4 ms·

I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?! How is thi

by t8sr 4y ago

I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?! How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?

eru 4y ago
I would suggest you double check what definition of literacy the different countries are using. Perhaps the US has a more stringent definition? As an example, for a long time Germany used a way to measure unemployment that yielded consistently higher numbers than most of the rest of the world. So any honest international comparison had to make adjustments. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States > In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3]
- bombcar 4y ago
  You also need to see if it’s from official reports based on testing or statistical reports based on surveys. Many people who are counted literate are functionally illiterate- they car recognize street signs, their name, etc but not much more.
sriram_malhar 4y ago
It is not a fair comparison. In India, the definition of "literacy" does not mean functional literacy in India ... merely knowledge of the alphabet is enough to qualify ("akshar gyan").
nativespecies 4y ago
Public education has been gutted for decades in this country.
- eru 4y ago
  Public K-12 education spending increased from 2.3% of American GDP in 1950 to 5.5% of GDP in 2015. [0] See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-education-expenditure-as-share-of-gdp-public-and-private-institutions https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-education-expenditure-... (as linked from https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... ) Educational achievement in the US has been roughly the same as in the 1950s. It seems almost as if public education doesn't matter? [0] Keep in mind that American real GDP per capital increased enormously over time as well. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA
SaltyGoodness 4y ago
I was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best guess: 13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too good. Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. People who feel unsafe don't learn too good. Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn too good. School boards refuse to integrate modern understanding of best practices - homework is useless, school starts too early, multi-modal learning works way better, spaced repetition works great, bullying isn't a fact of life to be accepted and ignored. Bullied, tired kids don't learn too good. Publishing monopolies charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks, altering 1984 and children's stories to be "safer", and holding back anything that might upset their comfortable position. Hundreds of years of the world's most sophisticated anti-intellectual propaganda has allowed America to be world leaders in producing people that think education is scary. Blaming poor people for their own problems is a national sport. These attitudes have been with America for hundreds of years, and no amount of fight from Mark Twain, or Thoreau, or Einstein, or Bernie has changed those fundamentals of American culture. There's no political motive to change any of this. As George Carlin put it so well: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." America are undisputed world leaders in this (except in America, where this is seen as socialist talk and therefore safe to ignore). Media, corporations and government conspire to prevent any third party or group from changing the social situation - look at what happened to OWS, or MLK, or Fred Hampton. Any progression toward helping people get safe and educated is labeled communism, and the DNC conspires with media to mess up anyone too "radical" that runs as a Democrat. Nobody on TV talks about how many teachers we could have trained with the 20 trillion dollars spent bombing Middle Eastern families - it's a lot. So, a lot is going on in America. I didn't even mention the drugs, the housing situation, the bank crises, the environmental poisoning, the disconnection from nature, the lack of exercise, the poor quality food or God knows how much else. Some will say I must hate America to write this stuff - people who say things like this get accused of being Putin's puppets, or worse, socialists. But I love America, which is why I hate to see what is happening to it and refuse to pretend these problems will be solved without even acknowledging them.
misterprime 4y ago
I'm not sure our Department of Education is effective, and I think some children actually are being left behind, despite the "no child left behind" effort.
- nngjmppkjhfd 4y ago
  Why even consider that another standard could be in use, like others have pointed out in the thread, when you have political priors to confirm? Stay classy HN!
  - mplewis 4y ago
    What? It’s widely known that over half of American adults read at or below a sixth grade level. This is a result from 2020 so it shouldn’t be news to you.
    - eru 4y ago
      The astonishing fact in need of explaining was the absolute American statistic, but why it was smaller than the rates for eg India.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> depending on how you count I think you got it right there. Be wary of cross-nation statistics without context.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
I suspect a lot of this is variance on surveying methods. I could see "Literacy" be defined anywhere from "able to read the survey enough to pick out where to mark "yes/no" and "sign here"" to "Able to read YA novels", and in the US it could well be "English literacy" versus "Any literacy". I knew plenty of kids growing up who had grandparents living with them that could read Mandarin or Spanish just fine, but who had pretty limited English skills.

