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More (not so) fun facts:
54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level.
21% read below a 5th grade level, which is considered functionally illiterate.
High immigration numbers don't fully explain it either, as first gen immigrants only make up about 1/3 of those with low literacy.
I've studied this a little before (at graduate school) and I don't think we know exactly why, mostly because it's a ton of factors and none of the different camps in academia seem to agree on one.
Your standard Lemmy user may appreciate that late stage capitalism probably is the biggest factor, since poverty and illiteracy are hand in hand. The professor I RA'd for, for instance, just did projects that gave families money and they just did better. It was really that simple, since a ton of this is in the home, even before starting preschool.
But others have argued that there's also an anti-intellectualism in our culture (even before MAGA, kids go "ew nerds") and even more say it's pedagogy. That includes theory, like whole word vs phonics (my advisor spoke of the reading wars of the 90s like he had PTSD lol) as well as practice, like memorization vs reading for reading sake.
And, of course, the government under Bush Jr. really did the opposite of research by enacting the bipartisan No Child Left Behind which fucked both poor folk with contextless "accountability practices" while pushing soulless memorization.
Sorry for a long rant, just, y'know in 2025 onwards it's easy to forget that education has been routinely fucked, usually by conservatives. I can always explain more though, just don't want to make this comment too long, lol
They were supposed to bring critical thinking to the high schools and conservative parents in the US threw a shit fit because they truly believed their kids would no longer believe what they did. We never got critical thinking in high school and most people don't get an introduction to it until college.
Critical thinking should start in kindergarten and by third grade children should be able to create a simple opinion based on facts they understand. We are doing such a disservice to young people it isn't funny.
I'm not sure if it played out quite like that originally, though I guess there would be some people's parents thinking that way, especially in 2026. Keep in mind, NCLB was bipartisan.
In 2003, though, I read that the reality for a majority of schools is a bit more stupid, they don't understand testing and statistics at the federal level and designed a system of accountability that promoted teach-to-the-test methods, which is mostly memorization. That's because low performing schools (read: poor schools) got punished for not meeting an arbitrary test score, so it was a go to survival tactic.
Conservatives still get their desired result, though, which is an education system with minimal critical thinking practiced. Perhaps it was a poison pill, or something, given it's made Americans by and large even dumber since then (and we were already doing bad for other reasons and Reagan).
Ooh, I kind of forgot about the madness of schools being funded mainly by their local neighborhood, making schools in poor neighbourhoods poor. Could it be that increased segregation or relative marginalization have had an impact significant enough to bring the mean down?