actually impresses me, because the little kids act very mature when they have to translate, since I'm sure they are used to having to navigate their family around at a very young age.
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...
It's not just the teachers, it's also the teachers of the teachers and the whole American system of teaching reading that's also in need of dire improvement. A good resource on how bad reading education is in America I can recommend Sold a story, a podcast.
And yet "Terms Of Service" are supposed to be fair. When they're written at a college level.
It's not the terms of service's fault that adults can't read over a 6th grade level
No, but think about how we structure society.
We give people shit education, and they wind up not being able to read at a 6th grade level.
Then you basically have to navigate an entire world where you are required to pick how to sign away some of your rights/enter deals written beyond their comprehension.
This is a system that breeds suckers as sets them up as suckers, to screw them later.
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Nuance.
Conciseness.
And many adults choose not to read. It is almost as if they are connected
This is the reason the GOP exists as it does. It is the fucking idiots party.
It might be, but I guarantee you that there's a not insignificant number of people who align with the left who are dumb as rocks and just happened to fall into that party instead.
If there's some study proving that uneducated or unintelligent people are only ever exclusively on the right and the left is just full of geniuses, I haven't seen it.
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.
Why u hurt our brain with thing that not screenshot of headline or tweet
wait yall can read?
What did you say?
Yup. And the map is pretty much what you'd guess, Mississippi is #1. That is, #1 for worst literacy rate in the nation. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas-Literacy-Problem
California and New York being high on the list is a little surprising, however.
large, under-educated and recently arrived immigrant populations do contribute to it for sure
California has more Republicans than fill in state. The Central Valley is just littered with ignorance and po dunk pretend (and real) shit kickers. I know this because my family came from that area.
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.
Explains a lot
It feels like a low-blow but... Yeah.
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.
Lol as long as its not porn, we could rent any book
Never heard about age limitation
It wasn't age locked per se. If you were in Honors English, they assumed you were reading at a higher level and could check out books one grade level higher than you and if you were in on-level English you were not allowed to read above "grade level".
I can understand keeping a 6th grader from checking out a bunch of 1st grade level books, but discouraging kids from pushing themselves was weird
I didn't have a single teacher or librarian who would discourage a kid from reading a book, unless a 6th grader tried checking out a clearly adult intended book like a harlequin novel or something.
I'm glad you had teachers like that. Not sure why mine were so dead-set on only reading in your grade level. Limiting lower level makes more sense, to encourage students to push themselves more. 6th grade was the last grade in the school, so the only people allowed to read the 7th grade level books were in the 6th grade Honors English class. It's not like the library would run out of books if all 6th graders were allowed to pick out of that section of the library
Yeah that seems so unfortunate. I loved my elementary school librarian; she would flip to a random page and make sure you could read and understand it. As long as you could do that, you could check it out.
pointedly doesn't look at the numerous Lemmings he's seen complain that relatively simple statements are grammatically confusing
I’ve absolutely had someone blow a gasket over asking for clarification when they wrote a few sentences where it was unclear from their statement whether they were progressive or a white power lunatic. I could have assumed but my level of certainty was hovering in the mid-50% range. Sometimes the author is an idiot and the questioner is justified. EDIT: from what I could figure out, the gasket blower has a habit of assuming you know their post history rather than letting each comment stand on its own. Which is not very smart.
We have people who think that 'e-mail' gets an s as a noun - ever - when 'mail' never has.
They will be confused that the sun keeps rising.
The term e-mail has been "neologized" into its own independent word, which may or may not take an s as a plural.
You must be a hit at parties.
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.
3 min read
lol
You joke, but I went back to college for a bit a few years back. We'd read an article in class. I'd have read the thing in a minute or two. The rest of the class would take 10 minutes or more.
And these were educated people in a college class. I really think phone use has ruined a lot an entire generation's ability to read and grasp the essence of a text quickly.
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'.
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).
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 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.
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 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.
Is that 54% the Trump supporters?
Ma'am the Republicans and Democrats have almost the same 'apolitical' bases. The illiteracy is within every level of American society, you can't choose one silly side to shove all the issues on.
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.
We are required to write our customer facing self-help articles at no greater than an 8th grade reading level. Or people literally can't read to the end.
Largely removing and semblance of usefulness to them IMHO.
So this tracks.
This is nothing new though. I remember being in middle school and teachers saying that the most sophisticated newspapers at the time were written at an eighth grade level. Basically, it's the level where you're not alienating potential customers, I guess. And I suppose there's some benefit to dumbing down things like news. Maybe. I dunno.
