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having met a ton of fully grown adults who have offspring, near as I can tell, most people are functionally illiterate. While they probably can read, most choos

having met a ton of fully grown adults who have offspring, near as I can tell, most people are functionally illiterate. While they probably can read, most choose not to read anything longer than a tweet. I coach in a local sports league. I send an email at the beginning of each season with nice bulleted sections about schedules, uniforms, etc. After I send that email, I spend the next week answering questions to responses to replies from that email. All answers are in that email they are responding to. TLDR - just because someone can read, doesn't mean they will, and my experience is that they won't.

ohazi 6y ago
A hurried parent not bothering to read a syllabus is not equivalent to a curious kid blitzing through every single Wikipedia article about dinosaurs. Both require literacy, but one of these things is fun, while the other is a chore.
- abfan1127 6y ago
  the OP inferred that not reading until 10 was suboptimal. I argue that effectively, most people don't read in adulthood. So, if he's frightened by a 10yo not reading, he's in for a rude awakening when he gets to interface with adults. Perhaps they are unrelated. perhaps I drew a wrong conclusion. But perhaps they aren't hurried, they are just lazy.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    Are you really trying to draw an equivalence between laziness and illiteracy? It's okay for an adult to be lazy. It's okay for a kid to be lazy. It's probably not great for a homeschooled kid to be lazy, but you can invent games and rewards and other incentives and make this work. But it's irresponsible parenting to allow your homeschooled kid to be illiterate at 10. You're not going to convince me otherwise with comparisons to lazy parents not wanting to read your boring emails. It is so obviously not the same thing. The whole concept behind unschooling is that you allow a child to find the things that they find interesting, and then allow them to voraciously teach themselves as much as they can, as fast as they can. This doesn't work at all if your kid can't read.
    - abfan1127 6y ago
      why can "a kid" be lazy, but not a "homeschooled kid? What's the role of literacy if you don't use it? What's the use of literacy without engagement? There are lots of ways to learn things without reading. While I personally taught my kids reading at an earlier age than 10 (they are also not home-schooled), I've also seen kids learn "late" but still learn as needed. I also see a ton of kids who can't read even though they were "taught it" early. On a side note, Montessori methods for teaching are quite interesting in how they use materials to teach concepts most traditional schools rely on abstract ideas and worksheets. They don't need to read to do the Montessori materials, but worksheets certainly require some level of reading to understand what's to be done.
      - ohazi 6y ago
        Did you read the article? If an adult doesn't want to use their literacy, that's their choice, but the unschooling method requires that a kid be able to use their literacy to learn things that interest them at their own pace. A lazy child is going to need additional motivation for unschooling to be effective. An illiterate child is going to have an "at their own pace" that's close to zero. If you're a parent, and you think you're homeschooling your kid with this "unschooling" method, and they still can't read at ten, then you, as a parent, need to drop the charade that unschooling is working for your kid and teach them how to fucking read, stat.
    - nicolas_t 6y ago
      I've often found that laziness in reading is correlated with difficulties reading. For example, I know a lot of people who say they are too lazy to watch a movie with subtitles. When you dig deeper, they then tell you that it's hard to follow the movie because they have to concentrate on the subtitles or that the subtitles go too fast. That shows that they are actually not very good readers and. For the specific example of the OP. You might be right, it might just be laziness but those parents do take the time to reply to the email to ask for clarifications. So, either the email was ambiguous or a lot of people just have a hard time reading a block of text. In my experience, the later is often true. That said I fully agree with you that allowing a home schooled kid to be illiterate at 10 is criminally irresponsible. Reading is the key to knowledge and any parent homeschooling their kids should make damn sure that their kid will learn to read and see the value in it.
leetcrew 6y ago
I'm sure some of the parents are just refusing to read your email carefully, but I think people also overestimate how clear their writing is. I do read written policies very carefully, but I often misinterpret things because I read more literally than the author expected. if it's something important (eg, specifications at work), I will rewrite the ambiguous passage in my own words and ask the author / person in charge if it's a correct interpretation. this annoys people sometimes, but it makes it not my fault if I misunderstand :)
- abfan1127 6y ago
  I'm certain they are refusing to read it. I try to be sensitive to thinking I'm being clear when in reality I'm not. Here is a screen grab of a typical email. https://imgur.com/5d36jpq https://imgur.com/5d36jpq The first questions I get are "when is first practice".
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    this is actually a good example to demonstrate my point. you don't explicitly say when the first practice is, only that they recur every tuesday and friday. the "see you next tuesday!" strongly implies that the first practice is the tuesday that immediately follows, but the reader doesn't get this needed context until the very end of the email. I bet if you put something like "starting next tuesday (dd/mm/yyyy)" in the Practices section, you would get fewer of those questions. all the information is there for an active reader to figure out what they need to do, but I can see how a linear reader (who isn't holding all the information in their head to begin with) could miss it. I had to reread the email to know exactly when the first practice would be. an extremely pedantic reader might be unsure whether "see you next tuesday!" refers to a second informational meeting or the first actual practice.
    - abfan1127 6y ago
      This is a great point. If I may, I get 2 types of questions on this specific point. "When is first practice?" which is a good question as you point out. I also get " when are practices" which is pretty clear unless they have poorly phrased "when is first practice" with this question and now we've both committed the same error. Good point either way.
sjg007 6y ago
Your emails are too long. It’s extremely difficult to read multiple paragraphs in an email. Same with a HN comment.
epr 6y ago
> All answers are in that email they are responding to. My gf works in inside technical sales for an industrial instruments rep/distributor, and therefore a large part of her job is passing information between customers and manufacturers while trying to keep both happy and process orders. On a good day, she probably is forced to send the same requests for information at least two or three times on average before finally getting an answer. People just refuse to read even extremely short emails asking for straightforward information like shipping addresses which simply must be provided to proceed with the order. I wouldn't last a month doing her job without losing my damn mind.
- abfan1127 6y ago
  Your GF is a saint. This is a good place for AI to read the original email, and reply with snippets. If the AI isn't very good, it doesn't really matter because they probably aren't reading it anyways. :|

