Like, in a practical sense? Do you have any stories or examples from your life?
The way it has manifested most clearly in the situations I’ve encountered it is a basic difference in approach to writing and reading as concepts. They don’t see writing or reading as a way to communicate, they see it as a puzzle they have to solve by following rules, so that they can return to communicating once the puzzle is out of the way. Unless they’re in very casual/online settings, or very motivated to find specific information, they avoid the puzzle because it’s annoying.
It means they are easily propagandized to and won’t have the critical reading skills to realize it
That clip of that Kik Streamer fascist Aiden Ross trying to whole-word-read “fascist” and then googling the meaning and then still being puzzled why someone would call Trump that.
Once, Andrew Tate asked him questions about World War II. I could maybe forgive someone for not knowing that de Gaulle was the leader of France, but the only leader of the major Allies/Axis Powers he knew was Hitler. When asked who the leader of Russia was, he said “I’m guessing Putin’s father or grandfather”.
Good lord
When asked who the leader of Russia was, he said “I’m guessing Putin’s father or grandfather”.
That sounds like a bit.
Nah, he’s that stupid. He once played porn on stream knowing that half his viewers are children.
deleted by creator
When I first saw this, I laughed my ass off and then cried because this motherfucker is an idol to so many people.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I had a roommate who grew up in a poor farming community. He has dyslexia but the school had no special education funding to address that. As a result he grew up completely illiterate and stayed that way into his 30s. He passively absorbed libertarian ideas from the media he consumed, but lacked the ability to cross-check any of it. I remember him giving me a history lesson from a Call of Duty game.
My mom once stated in a FB post that socialism was evil, when I asked her to elucidate “It just is!”
They can sound out words and know what most common words mean in isolation but their ability comprehend the meaning of a text is very basic, if present at all. Reading a short story, being able to summarize it and comment on themes, conflicts, character motivations, metaphors, allegory, how they relate to the story or certain characters are generally beyond them. Reading a political article and reading between the lines to get past the writer’s bias is completely beyond them (tbf they would never read an article, they would watch a video or look at memes on facebook). That said, they have little to no ability to think critically so whatever authority figures beat into them when they were young becomes their worldview and everything that contradicts it is seen as an attack on them and society.
I had someone I know ask me what was wrong with the Korean PM declaring martial law since he was doing it because of a communist invasion. The article just repeated what he claimed he was doing and this guy hadn’t thought about whether that was an accurate statement on his part. Just didn’t occur to him that an official statement from a politician could be false.
He’s not coincidentally a huge Chud with a lot of beliefs about a (((cabal))) running everything he doesn’t like.
I legit think the only way to save these people is to very carefully word socialist theory in a way that they can understand through facebook level memes. But then you have to worry about the authority figures that actually can read seeing through it.
I don’t know that re-education is actually possible in this case, tbh.I legit think the only way to save these people is to very carefully word socialist theory in a way that they can understand through facebook level memes
Impossible, leftist memes must have multiple paragraphs of text at minimum
The issue is also that these people actively do not want to learn, because learning actual history means learning that they are the bad guys. I think real re-education can only take place in a Chinese-style re-education camp (depicted wonderfully in one of my favorite movies, The Last Emperor).
This was what I was going to say. The idea of an author of a text having a bias is alien to a lot of Americans. Like if you say that Harry Potter is a liberal fantasy about not changing anything and defending the status quo, there will be someone telling you “uh no, it says in the book that it’s about fighting Voldemort”. Just a lack of ability to do anything more than a surface level read.
It means they have a difficult time parsing Parenti quotes. They can read it aloud, and they can tell you roughly what it’s about, but they have difficulty following and comprehending the argument being made.
“We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat,” announced Reagan advisor Roger A. Freeman during a press conference on Oct. 29, 1970.
“I used ChatGPT Bazinga to write this message”
Sometimes you have to be brought back to reality and realize that the vast, vast majority of USAmericans have not grappled with materialism, thus nearly all the connections they make are like a 6th grader writing out their 5 paragraph essay for the high stakes exam that determines if their school gets funding or not.
US self made brain drain is going to hit the country like a comically large boomerang, it already has essentially.
Yeah, even if a person gets an undergrad degree they still have the capitalist brainworms unless they poison them with theory. Reading and writing education in the US is so formulaic as to be worthless. People are taught to follow a small set of rules and if they don’t follow the rules, they fail. They are not expected to think. Even so, many people refuse to read or write anything, either paying others to do it for them or just turning in some AI slop without taking a single look at it.
And these people are armed to the teeth
How has it or will it impact the US? With America’s money can’t they just attract immigrant intellectual labour with high salaries?
Yes and no. We used to actively court immigrant intellectuals, now we’re accusing every Chinese intellectual of espionage and frothing at the mouth to deport anyone darker than freshly fallen snow. People with advanced degrees see what’s happening in the US and are choosing to go elsewhere.
brain drain is going to hit the country like a comically large boomerang,
To where?
Slightly more seriously, the people who can actually do things will go to countries where they can actually do them. The US ripping the copper wire out of everything will reverse any sort of intellectual dominance that it once had.
Worked for a major insurance company in rural Alabama. Had customers who couldn’t even write their own name, all of them were black people living in an incredibly poor area. None of them seemed particularly dumb or something, they just didn’t have access to education because of segregation. This wasn’t that long ago (2010ish), but a 70 year old today was school aged before desegregation in Alabama. Especially in rural areas that didn’t enforce it for a while.
I think a lot of people ignore the effect this has on stats like this.
But racism no longer exists we elected a black president!