As a lawyer, I have to take MASSIVE amounts of time to write and rewrite emails and letters to account for the fact that (1) no matter how important the matter, 80% of folks WILL NOT read the whole thing, (2) of the 20% that do read the whole thing, 50% will accidentally skip over key points. I’ve learned to use bullet lists, and as much as possible, to err on the side of plain language—even when doing so leads to an underinformed person, because the alternative is an entirely uninformed person. It’s brutal.
How do you even measure that? Is there a guidebook?
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
My dad is at probably about 6th grade level.
My father is extremely quick, a sharp mind. He is able to articulate, but not very eloquently, can't spell really, and or he is self conscious of it and defers to others when writing.
To his credit, he doesn't really need any of that to live a fulfilling life, but, I wonder what would have changed if his education was better or if he got to grow up in a less broken home. How would that change my life? I'm sure I would be doing something much different than I am now. I'm not sure it even matters.
I'm thankful that my father is a kind soul who doesn't really seem meant for this world. He taught me many important lessons in life and I wish there were more genuine people like him. Everyone seems to gravitate towards him even tho he is by all accounts an "idiot". He's an anarchist in purest form. I'll miss him when he's gone, but I carry his spark within me. <3
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"?
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.
It's not a new study though, it's kind of old.
All studies are new if you just believe enough!
Anyone have the stats on what percentage voted Trump or didnt vote at all?
although those people are silly its strange to think that california, one with the largest illiteracy, has somehow become a republican stronghold within the last day
California has a ton of Spanish speakers, that's why they and other border states scored so low. Use your brain.
Is there a country we can jump to? Kinda like when Reddit got lame we all jumped to Lemmy? Where is our Lemmy country?
The brain drain on Reddit now makes reading some of the forums I used to follow very painful. The level of discourse, the turn of phrase, the obscure references that now now end at the 2000s instead of going back decades. The depth of knowledge there has shallowed because the kids who grew up reading and upvoting our posts, who lived vicariously through our old ass generation, are now in charge, and many of them have no real world knowledge to share.
I remember life before the internet, I remember black and white television, I remember seeing the Beatles live on television, I remember how rap started because I was there, I remember nuclear drills because I lived under Reagan, I remember MTV when they played music videos, I lived through the first World Trade center bombing, and 9/11 in New York.
I went from the Commodore 64 and dialup internet in the 80s, to building my first computer in the 90s. I remember buying Red Hat Linux in a box at Barnes & Noble, and then slowly watching Linux get better, I even watched Android mature from nothing to where it is today. Working in publishing for two decades allowed me to see the development of ebooks. I even saw portable music develop from my walkman, to a CD player, to the bulky ugly ass mp3 player I defaulted to because I rejected Apple.
These kids on Reddit now remember some basic ass shit from the oughts.
I apologize for the old man's rant.
About the amount that repeatedly votes Republican. Coincidence?
We're really due.
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
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.
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.
what's the concrete advantage of the average person reading at a high level is, past some sort of weird elitism?
they clearly haven't needed the skill in their lives, or their reading level wouldn't have "atrophied" over time, so what's the point?
i also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised
High reading level shouldn't be elitist, we should strive to have a well educated population
You don't want a well-educated population for the sake of having a well-educated population. You want it so that you can have a productive population. And clearly, a high reading level isn't required to be a productive member of society since otherwise reading level wouldn't drop over time like this figure is implying.
Poorly educated people are more susceptible to manipulation, misinformation, and propaganda. And a low reading level is both an indication of a poor educational level, and an impediment to a person educating themselves further.
Reading is a fundamental skill in the modern world.
what's the concrete advantage of the average person reading at a high level is
Sixth grade reading is being able to extract information from written word. Below that grade level, you're basically reading words but none of them need to have logical impact on some greater theme or topic. Sixth grade reading level is the ability to read things that matter. Eighth grade reading is reading at a level where you can apply introspection to the underlying theme or topic that's being extracted from the written word.
So, and this is simply my opinion, I believe it is important to be able to read things and understand how they apply to one's self in a logical manner. The ability to extract the impact that the particular piece has is critical to subsequently applying that introspective quality to the piece. So, yes, I believe being able to read at sixth grade level is incredibly important. It is difficult to understand how something applies to you if you cannot correctly extract what the point that is being discussed, actually is, in the first place.
they clearly haven't needed the skill in their lives
Well a lot of everyday life is not present in those terms. Your employer does not sit there and go "this machine is big enough to stick a arm into it and applies enough pressure to remove that arm from your body" without also following it up with "so do not stick your arm into this machine." In fact, legal requirements likely dictate a "DO NOT STICK ARM INTO MACHINE" or something similar sign right beside the machine.
