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Quick question, genuine question:
Why on earth does “more than half of US adults under 30 cannot read above an elementary school level” not strike horror into the heart of everyone who hears it?
Are the implications of it unclear????
I’m serious, people keep reacting with a sort of vague dismissal when I point this out, and I want to know why!
If adults in the US cannot read, then the only information they have access to is TV and video, the spaces with the most egregious and horrific misinformation!
If they cannot read, they cannot escape that misinformation.
This obscene lack of literacy should strike fear into every heart! US TV is notoriously horrific propaganda!
Is that???? Not??? Obvious???????
I know this sounds sarcastic, I know it does, but I’m completely serious here. I do not understand where the disconnect is.
Literacy can be broadly categorized into 3 groups. The ability to read words, the ability to read sentences or paragraphs, and the ability to texts a page or longer.
55% of US adults cannot read long texts.
The process of reading the individual sentences is so taxing due to this low literacy that actually synthesizing the total information presented becomes nearly impossible. It requires both holding onto the meaning of each sentence so that you can contextualize it with the next one, AND consciously going through the decode process of interpreting letter and word forms in that next sentence.
In general, children are expected to begin reading long texts for meaning around age 8-10, in elementary school. This is when kids normally swap from short stories to chaptered books.
55% of American adults under 30 cannot read at that level.
We know this not from some short term study or another, but from the collected data of the US Department of Education going back decades.
This is the same literacy data used internationally to determine literacy rates around the world, not some kind of shock study.
55% of American adults under 30 can’t read, and it’s explicitly, specifically because our schools refuse to teach them, and effectively haven’t been doing so for over a decade nationally and as much as 30 years in some states.
What Education Schools Aren’t Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren’t Learning
The knock on effects and implications of this are horrific.
I understand that this sounds like some fuckery bullshit because it’s such an unfathomably massive problem, but holy shit.
It’s very, VERY real.
@firecoloredwater I can’t see your replies while I write on mobile so I’m trying to just remember everything you mentioned. I hope this covered most of it?
But, basically, the reading skills to navigate an app menu or read a single sentence are not what’s being discussed. The skills to read a newspaper or book, however, are.
I saw this a few days ago and it’s been on my mind since.
I don’t even need to leave Tumblr to see failed literacy.
I’ve seen many people, just in the last couple of days, completely misunderstand something and read it in a hostile way based on their own biases rather than in anything the author said.
It’s weird and unpleasant when I go to fandom spaces and see someone completely misread a chapter. But when it comes to discussions on bigotry, politics, social justice? That ruins lives.
On a different note, I’ve started asking myself “am I sure I understand this” when reading dense texts, and taking a few extra seconds per paragraph to mentally summarize what I read to make sure I get it. So, thanks for making me a more conscientious reader, Vees.
This is something that I bring up a lot in discussions of politics and education and people regularly assume that I’m either misunderstanding the studies or just making stuff up. It’s a gigantic problem that is too readily overlooked. Reading isn’t everything, but it is necessary to be informed, and lacking reading comprehension and, as often goes along with that, the ability to determine credible sources, means that people are often not reliably informed.
This is made worse by people being insecure about their difficulty with reading and lashing out against “elites” who try to cite studies and articles they don’t understand. There’s whole swaths of US adults who almost brag about not having “read a book since highschool”. Reading for a lot of people, because it’s difficult and because, is seen as a chore or a punishment, and not enough is done to combat this and meet these people halfway and make reading engaging for them. Things like bionic reading, accessible language articles with specific summaries, and headlines that don’t ask misleading questions can help a lot.
So often people who are argumentative and tell you to “do your own research” are literally incapable of doing their own research as a result of this, and just find a charismatic voice that vaguely matches their own biases and just seeks to manipulate people like this. This influences voting, this influences daily interactions, this influences a world where we have people believing in two distinct sets of truths: the world that makes factual sense to those who can and do read studies and articles and longform texts, and the world that makes sense off of a general “feeling” and what you’re told in the media that you engage with.
This is why it’s so important that we hold our media accountable, that we call out oppressive voices in news and entertainment, and that we make other struggling voices more visible. People can complain all they want that it’s becoming too “woke” in the media landscape, but they’re still watching and in watching they’re being exposed to more and different ideas, something that they otherwise wouldn’t get without seeking it out or engaging in deep reading. While having “woke” superhero media or whatnot is a step we need to also accompany this with better more engaging educational media that is factually accurate, as well as more aggressive (or any at all) restrictions on the spread of misinformation.
Not being able to read shouldn’t be something we’re judging people on, it should be a problem we look to understand and solve for.
Source: xxblackheartbiohazardsxx
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