ohazi 6y ago

A hurried parent not bothering to read a syllabus is not equivalent to a curious kid blitzing through every single Wikipedia article about dinosaurs. Both require literacy, but one of these things is fun, while the other is a chore.

abfan1127 6y ago
the OP inferred that not reading until 10 was suboptimal. I argue that effectively, most people don't read in adulthood. So, if he's frightened by a 10yo not reading, he's in for a rude awakening when he gets to interface with adults. Perhaps they are unrelated. perhaps I drew a wrong conclusion. But perhaps they aren't hurried, they are just lazy.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Are you really trying to draw an equivalence between laziness and illiteracy? It's okay for an adult to be lazy. It's okay for a kid to be lazy. It's probably not great for a homeschooled kid to be lazy, but you can invent games and rewards and other incentives and make this work. But it's irresponsible parenting to allow your homeschooled kid to be illiterate at 10. You're not going to convince me otherwise with comparisons to lazy parents not wanting to read your boring emails. It is so obviously not the same thing. The whole concept behind unschooling is that you allow a child to find the things that they find interesting, and then allow them to voraciously teach themselves as much as they can, as fast as they can. This doesn't work at all if your kid can't read.
  - abfan1127 6y ago
    why can "a kid" be lazy, but not a "homeschooled kid? What's the role of literacy if you don't use it? What's the use of literacy without engagement? There are lots of ways to learn things without reading. While I personally taught my kids reading at an earlier age than 10 (they are also not home-schooled), I've also seen kids learn "late" but still learn as needed. I also see a ton of kids who can't read even though they were "taught it" early. On a side note, Montessori methods for teaching are quite interesting in how they use materials to teach concepts most traditional schools rely on abstract ideas and worksheets. They don't need to read to do the Montessori materials, but worksheets certainly require some level of reading to understand what's to be done.
    - ohazi 6y ago
      Did you read the article? If an adult doesn't want to use their literacy, that's their choice, but the unschooling method requires that a kid be able to use their literacy to learn things that interest them at their own pace. A lazy child is going to need additional motivation for unschooling to be effective. An illiterate child is going to have an "at their own pace" that's close to zero. If you're a parent, and you think you're homeschooling your kid with this "unschooling" method, and they still can't read at ten, then you, as a parent, need to drop the charade that unschooling is working for your kid and teach them how to fucking read, stat.
  - nicolas_t 6y ago
    I've often found that laziness in reading is correlated with difficulties reading. For example, I know a lot of people who say they are too lazy to watch a movie with subtitles. When you dig deeper, they then tell you that it's hard to follow the movie because they have to concentrate on the subtitles or that the subtitles go too fast. That shows that they are actually not very good readers and. For the specific example of the OP. You might be right, it might just be laziness but those parents do take the time to reply to the email to ask for clarifications. So, either the email was ambiguous or a lot of people just have a hard time reading a block of text. In my experience, the later is often true. That said I fully agree with you that allowing a home schooled kid to be illiterate at 10 is criminally irresponsible. Reading is the key to knowledge and any parent homeschooling their kids should make damn sure that their kid will learn to read and see the value in it.

