Report: 54% of American Adults Read Below 6th Grade-Levels America’s Shameful Literacy Crisis and the Cascading Collapse America’s Shameful Literacy Crisis and the Cascading Collapse Low literacy …
Even Brewer, the author of the infographic, publicly admitted in 2012 that he couldn’t back up any of the statistics and asked people to stop sharing it. Brewer claims to have used statistics from a survey by an organization called the Jenkins Group, though the group itself says the statistics were incorrectly attributed to them. Brewer has never been able to provide any other source of the numbers he used in the infographic.
The questionable statistics seem to have originally come from a 2011 Mental Floss article, which claimed to have taken them from a Jenkins survey from 2003. Mental Floss has updated the original article saying they have no idea where the statistics came from, either.
That’s absolutely not the conclusion from PIAAC, around 1/50th of the us population in 2013 (320 million) was functionality illiterate:
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills: 26.5 million at level 1 and 8.4 million below level 1
Level 1 – 176 – 225 Most of the tasks at this level require the respondent to read relatively short digital or print continuous, non-continuous, or mixed texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question or directive. Some tasks, such as those involving non-continuous texts, may require the respondent to enter personal information onto a document. Little, if any, competing information is present. Some tasks may require simple cycling through more than one piece of information. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary determining the meaning of sentences, and reading paragraphs of text is expected.[6]
Adults classified as below level 1 may be considered functionally illiterate in English: i.e., unable to successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms (OECD 2013).
I live in a city full of very liberal very educated people.
a huge chunk of them think books are wastes of time and are angry they were forced to read so much during their PhDs/masters/JDs.
I’ve been on many first dates with a science PhD who tells me reading fiction is stupid and dumb and if I’m reading it should only be for career productivity or self help therapy crap. And oh, btw my degrees in humanities mean I’m a stupid idiot who wasted years of my life reading stupid crap books.
It’s insane.
but when you realize these people hate learning, and only like money, it makes a lot of sense. their degrees/educations were not thinks they wanted to do or enjoyed doing, they were brass rings they had to leap through to get money.
Are you in the US? That is the vision I have of the ‘American way’. In a way they are right, they get benefits from the system for playing the game like that.
What I don’t like is that I see that culture permeating my country…
I studied abroad in Canada and Germany… the mentality there was not like that. It was far less hostile to education and learning generally. People in Germany used to compliment me for reading books and think it was good thing. In America, often, it’s considered negative and anti-social to read. It’s insane.
Not sure if their comment is related / deliberate, but the image in the article is from the film Idiocracy
In the film, the people of the future speak real slow and dumb. When they hear the time travelling protagonist speak in a vanilla US West Coast accent, the narrator describes them as thinking he sounds “Faggy and pretentious”, there are multiple points in the film where future-folk tell the main character “you sound like a fag”
I had a teacher in high school (in Ohio) ask me if I was English. I don’t sound even remotely English, I’ve just always generally spoken in complete sentences and occasionally use multi-syllable words.
What I believe they mean is that the same people who’d use it as a demeaning slur and something to avoid are the same who would never touch a book after not being required to do so … And likewise vote for people who’s entire platform is fear mongering and hate towards the “other”.
I’d say it’s probably a lot more in line with the ones who didn’t vote at all. I know everyone likes to say “conservative dumb,” but we’re all aware there are plenty of educated conservatives, probably just as many dumb liberals. The true dumb are the ones who sit out an election. That’s “I don’t read” dumb.
In a typical modern democracy, turnout for general elections is usually around the 80% mark. I don’t think the difference can be explained just by Americans being “dumber.”
I reject that. Voting changes nothing with both parties owned by the oligarchy, with one now reaching for absolute power or no, the other party was never going to stop them.
We went to great trouble to stop them and it was squandered, then the next election thrown.
No, tis those supporting the doomed to fail strategy at fault, not those not participating, because it was always going to end here without a New Deal on offer, and your precious opposition party sees it’s reason for being as preventing reform, not beating r’s, or undoing their past harms, let alone restoring the republic to it’s glory half a century back before the business roundtable infected both parties and every branch of government.
