United States | News & Politics

I keep seeing this and it's not clear to me if this is general literacy or specifically English literacy. 21% of USAmericans speak English as a second language (or specifically "a language other than English at home"), which has to weigh on these statistics right?

Not enough to explain it away. Even if every single one of them were counted that's still a large number of English-as-a-first-language speakers who are reading below a 6th grade level. It just seems like something that's important to consider.

I recall reading in a separate study that true literacy, that is, being able to read, comprehend, and make inferences about a text, is at about 10% in the USA. Even those 10% are being mis-educated - taught various myths about history and economics. Without historical materialism, one really lacks the ability to comprehend the broader picture, even when one is ostensibly able to read and comprehend.

Of course, this is by design. Why would Capital want workers capable of understanding the world or their place in it? The brain drain will continue until the empire collapses under its own contradictions.

It's obvious when you listen to their dictator.

Sad. How disgraceful. Total disaster. Tremendous disgrace.

EDIT: Seriously, I'm not a native speaker and recently someone asked me my level of English compared to one. I wasn't sure how ro reply. It depends which native speaker. Do we count the accent? Because I'm pretty sure the president of France has a better English vocabulary than the US dictator.

Maga is evidence of this

Yeah, well, at least I don't spell Almanac with a K

I used to work as a spell checker. I got fired for no raisin.

I know this to be true at some level, because it can be measured, and there are laws around it. Government publications have to be written for a certain grade level. I know military manuals are 8th grade.

I wonder if this ties to media and social media literacy as well, though poor education on its own could explain that.

It's often interesting to me that in both media and social media, the more informative they are the more atomized they are. Lemmy > reddit > facebook/x, dropsite > jacobin > msnbc/bbc

I'm not really sure what 6th grade level actually means, but when I was in 6th grade I was able to read pretty much anything I wanted to if it was just standard English (like I probably couldn't understand some paper full of medical jargon or old stuff like Shakespeare, but I could read a novel or a newspaper just fine.)

I guess this has to do with 60s and 70s when the most educated people protested against Vietnam War and against capitalism.

Then they started a very long anti-intellectualist campaign with mad scientists, nerds as losers, and anti-vaccination campaigns.

Well... I guess under Trump you could skate by with an A1 reading level.

This explains so much about ‘merica

I ran into a guy on here the other day that didn't know what the word "you" meant so I'm no surprised.

it was 3rd grade level in 2003 so that's... an improvement...

It's amazing that so many people read so much online and text so much now, but the reading levels have dumped so much. Like, everyone reads more crap now than when I was growing up, but I read at a 5th grade level by the time I was in 1st grade. I know our education sucks more, but I still figured people got enough practice in at simply reading.

Now this explains a lot