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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

but some of it is because 50% of the way through their brain is tired of reading text. AND THAT, is problematic.

Yep.

This reminds me of how often people mistake skill for “natural talent”.

“Natural talent” exists, but someone without any particular natural talent who still has spent thousands of hours doing a thing is going to run circles around someone with “natural talent” who never put time and effort into practicing.

And I think when that skill is “reading”, people don’t power through the moments when their brain rebels, gets frustrated, or gets tired. So they hit that block, and don’t push through to overcome it. They go do something else…but they go do something else every single time. So a block that would be frustrating but minor in the big scheme of things gets codified in one’s mental image of themselves.

And once you have this idea that you are or are not something–that conception can turn into a huge mountain to overcome.

(As an aside, our parents have huge influence on if we think we “are” or “are not” something. It’s very worth it when you think you “can’t” do something to go back and look at your life and check if that voice in your head is yours, or if it’s the internalized voice of a parent who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about!)

(Both people who were belittled as “stupid” and those who were constantly called “smart” can end up kinda “malfunctioning” later on, thinking they can’t do something. The ones called stupid think they can’t do something because “they’re dumb”, while the one called smart has been conditioned to fear not being 100% perfect, so they don’t even start because minor, genuinely trivial failures loom as large as the destruction of the entire earth in their minds!)

Bruh, I ain’t reading all that. You crazy?

Hard tl;dr from me, dawg

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.

Hey go easy. Some of us have ADHD.

It’s not that I don’t want to read a wall of text, but simply that I’m incapable of doing so.

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.”

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.

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.

Nuance.

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

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

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

wait yall can read?

It feels like a low-blow but… Yeah.

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.

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.

Children of- probably.

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.