Reading at a 6th grade level is reading for plot. Just like, what happened? Who was there? More advanced things like subtext, metaphor, and unreliable narrators come later.
I found this online the last time this topic came up: https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/english-level-test/reading
Go ahead and read the story, and imagine that a lot of people cannot read and understand it.
There’s also this article about how many kids are taught to read badly: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (amusingly, also available as a podcast)
What does it mean practically? Bad things. If you haven’t read 1984, give it a go and think about why the authoritarian state benefitted from a diminished language.
so lets go a bit more in depths on the topic, what other lessons did you get out of 1984?
what other lessons did you get out of 1984?
that i should sport a mustache if i want to be taken seriously
Aside from the seminal “Shake It Off” (which itself has been analysed by scholars to death), 1984 shows Taylor Swift’s writing prowess with bars such as
“Now we got bad blood/ You know it used to be mad love.”
oh shit i’m 20 years overdue on that book report!
their site design is knocking my reading level down a couple grades
Not GDPR compliant, the disagree button just says fuck you you must agree to our cookies to read this plain text
I don’t know how that test compares to grade level. It seems like a test to determine one’s CEFR level, 20 correct answers out 20 gave me C1. It doesn’t really say what it’s based on, but it does encourage you to buy their product.
Ok actually, this seems to suggest B2/C1 is about 6-8th grade level and C1 is 9-12: https://wida.wisc.edu/news/wida-model-online-scale-scores-linked-common-european-framework-reference-cefr
I missed one and I got B2!!
Coincidentally, I answered
that her English was perfect instead of very good.
Some of those were a tossup for me. perfect or very good? months to adjust or years?
It was total inference too. From this section:
At first, she thought it was difficult, but when she finished school, she could already speak quite fluently and understand almost everything she heard or read.
Does almost say “not perfect”? Not sure…
Do you have any stories or examples from your life?
A middle school textbook is pretty basic stuff. Think of all problems, blunder, mistakes, accidents, etc happening all over the US every day that are caused by the average American having difficulty understanding anything written at a middle school level or above.
With the rise of the internet along with it’s dark side and the expansion of right-wing media - maybe it was enviable that a repulsive republican like Trump would be president not just once but twice. And maybe it’s no surprise that huge number of Americans fall prey to conspiracy theories and snake oil salesmen like RFK. A large percentage of Americans hate vaccines and think they cause disease.
My worry is that not only will the problem not get fixed - it will most likely get worse over time. There is a concerted, bipartisan effort to ignore the problem. The GOP likes an uneducated public. Trump even bragged about it. The democrats will remain unwilling to even acknowledge the problem because they think the public will lose faith in American exceptionalism, the American dream, etc.
Trump even bragged about it
What did Trump say?
At least he loves himself
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Work emails have to be “dumbed down” to get co-workers to respond.
If I send the fully detailed email I want to, explaining what the situation is, what actions I need them to take and why, I get ghosted 9/10 and have to waste time getting their attention.
If instead I send one sentence emails I can at least get a response and back and forth conversation going. The majority of my co-workers have difficulty parsing anything more than like 2 paragraphs for relevant info.
I work on an app that’s pretty complex and requires a lot of back and forth between devs, customers, and the people who do all the training/sales. I’ve had A LOT of success using numbered bullet points instead of writing normal sentences and paragraphs.
Something about the numbers makes them want to read it in order instead of skimming and it being broken down and labeled lets me respond with things like, “great, what about the 3rd bullet point?” Instead of having to repeat things. Plus most of my coworkers are in Texas so they love bullets.
I have to agree hard with this, something about paragraphs says “chatgpt made this” and it’s probably safe to assume it’s long meandering non-sense stuffed with word salads, fluff, etc. and a bit at the end granting yourself an honorary PHD in early 1900s English literature. My friend even once told me they go off on unnecissary tangets and annecdotes that add nothing.
- Bulleted lists are awesome
- numbers aren’t even necessary for most of the value
- caveat: unless order strictly matters
- nested bullet points are awesome for grouping sub-thoughts
- my friend told me unnessary tangnts as nested bullet points are great because you can include them anyways but it’s easier for fast readers to skip over in a safe organized manor.
- still an info dump, but human parsable and navigatable
- faster to go through, like an indexed database
- Texas Delenda Est
i mean, that’s emails. no one wants to read emails.
Not just the volume of content, but also modifying syntax and verbiage.
“Parsing? What’s that, a vegetable?”
I really dislike writing a long email that contains in very simple text everything that is required of them, maybe some of the background, and I either get ghosted or only the very last thing (or very first thing) in the email gets responded to. Usually from clients rather than coworkers.
It means,sadly, that the US education system is doing precisely what it was intended to do. Sigh
I imagine a lot of the lib discourse of this either avoids the education funding model (rich areas get better schools) or views it as either inevitable or good. If you’re a “middle class” lib in a rich area, maybe everyone around you hasn’t gone to a school with very little funding, everyone around you has gone to uni etc.
Still intentional.
Extremely intentional. Maintains class divide, keeps the “middle class” in check by letting them know if they question anything they’ll get kicked down a few rungs on the social ladder.
Since no child left behind was passed in 2004 and the common core standards that came not long after it. I graduated HS in 2007 so I mostly missed all that bullshit and only got a little bit of standardized testing.
I find the OECD’s levels of literacy more instructive than grade level. This page has a short definition: https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/
pdf page 75 (table 4.5) here has more detailed definitions: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2019/11/the-survey-of-adult-skills_d7f1bc16/f70238c7-en.pdf