Yeah sorry this argument doesn’t matter now that the current president is sending armed goons to muder citizens. We have God damn literal brownshirts in our streets
This would not have been our current reality, but the BoTH SidEs ArE ThE SAmE crowd is incapable of acknowledging their responsibility in making this happen
You are arguing terms, after the formula is multiplied by zero. Get some real opposition leadership, or else get used to the fascist dictatorship. You knew or should have known people like Biden would fail, let alone kamala, anointed without contest 4 plus months to go running as status quo.
Instead of admitting you trusted the wrong people you listen to those wrong people in passing the buck, and blaming everyone else.
People made clear they wouldn’t vote for these democrats just because the other party is worse, biden barely pulled off 2020 and did nothing with it, vote for what? 2020 changed nothing, just slowed down parts of the plutocratic rot and fascist cancer. Take some responsibility and admit your influencers are playing you, so you can help get a winning strategy, a new deal in popular reform. Or else continue to lose, and blame everyone else despite knowing better.
But ignorance is no excuse, and following the lead of establishment democrats that see their reason for being as preventing reform, and extracting borrowed money from the government, rather than defeating the republicans and instituting real reform to improve the situations is at this point a dereliction of duty as a citizen that votes, and frankly speaks to a weak mind.
Committed to never reading, or just never made time for it?
I think it’s been over a year since I picked up a book. I actually love the book* I was reading and I’m only like a 3rd of the way into it. It’s just… hard to make time for it. Worst bit is, I’m not even working every moment I’m awake anymore (I should be, my ex put me deeeep in debt, like 3 or 4 national median annual pre-tax incomes worth of debt that I want to pay off within the next 3-4 years), it’s just that gaming, youtube, scrolling lemmy, are easier timewastes to accidentally sink into, whereas reading has to be a deliberate decision. So now I’m in a situation where I don’t read because it feels like a waste of time in my present situation, but due to stress, ADHD and everything else, I still waste time on a lot of things that are arguably much less rewarding than reading would be.
* “Guards! Guards!” by Terry Pratchett. I wanted to read the entire series, bought 3 books at first. Then met my ex, became a dad and got guilted into taking out tens of thousands in loans, installment plans, etc. Over 2 years later I still haven’t finished the first book I started :/
i am the same, then i found Libby and now i borrow multiple audiobooks a week and listen at work/doing chores etc. i am almost back to reading as much as i did in high school :)
Yeah, but you’re not anti-book. It’s different if you just don’t have time / energy right now. There are literally millions of people who just…like, don’t believe in it.
The news sucks now. Every article is what the president says, the few remaining news sources have gone way downhill and they mostly just gave up last year. Less reporting, more bullshit.
More pushing admin lies, fairness bias, ect. I want to read events not the play by play on politicians talking shit. Nytimes eats bags of dicks.
To be fair, I read little nowadays, but audiobooks where I can listen to seties while doing laundry, or trash, or DIY projects… I blasted through Cosmere 2 years ago, plus the Dresden series, Noobtown, DCC, Demon Mart, He Who Fights with Monsters last year, and this year (and past two months) the Wandering Inn series (Book 12 now). I enjoy books far more than film and tv, mostly due to speed at which I can devour the content (1.75x usually).
I bet you more than 50% of teachers hear a fact like that and say “Well clearly we need to force them to read as much as possible while we can.” And that’s the real problem.
The problem is our brains are now conditioned to want quick hits of entertainment and multitasking so businesses can cram as many adverts into us as possible. As a longtime adult, I feel it. Even with feature length films, not just books. I cant imagine how programmed the “youths” are, having grown up in this short attention span world of today… Its gotta be even harder for them to fight it and read a book or watch a movie from before 1996.
Seems like you’re adding “committed” into that stat. The people who will never read a book post high school aren’t doing so out of commitment but for a variety of reasons.
It’s also silly to pretend book readers are inheriently better. I know a few magas that read books after high school. It’s all fantasy novels but they do technically read books.
The original source, a research org called the Jenkins Group, say it was misattributed to them. Nobody knows of a legitimate study that claims that value.
33% of high school graduates never read another book again in their lives after graduation.
Let that sink in.
