12 ms·

Nearly half of teenagers globally cannot read with comprehension

152 points by therabbithole 2y ago

everdrive 2y ago
For much history, most people were illiterate. Do we necessarily have reason to believe that proper reading comprehension is something that is available to everyone by virtue of proper education alone?
- redundantly 2y ago
  Should it be considered 'proper' education if it leaves people illiterate?
  - sim7c00 2y ago
    if they learn to solve real problems in the real world and it helps them, they are more educated than when they started, regardless of literacy rates.
    - _6khi 2y ago
      Literacy is essential to living in society without getting scammed or taken advantage of. There's a scene in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person, where a grandmother tells a mother to save enough money over time and make sure the granddaughter can read. An excerpt follows: -- "Will it work, this saving?" "I swear by the Holy Mother it will." "Then why haven't you ever saved enough money to buy land?" "I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language; 'This is thine!' He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man's to sell. It was ... how do you say it in the English ... a schwindle." "Swindle." "Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will read on the paper that the land is yours. Only then will you pay." -- Yes, you can certainly be relatively more educated than you started by going to school, even if you are not literate by the end. But reading comprehension and literacy is a crucial skill that has practical value for living a better life.
      - 9rx 2y ago
        > that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person Does it? In practice, the average person, even the above average person, hell, even the greatest minds, will typically seek the services of a lawyer when buying land exactly because they lack the comprehension necessary to avoid the tale you tell. And once you are outsourcing comprehension, literacy doesn't really buy you anything.
        redundantly 2y ago
        > The average person, even the above average person So, people who are likely to be literate will seek out assistance when they realise they don't understand something? One might wonder if their literacy has anything to do with that...
        9rx 2y ago
        Those who are illiterate, at least of those who could become literate, realize they don't understand something right from the get-go. It turns out they also typically seek the services of lawyers when buying land for the same reasons.
        redundantly 2y ago
        That’s a pretty rosy view of the world. If that were true, the 2008 housing crisis wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. People get taken advantage of all the time because they don’t understand what they’re signing—and society’s conditioned us to agree to whatever’s put in front of us, from cell phone contracts to software usage to major investments. Plus, lawyers aren’t everywhere, and they’re not cheap. Most people can’t afford to just hire one whenever they need help.
        9rx 2y ago
        > the 2008 housing crisis wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. I'm not sure I agree. Lawyers aren't rulers, only advisers. They can give you a perfect understanding of the situation, and if you are caught in a fear of missing out state, which was certainly the case for many leading up to that timeframe, it is likely you'll ignore their advice anyway. In fact, many US states legally require lawyer advisory before completing a real estate transaction. Those states certainly did not avoid the real estate bubble. > People get taken advantage of all the time because they don’t understand what they’re signing Absolutely. Being able to comprehend every situation is straight up impossible. Not even the greatest minds of our time are able to do that. Not even lawyers themselves, whose job is to comprehend written text, are able to comprehend every situation. They focus on narrow specialities for good reason. There is no avoiding that situation. If someone wants to take advantage of you, they'll find a way.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      > if they learn to solve real problems in the real world and it helps them We have less evidence of this than of improvements in literacy rates. At least in the US, no part of the curriculum has anything to do with general life skills other than driver's ed and math, and innumeracy is far more common than illiteracy.
- kleene_op 2y ago
  Why wouldn't it be?
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I think the point this report (from UNESCO) is trying to make is that this "proper education alone" is not available for everyone to begin with. That said, clicking further it has a chart that shows more than 80% of countries have "some form of basic education" at least, which is double that of what it was 100 years ago. But in countries where it is, it's highlighting that there's a way to go yet. It doesn't give all the data (after all, it's a website selling data) but it's pretty telling that a lot of countries that we think of as having good education (like most of Europe) are not in the top five.
  - lucianbr 2y ago
    I'm sure your point is great and all, but with Europe having about 50 countries, most of them can not be in the top five for a given subject no matter what.
  - throw646577 2y ago
    Putting aside that the top five can only be five, the second-best-performing country is in Europe: Ireland.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  I don't know where the idea "everyone" will be able to achieve a certain minimum reading comprehension came from and it's trivial to show that wouldn't be true. As I understand it, the topic is more about the differences between countries in the chart rather than somehow achieving 100%. E.g. how Ireland sits around 87% while Senegal sits at 2%. If Senegal were able to afford the same overall quality of education for their students as Ireland don't you think the would have significantly higher numbers?
