77% of Americans write below 9th grade-levels, and hyphens are taught as an elective.

The tables, they turn

The great journalism of "Homeless Romantic" has really been in decline.

This is all just a simulation.

The hyphen goes between grade and levels. Confidently incorrect.

that's a wall of text, I'm not reading that

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

My reading skills tell me this author has a profound sense of sorrow about the state of the world.

This author is now also aware that there is no comfortable place in your mouth to rest your tongue.

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.

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.

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.

Hard tl;dr from me, dawg

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.

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."

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.

I never had patience for that and would just read ahead and ignore the person speaking.

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 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.

I want to look at the eyes of a person who set a white colour on the scale to 12% value.

It’s basically Americas official language, let’s not pretend it isn’t.

Not just college, but by lawyers, so a doctorate level.

It's not the terms of service's fault that adults can't read over a 6th grade level

This is the reason the GOP exists as it does. It is the fucking idiots party.

Nuance.

Why u hurt our brain with thing that not screenshot of headline or tweet

wait yall can read?

California and New York being high on the list is a little surprising, however.

It feels like a low-blow but... Yeah.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Sure, feel free to go literally anywhere else if you want to bail on a country for having problems.

The majority of Americans are politically illiterate, its why everyone laughs at them for going insane deciding between white capitalist party 1 and white capitalist party 2

You think liberals read more than headlines?

I'm not sure I'd trust someone who reads like a 11/12 yo with signing potentially life changing (not in a good way) contracts.

High reading level shouldn't be elitist, we should strive to have a well educated population

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.

This wouldn't be a problem except all of those people who don't read good are allowed to vote.

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.

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.

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

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 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.