228 million adults in the US, and 75 million of them are committed to never reading.
Sounds a lot like the voting block for a certain orange fascist…
Hey just FYI, that statistic is bullshit
Actual stats:
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
About 1/5th of US adults are functionally illiterate, of those 2/3rds are US-born.
That’s absolutely not the conclusion from PIAAC, around 1/50th of the us population in 2013 (320 million) was functionality illiterate:
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I live in a city full of very liberal very educated people.
a huge chunk of them think books are wastes of time and are angry they were forced to read so much during their PhDs/masters/JDs.
I’ve been on many first dates with a science PhD who tells me reading fiction is stupid and dumb and if I’m reading it should only be for career productivity or self help therapy crap. And oh, btw my degrees in humanities mean I’m a stupid idiot who wasted years of my life reading stupid crap books.
It’s insane.
but when you realize these people hate learning, and only like money, it makes a lot of sense. their degrees/educations were not thinks they wanted to do or enjoyed doing, they were brass rings they had to leap through to get money.
Are you in the US? That is the vision I have of the ‘American way’. In a way they are right, they get benefits from the system for playing the game like that.
What I don’t like is that I see that culture permeating my country…
Bingo.
I studied abroad in Canada and Germany… the mentality there was not like that. It was far less hostile to education and learning generally. People in Germany used to compliment me for reading books and think it was good thing. In America, often, it’s considered negative and anti-social to read. It’s insane.
Books is*…
*Them books is fer
Not cool, dude. There are very few words I self-censor, but that’s absolutely one of them.
Not sure if their comment is related / deliberate, but the image in the article is from the film Idiocracy
In the film, the people of the future speak real slow and dumb. When they hear the time travelling protagonist speak in a vanilla US West Coast accent, the narrator describes them as thinking he sounds “Faggy and pretentious”, there are multiple points in the film where future-folk tell the main character “you sound like a fag”
That’s right. They literally say “books are for fags” in the movie several times. It’s a direct quote.
I had a teacher in high school (in Ohio) ask me if I was English. I don’t sound even remotely English, I’ve just always generally spoken in complete sentences and occasionally use multi-syllable words.
Use–mention distinction
Pretty easy to understand, but still somehow eludes most people.
What I believe they mean is that the same people who’d use it as a demeaning slur and something to avoid are the same who would never touch a book after not being required to do so … And likewise vote for people who’s entire platform is fear mongering and hate towards the “other”.
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don’t be retarded
Wow edgy
I should read a book.
I’d say it’s probably a lot more in line with the ones who didn’t vote at all. I know everyone likes to say “conservative dumb,” but we’re all aware there are plenty of educated conservatives, probably just as many dumb liberals. The true dumb are the ones who sit out an election. That’s “I don’t read” dumb.
In a typical modern democracy, turnout for general elections is usually around the 80% mark. I don’t think the difference can be explained just by Americans being “dumber.”
I reject that. Voting changes nothing with both parties owned by the oligarchy, with one now reaching for absolute power or no, the other party was never going to stop them.
We went to great trouble to stop them and it was squandered, then the next election thrown.
No, tis those supporting the doomed to fail strategy at fault, not those not participating, because it was always going to end here without a New Deal on offer, and your precious opposition party sees it’s reason for being as preventing reform, not beating r’s, or undoing their past harms, let alone restoring the republic to it’s glory half a century back before the business roundtable infected both parties and every branch of government.
Yeah sorry this argument doesn’t matter now that the current president is sending armed goons to muder citizens. We have God damn literal brownshirts in our streets
This would not have been our current reality, but the BoTH SidEs ArE ThE SAmE crowd is incapable of acknowledging their responsibility in making this happen
You are arguing terms, after the formula is multiplied by zero. Get some real opposition leadership, or else get used to the fascist dictatorship. You knew or should have known people like Biden would fail, let alone kamala, anointed without contest 4 plus months to go running as status quo.
Instead of admitting you trusted the wrong people you listen to those wrong people in passing the buck, and blaming everyone else.