- throw646577 2y ago
  At risk of self-fulfilling a joke, I don't know exactly what you mean here. The level of education UNESCO is talking about is not enormously challenging: "Minimum reading proficiency for the end of lower-secondary education means students can connect main ideas across different text types, understand the author’s intentions, and draw conclusions based on the text." So yes, I think that is a reasonable objective for 12-15 year olds that should be available to everyone by virtue of proper education alone. Indeed it is very difficult to give a 12-15 year old a proper education if they cannot do this. It's foundational. So one would almost expect any 12-15 year old who can be taught _anything abstract_ at an appropriate level to be able to do this. The alarming thing about the data shown here is that it includes children who are not even in education, which would skew it down a lot in, say, "third world" countries, but should not be skewing it so much in western countries, and yet... slightly more than one in five of UK and US 12-15 year olds lack this skill according to that assessment. Some of this might be fundamental reading challenges (visual impairment, dyslexia, attention and memory), but still, it is not a particularly good sign for the global figure if these rather ordinary western countries are scoring so low. (Singapore and Japan manage more like 85%) The full explorable graph appears to be here for 2023 data -- I can't find it for 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reaching-sufficient-reading-comprehension-by-the-end-of-lower-secondary-age https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reachin...
  - MoreMoore 2y ago
    I don't understand how a country like Belgium could possibly only score a 67%.
    - krageon 2y ago
      Belgium isn't exactly a bastion of solid infrastructure, nor is it incredibly well-known for the quality of it's education. Why is that country specifically so surprising for you?
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  These numbers include all children of middle school age, not just those who attend school.
- francisofascii 2y ago
  I wonder if the majority of people would have improved comprehension by listening or watching a video. For much of human history, knowledge was transferred orally, so maybe humans are naturally better at that. With the ubiquitous of video, do people really need to be expert readers and writers?
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > For much of human history, knowledge was transferred orally, so maybe humans are naturally better at that. I'm dubious of that inference: For much of human history (we are mostly unchanged from 200k years ago), we lived poorly and made no technological progress. When all we had was oral knowledge transfer, we spent at least a couple of 100k years making no progress. When writing was invented, progress came almost immediately. To me it seems fairly clear that progress was basically non-existent until writing was invented. This makes me think that oral knowledge sharing is the worst form there is.
- etempleton 2y ago
  Everyone? No. But depending on how reading comprehension is defined / tested I would suspect at least 90% of individuals are capable of full reading comprehension.
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  For much of history women didn't get any education and were considered retarded. Who's laughing now?
randcraw 2y ago
Is this new? Or has this been true for decades? What is the trend, both across countries and within each?
- dv_dt 2y ago
  Could it also be that teenagers are taking standardized tests less seriously if the stakes aren't apparent
  - lolinder 2y ago
    This isn't an answer to their question about whether there's been any change for the worse, it's speculation about the reason for the change, assuming any such change does exist.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    I don't think this is based on standardized tests because they're not standardized internationally; this would be presented more as a questionnaire or poll than a test, made to assess roughly the same in every country it was given.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    There have always been some. I remember kids just randomly filling in bubbles on the standardized tests 40 years ago when I was in school. There was no consequence to them and they just didn't care.
    - doubled112 2y ago
      "When in doubt, pick C" carried me all the way through college. Even when there were consequences, sometimes I still didn't care. I've since grown out of it.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I think you'll have to do that research for yourself, but I did a cursory googling for you and it seems fairly stable in the US since the 70's [0]. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38
nashashmi 2y ago
Had a hard time learning comprehension myself. Acquired it when I was 16. Quite painfully.
- noman-land 2y ago
  Can you describe what this looked like in practice? Would you just read things and at the end have no recollection of what you read? How did you finally overcome this and what was the moment like when you finally crossed over?
  - nashashmi 2y ago
    I was studying for SATs. I mastered the verbal portion’s analogy and sentence completion by memorizing 4300 SAT words. Got all questions in that section right except two, one was skipped and the other was wrong (sacrosanctity is the same as sanctity apparently!). The reading comprehension was the last bit (too much procrastination!). Used Barrons verbal SAT book, with its three difficulty levels segmented. Went through each level and understood it well enough to understand what I was doing wrong. Realization: Each phrase has to be split up into its own sentence. Then Each sentence has to be given a context. Then each context has to have connecting pieces with the next context. The reader’s job is to understand each sentence, put it into context, and identify the missing parts and pieces of logic, and come up with a possible explanation of the contexts that are missing. The possible explanations was a hardest one to get right. It was like I did not understand People and how they thought. (I was autistic and introverted with some adhd.) example: the class is a reflection of the teacher. Does that mean that the class is opposite of the teacher because that is how a reflection works? I had to watch many movies and tv shows to get this one right over the course of many years after I graduated and start earning money to pay for cable tv.
