I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?!
How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?
I would suggest you double check what definition of literacy the different countries are using. Perhaps the US has a more stringent definition?
As an example, for a long time Germany used a way to measure unemployment that yielded consistently higher numbers than most of the rest of the world. So any honest international comparison had to make adjustments.
> In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3]
You also need to see if it’s from official reports based on testing or statistical reports based on surveys. Many people who are counted literate are functionally illiterate- they car recognize street signs, their name, etc but not much more.
It is not a fair comparison. In India, the definition of "literacy" does not mean functional literacy in India ... merely knowledge of the alphabet is enough to qualify ("akshar gyan").
I suspect a lot of this is variance on surveying methods. I could see "Literacy" be defined anywhere from "able to read the survey enough to pick out where to mark "yes/no" and "sign here"" to "Able to read YA novels", and in the US it could well be "English literacy" versus "Any literacy". I knew plenty of kids growing up who had grandparents living with them that could read Mandarin or Spanish just fine, but who had pretty limited English skills.
I'm not sure our Department of Education is effective, and I think some children actually are being left behind, despite the "no child left behind" effort.
Why even consider that another standard could be in use, like others have pointed out in the thread, when you have political priors to confirm? Stay classy HN!
What? It’s widely known that over half of American adults read at or below a sixth grade level. This is a result from 2020 so it shouldn’t be news to you.
I was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best guess:
13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too good.
Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. People who feel unsafe don't learn too good.
Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn too good.
School boards refuse to integrate modern understanding of best practices - homework is useless, school starts too early, multi-modal learning works way better, spaced repetition works great, bullying isn't a fact of life to be accepted and ignored. Bullied, tired kids don't learn too good.
Publishing monopolies charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks, altering 1984 and children's stories to be "safer", and holding back anything that might upset their comfortable position.
Hundreds of years of the world's most sophisticated anti-intellectual propaganda has allowed America to be world leaders in producing people that think education is scary.
Blaming poor people for their own problems is a national sport.
These attitudes have been with America for hundreds of years, and no amount of fight from Mark Twain, or Thoreau, or Einstein, or Bernie has changed those fundamentals of American culture.
There's no political motive to change any of this. As George Carlin put it so well: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." America are undisputed world leaders in this (except in America, where this is seen as socialist talk and therefore safe to ignore).
Media, corporations and government conspire to prevent any third party or group from changing the social situation - look at what happened to OWS, or MLK, or Fred Hampton.
Any progression toward helping people get safe and educated is labeled communism, and the DNC conspires with media to mess up anyone too "radical" that runs as a Democrat.
Nobody on TV talks about how many teachers we could have trained with the 20 trillion dollars spent bombing Middle Eastern families - it's a lot.
So, a lot is going on in America. I didn't even mention the drugs, the housing situation, the bank crises, the environmental poisoning, the disconnection from nature, the lack of exercise, the poor quality food or God knows how much else.
Some will say I must hate America to write this stuff - people who say things like this get accused of being Putin's puppets, or worse, socialists. But I love America, which is why I hate to see what is happening to it and refuse to pretend these problems will be solved without even acknowledging them.
There are two causes to consider. The failure of society to provide equal opportunities to all, and the failure of individuals to capitalize on what opportunities they have available.
The trouble with your criticism is that you are focusing entirely on society’s failures, when a more complete analysis would consider what can be done on either side.
> and the failure of individuals to capitalize on what opportunities they have available
Yeah, we could blame the 5 year olds for their lack of grit and determination to create their foundation for their reading skills. Alternatively, we can look at what other societies achieve, and try to improve our own.
Also you are completely ignoring that plenty of people have functional difficulties learning to read and write. Anecdotally I would say over 10% based on my dyslexic or illiterate friends and family, some of which had professional focused help beyond what schooling provides. I agree with you that the education system has its faults, and some people “fail to capitalise opportunities”. However there is a large segment of people that are motivated, work hard, get good educational opportunities, and yet still struggle to read and write. There are people with denial or bullshit reasons too, but too many of my friends and family have symptoms that I have good reasons to believe they are not making anything up.
My 10% figure ignores functional meta-level difficulties for lacking motivation. Perhaps born without grit and determination; perhaps never taught it; perhaps other home problems trump it.
Sure, everyone ought to do what they can to better themselves. That's for another comment, because the question was, what is it about America that has literacy skills at such a shameful level.
It's not Brad's fault that he can't read good. It's not Chad's fault that he hasn't picked up a book. These hypothetical kids are 6, 7, 8 years old.
That's on us, and our willingness to allow their home lives to be miserable rather than pay for mental health supports and education as a society.
Parents should be putting books into these kids hands. Society can not replace the role of a parent.
We can and should help the parents, and the first step is assessing the root of the problem, and sometimes that looks a lot more like laying blame than some folks are willing to do
> Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn too good.
This one is mostly a myth. States and federal grants will equalize money per pupil across different school districts. Some of the worst performing school districts in the country also have the highest per-capital spending.
This stat probably includes older Americans in their 80s and 90s. Many immigrated in their teens, from small villages, in the early 1940s/50s. Let's say you left rural Italy in 1940, as an 11 year old. Started working in America at 16, in 1946. Many jobs in America at that time didn't require much literacy, for example working in a textile mill, or an assembly line.
Your post includes some good commentary identifying issues with the educational system, specifically about fostering a healthy, effective learning environment as well as commentary about mis-allocating resources. However, it also includes lots of specific blaming and accusations which, to me, distracted from the helpful elements.
I'm curious if you think the best path forward would be to keep pushing for the federal government to do better with education, or if it would be better to empower more local entities to improve. This could be state, county, or city governments, or even private school systems.
How does Finland do it? Copy them as much as possible, since it's clearly working. Gaps in Finlands system? Pay experts to figure it out. I don't claim to be an expert - you don't need to be, to see how bad the current system is.
If we can afford $20 trillion on interest payments for illegal wars on the other side of the planet, we can figure out how to fund schools.
Not sure what you mean by "specific blaming and accusations" - there are real forces fighting back against educating children in a safe and happy environment.
They're not even that sneaky about it. Pretending that extremely well funded and organised and power groups are not, for example, banning books, abortion, cutting school funds, cancelling school lunch programs, giving millions in TANF funds to dried out quarterbacks, etc, etc, is like ignoring the termites eating away at the foundations of your house while spending all your money on grenades to protect from home invaders.
How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?