People made clear they wouldn’t vote for these democrats just because the other party is worse, biden barely pulled off 2020 and did nothing with it, vote for what? 2020 changed nothing, just slowed down parts of the plutocratic rot and fascist cancer. Take some responsibility and admit your influencers are playing you, so you can help get a winning strategy, a new deal in popular reform. Or else continue to lose, and blame everyone else despite knowing better.
But ignorance is no excuse, and following the lead of establishment democrats that see their reason for being as preventing reform, and extracting borrowed money from the government, rather than defeating the republicans and instituting real reform to improve the situations is at this point a dereliction of duty as a citizen that votes, and frankly speaks to a weak mind.
Committed to never reading, or just never made time for it?
I think it’s been over a year since I picked up a book. I actually love the book* I was reading and I’m only like a 3rd of the way into it. It’s just… hard to make time for it. Worst bit is, I’m not even working every moment I’m awake anymore (I should be, my ex put me deeeep in debt, like 3 or 4 national median annual pre-tax incomes worth of debt that I want to pay off within the next 3-4 years), it’s just that gaming, youtube, scrolling lemmy, are easier timewastes to accidentally sink into, whereas reading has to be a deliberate decision. So now I’m in a situation where I don’t read because it feels like a waste of time in my present situation, but due to stress, ADHD and everything else, I still waste time on a lot of things that are arguably much less rewarding than reading would be.
* “Guards! Guards!” by Terry Pratchett. I wanted to read the entire series, bought 3 books at first. Then met my ex, became a dad and got guilted into taking out tens of thousands in loans, installment plans, etc. Over 2 years later I still haven’t finished the first book I started :/
Just force yourself to do it for one hour twice a week, and it should spark something. It does for me.
I haven’t read a book in like 8 years :/
Read “Project Hail Mary” … It was an easy, quick read, and really enjoyable.
“And then there were none” (formerly “Ten little indians”) by agatha christie is a another easy, enjoyable read.
There are book communities on the Fediverse that could help motivate you to read.
I used to read. I used to love reading. What happened to me? Now I just buy books for them to sit on my shelf collecting dust :(
i am the same, then i found Libby and now i borrow multiple audiobooks a week and listen at work/doing chores etc. i am almost back to reading as much as i did in high school :)
Yeah, but you’re not anti-book. It’s different if you just don’t have time / energy right now. There are literally millions of people who just…like, don’t believe in it.
Yeah. I just don’t crave it I guess. i still read the news once a day.
Books are so much better than the news.
The news sucks now. Every article is what the president says, the few remaining news sources have gone way downhill and they mostly just gave up last year. Less reporting, more bullshit.
More pushing admin lies, fairness bias, ect. I want to read events not the play by play on politicians talking shit. Nytimes eats bags of dicks.
Yeah. Responsibilities suck T_T
“Uh, s-scuse me, all I see are screens, I’m just looking for something with some words in it.”
“Words?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean like in the books!? What for?”
“Just… to read.”
“Heh heh heh heheheheh… heheheheh…”
To be fair, I read little nowadays, but audiobooks where I can listen to seties while doing laundry, or trash, or DIY projects… I blasted through Cosmere 2 years ago, plus the Dresden series, Noobtown, DCC, Demon Mart, He Who Fights with Monsters last year, and this year (and past two months) the Wandering Inn series (Book 12 now). I enjoy books far more than film and tv, mostly due to speed at which I can devour the content (1.75x usually).
I bet you more than 50% of teachers hear a fact like that and say “Well clearly we need to force them to read as much as possible while we can.” And that’s the real problem.
The problem is our brains are now conditioned to want quick hits of entertainment and multitasking so businesses can cram as many adverts into us as possible. As a longtime adult, I feel it. Even with feature length films, not just books. I cant imagine how programmed the “youths” are, having grown up in this short attention span world of today… Its gotta be even harder for them to fight it and read a book or watch a movie from before 1996.
Seems like you’re adding “committed” into that stat. The people who will never read a book post high school aren’t doing so out of commitment but for a variety of reasons.
It’s also silly to pretend book readers are inheriently better. I know a few magas that read books after high school. It’s all fantasy novels but they do technically read books.
The statistic is also total B.S.
The original source, a research org called the Jenkins Group, say it was misattributed to them. Nobody knows of a legitimate study that claims that value.