There is a massive difference between the utility as a function of labor and employment and utility as a function of operating within a society. So do try to apply this at say a social level. Employers can change the condition of the environment one works in to accommodate a lot of leeway. So do try to think of it less in "what does this higher reading level provide in objective utility in a work environment?"
i also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised
Well that is interesting that you bring that up because rote memorization of multiplication is third grade level stuff. Things like "all things multiplied by two are even" is higher grade thinking. There is actually a point where you stop thinking of multiplication as some table to be memorized and start seeing it as a pattern that has deeper meaning.
If I add a zero to the end of a number, "3 to 30 or 45 to 450" I have multiplied that by 10, and that has a deeper meaning all over in various engineering domain. In computer terms we call that bit shifting and there's optimizations in rendering pipelines and memory access that comes from this deeper understanding of multiplication. Or things like (x,y) coordinates, it is easy to just think of it as plotting point on a grid, but at some point you obtain a deeper meaning and start seeing (x,y) as (r,θ) and you begin to have an understanding of vectors and that understanding is critical to literally everything that might have to traverse your GPU. Want to change the heading of an airplane? You can do vector addition to know exactly what will happen when you change that heading.
And even then you stop seeing exactness of math and start seeing the general patterns of it. You begin to understand this kind of change in this variable has this kind of effect. And you can pick that kind of feeling up with on the job training no doubt. But with a deeper understanding of math you begin to understand more than what on the job training can give you, because you can break those actions down into more mathematical terms that can be manipulated easily within your mind, rather than the good old trail and error method (which obviously wouldn't be a good method for an airplane that you are currently flying).
There is also more to it than the surface level implications of education. Yes, we can just look at the surface level stuff and conclude that the "real" world reigns supreme. But having that deeper understanding, be it in written word or mathematical eloquence, gives us a richer understanding of the world we live in. Gives us more access to the potential of this world. We do not per se "need it", much like we don't pre se need things like medicine, refrigerators, guns, bulldozers, and what not. Our ancestors did without them for countless years. But having that deeper meaning gives us access to things that we would otherwise not have. This nice world we have of comfort is not a product of it being forced upon us, it is a side result of various people who went further than the surface level understanding of this world that was routinely offered.
So if you are curious of the advantage, look around you. That is the advantage.
For me personally, it seems like reading comprehension is a pretty necessary skill. Between social media, texting, email, etc we are reading more than ever. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to jump on a call because some colleague has misinterpreted or misrepresented something from an email.
Media literacy and reading comprehension are important skills, but unless I'm (ironically) mistaken, it doesn't look like they form part of a text's "reading level".
You can vote for non-wolves and prevent destroying the planet.
I agree it's not necessary for immediate survival, but long term.
the average person reading at a high level is, past some sort of weird elitism?
An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for the survival of a free people.
People who can't read well, can't easily learn further skills, fact check, do proper research, and invariably lack the ability to do proper critical thinking.
The end result is gullible stupid people, making stupid decisions. People who think research involves watching youtube/tiktok videos.
also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised
I don't think memorising multiplication tables is a thing anymore, but if you can't do basic calculations, you're an easy mark for many businesses.
Teaching people to read, write, and do basic maths is about making them self-reliant.
This kind of serves as a pretty good example, because despite the first part of this response reading like you were trying to hit a minimum word count, it conveys information no more effectively than the same text written more normally would.
invariably lack the ability to do proper critical thinking
this is elitism
you could be illiterate and still have strong critical thinking skills
Yeah I don't really care if someones an advanced biologist but I'd prefer if they didn't believe humans grew from seeds
Reading at an xx level isn't about using fancy words, it's about reading comprehension. English is a super ambiguous language...
Case in point, the first half of my post is probably about a 6th grade reading level. A fourth grade reader would probably know all the words but struggle to understand my point, a sixth grade reader would understand I'm saying that reading level is important to correctly understand the meaning, and a college level reader would understand that plus understand the implication that English is a poorly designed language that was shaped to promote intellectual elitism
And now I'm just going to spell out the fact that humans communicate at a steady rate through spoken word regardless of sounds per minute - "dumber" people don't necessarily express less using slang or simple word choices, they just miss out on the full meaning
I could explain all this so anyone who can tie their shoes could understand all of this, but a high enough reading comprehension means I could have stopped at the first paragraph and all of the meaning would have gotten across... Being a charitable reader is a big part of the equation, as is a certain level of general knowledge
reading is insanely important, so is literacy. Its not elitism to get someone to actually be fluent in their own language in order to allow them to properly interact with the world.
Lol the same people who are so confident in their opinions also have a hard time reading, coincidence?
People who don't read well, or often, literally think less effectively than people who do.
Reading isn't just a hobby for nerds, it's critical to advancing your own ability to think above an animal level.
There's a reason all of the smartest people you know read and the dumbest people you know do not.