by t8sr 4y ago

eru 4y ago

I would suggest you double check what definition of literacy the different countries are using. Perhaps the US has a more stringent definition? As an example, for a long time Germany used a way to measure unemployment that yielded consistently higher numbers than most of the rest of the world. So any honest international comparison had to make adjustments. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States > In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3]

bombcar 4y ago
You also need to see if it’s from official reports based on testing or statistical reports based on surveys. Many people who are counted literate are functionally illiterate- they car recognize street signs, their name, etc but not much more.

sriram_malhar 4y ago

It is not a fair comparison. In India, the definition of "literacy" does not mean functional literacy in India ... merely knowledge of the alphabet is enough to qualify ("akshar gyan").

nativespecies 4y ago

Public education has been gutted for decades in this country.

eru 4y ago
Public K-12 education spending increased from 2.3% of American GDP in 1950 to 5.5% of GDP in 2015. [0] See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-education-expenditure-as-share-of-gdp-public-and-private-institutions https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-education-expenditure-... (as linked from https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... ) Educational achievement in the US has been roughly the same as in the 1950s. It seems almost as if public education doesn't matter? [0] Keep in mind that American real GDP per capital increased enormously over time as well. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA

SaltyGoodness 4y ago

I was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best guess: 13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too good. Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. People who feel unsafe don't learn too good. Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn too good. School boards refuse to integrate modern understanding of best practices - homework is useless, school starts too early, multi-modal learning works way better, spaced repetition works great, bullying isn't a fact of life to be accepted and ignored. Bullied, tired kids don't learn too good. Publishing monopolies charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks, altering 1984 and children's stories to be "safer", and holding back anything that might upset their comfortable position. Hundreds of years of the world's most sophisticated anti-intellectual propaganda has allowed America to be world leaders in producing people that think education is scary. Blaming poor people for their own problems is a national sport. These attitudes have been with America for hundreds of years, and no amount of fight from Mark Twain, or Thoreau, or Einstein, or Bernie has changed those fundamentals of American culture. There's no political motive to change any of this. As George Carlin put it so well: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." America are undisputed world leaders in this (except in America, where this is seen as socialist talk and therefore safe to ignore). Media, corporations and government conspire to prevent any third party or group from changing the social situation - look at what happened to OWS, or MLK, or Fred Hampton. Any progression toward helping people get safe and educated is labeled communism, and the DNC conspires with media to mess up anyone too "radical" that runs as a Democrat. Nobody on TV talks about how many teachers we could have trained with the 20 trillion dollars spent bombing Middle Eastern families - it's a lot. So, a lot is going on in America. I didn't even mention the drugs, the housing situation, the bank crises, the environmental poisoning, the disconnection from nature, the lack of exercise, the poor quality food or God knows how much else. Some will say I must hate America to write this stuff - people who say things like this get accused of being Putin's puppets, or worse, socialists. But I love America, which is why I hate to see what is happening to it and refuse to pretend these problems will be solved without even acknowledging them.

misterprime 4y ago

I'm not sure our Department of Education is effective, and I think some children actually are being left behind, despite the "no child left behind" effort.

nngjmppkjhfd 4y ago
Why even consider that another standard could be in use, like others have pointed out in the thread, when you have political priors to confirm? Stay classy HN!
- mplewis 4y ago
  What? It’s widely known that over half of American adults read at or below a sixth grade level. This is a result from 2020 so it shouldn’t be news to you.
  - eru 4y ago
    The astonishing fact in need of explaining was the absolute American statistic, but why it was smaller than the rates for eg India.

rootusrootus 4y ago

> depending on how you count I think you got it right there. Be wary of cross-nation statistics without context.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

I suspect a lot of this is variance on surveying methods. I could see "Literacy" be defined anywhere from "able to read the survey enough to pick out where to mark "yes/no" and "sign here"" to "Able to read YA novels", and in the US it could well be "English literacy" versus "Any literacy". I knew plenty of kids growing up who had grandparents living with them that could read Mandarin or Spanish just fine, but who had pretty limited English skills.