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 just don’t believe research like this. I could be persuaded I’m wrong, but flat earthers are just pulling your leg, and everyone can read pretty good.
I think many people misinterpret literacy, it is not just the ability to connect written glyphs to words, but its also the ability to connect those words to thoughts, and to then think about those thoughts from different perspectives and applications - literacy is not just the ability to read but the ability to understand and apply.
There are plenty of illiterate people who can read, they know the words but do not comprehend what is actually being conveyed by those words.
A person can know the ingredients, but if they still dont know how to cook with those ingredients does it actually matter?
*pretty well.
and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too
I think a lot of people are out of practice. I read a lot for personal enjoyment and I prefer reading articles to watching videos about the news. Its way easier on me sensory wise. But I think we have this fast-entertainment model that pulls in a lot of people and they end up actually reading very minimally (both for pleasure and for utility).
I think people are capable of better, but we have everything set up to discourage reading. Unless people explicitly do the work to go against th flow, they end up not exercising this part of their brain as much.
Agreed im often disappointed when there’s a video anout a topic im interested in and there’s just no transcript to read. Idk, i just like being in silence most of the time and i just dont want to watch or hear a video, but by popular demand people share videos a lot more than they share text.
Well, don’t think of literacy as simply being able to recognize words and define them. Literacy also means being able to read a text and then summarize it, and a lot of people really can’t do that. They can read basic directions/instructions and then follow them, they can read posts and texting, but they’d struggle to summarize anything longer than a paragraph.
I think it just speaks to how much we unconsciously choose to associate with those similar to ourselves, and we can’t help but generalize from our personal experiences. Friend choice, coworkers, family, neighbors - all select for similarity compared to the general population.
Even being here on Lemmy, or Reddit, or w/e, is a bubble that has selected for people willing to choose to interact on a text-based platform.
If only people could write well too.
Most people just survive high school on Bs and Cs with no actual accountability and start classes at a two year school and drop out after a semester because they actually fail them at that point. That’s the average american.
Ha! I actually dropped out after one year of a two year school to do drugs instead.
Nah, I’ve got family members that fit this. Reading just isn’t important to them.
I acknowledge I may not be living in the real world, but I see no reason to try too hard to live there.
…can I join you?