leetcrew 6y ago

I'm sure some of the parents are just refusing to read your email carefully, but I think people also overestimate how clear their writing is. I do read written policies very carefully, but I often misinterpret things because I read more literally than the author expected. if it's something important (eg, specifications at work), I will rewrite the ambiguous passage in my own words and ask the author / person in charge if it's a correct interpretation. this annoys people sometimes, but it makes it not my fault if I misunderstand :)

abfan1127 6y ago
I'm certain they are refusing to read it. I try to be sensitive to thinking I'm being clear when in reality I'm not. Here is a screen grab of a typical email. https://imgur.com/5d36jpq https://imgur.com/5d36jpq The first questions I get are "when is first practice".
- leetcrew 6y ago
  this is actually a good example to demonstrate my point. you don't explicitly say when the first practice is, only that they recur every tuesday and friday. the "see you next tuesday!" strongly implies that the first practice is the tuesday that immediately follows, but the reader doesn't get this needed context until the very end of the email. I bet if you put something like "starting next tuesday (dd/mm/yyyy)" in the Practices section, you would get fewer of those questions. all the information is there for an active reader to figure out what they need to do, but I can see how a linear reader (who isn't holding all the information in their head to begin with) could miss it. I had to reread the email to know exactly when the first practice would be. an extremely pedantic reader might be unsure whether "see you next tuesday!" refers to a second informational meeting or the first actual practice.
  - abfan1127 6y ago
    This is a great point. If I may, I get 2 types of questions on this specific point. "When is first practice?" which is a good question as you point out. I also get " when are practices" which is pretty clear unless they have poorly phrased "when is first practice" with this question and now we've both committed the same error. Good point either way.

sjg007 6y ago

Your emails are too long. It’s extremely difficult to read multiple paragraphs in an email. Same with a HN comment.

epr 6y ago

> All answers are in that email they are responding to. My gf works in inside technical sales for an industrial instruments rep/distributor, and therefore a large part of her job is passing information between customers and manufacturers while trying to keep both happy and process orders. On a good day, she probably is forced to send the same requests for information at least two or three times on average before finally getting an answer. People just refuse to read even extremely short emails asking for straightforward information like shipping addresses which simply must be provided to proceed with the order. I wouldn't last a month doing her job without losing my damn mind.

abfan1127 6y ago
Your GF is a saint. This is a good place for AI to read the original email, and reply with snippets. If the AI isn't very good, it doesn't really matter because they probably aren't reading it anyways. :|