VagabundoP 2y ago
My kid is 14 going to secondary school in Ireland right now. And I'm helping them with their English homework and I notice how much of it is reading stuff and trying to get them to question what they are reading etc. Far more than when I was a kid their age, in my English class.
djaouen 2y ago
[flagged]
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  How would / do you assess your own reading comprehension level? I mean I'll freely admit I struggle with higher levels / legalese, and frequently struggle to express myself in words, both in my native languages and English. (I'm aware this is a subtle flex / humblebrag, lol)
  - whaaswijk 2y ago
    Legalese seems to me a different category more akin to technical writing. I wouldn’t classify difficulty understanding a legal document as a general lack of reading comprehension. It requires specific domain knowledge.
  - xxs 2y ago
    >(I'm aware this is a subtle flex / humblebrag, lol) Not really. Flex would be 4+ languages with at least two of them being C2. (edit: need comma after "I mean")
- thrillgore 2y ago
  Wouldn't be HN if there wasn't some jerk flexing.
- pbmonster 2y ago
  If you're competing - in any measure - with the bottom half of the global teenage population, you're in deep trouble.
cesaref 2y ago
'These numbers include all children of middle school age, not just those who attend school.' I think the low scores are telling you more about the pressure on children in poorer countries to work to support their families, rather than the quality of teaching when they are able to attend school.
- eddsolves 2y ago
  True, but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England (lived all three so still follow the local news and seen stories about this in the last two weeks).
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England Kids in rich countries have their brain fried from watching Cocomelon, Youtube Kids and Tiktok. They've been spawn-camped by ad-tech. Gotta get them when they're young.
    - runako 2y ago
      https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 The US scores are relatively consistent going back over a half-century. TikTok and Cocomelon are not the culprits.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        [flagged]
        slaw 2y ago
        Do you think it is the same reason for Reverse Flynn Effect? IQ scores are dropping in western countries. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...
icegreentea2 2y ago
Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". Global adult literacy rates have been drastically improving since the 1950s (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy https://ourworldindata.org/literacy). Today, global adult literacy rate is estimated at ~87%. I -think- this is the appropiate interactive plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reaching-sufficient-reading-comprehension-by-the-end-of-lower-secondary-age https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reachin... The controls are annoying, but world level data only goes back to 2000: * 2000: 38% * 2005: 41% * 2010: 45% * 2015: 47% * 2019: 48.5% (this is the closest point)
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". And one would argue that comprehension is more essential than ever, since every last thing you do in the modern world and nearly every product you interact with comes with a pages-long terms and conditions document in which you get the funny stuff like the inability to use iTunes to make nuclear weapons, and far more importantly, how a number of large platform services reserve the right to sell your soul to as many devils as they can. Like, on balance, I'm doing okay in life. I could have more savings put away but ultimately I have a good job in tech, I own a home, and basically have all my essentials handled with a side of a few toys to tinker on. I cannot fathom how I could get my life functioning without strong reading skills. It's... it's literally everything, it's communication in my office since I'm remote, it's filing taxes correctly, it's interacting with my local government, hell writing is a side hobby of mine and has been all my life. I can't fucking imagine what kind of utter hell it must be to even only be literate, let alone illiterate.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - realce 2y ago
      https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-highly-educated/ https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-hig... >Germany had the world’s finest elementary school system, the highest literacy rate and the best universities; by 1913 more books were published annually in Germany than in any country in the world. Believing that authoritarianism stems from lack of education is a flawed ideology.
m3kw9 2y ago
I this why TikTok is so popular?
- realce 2y ago
  I this so to
lars512 2y ago
Hi HN! You may be interested in some related work: "Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?" https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning Our topic page on Global Education: https://ourworldindata.org/global-education https://ourworldindata.org/global-education Our wider catalog of education data: https://ourworldindata.org/data?topics=Global+Education https://ourworldindata.org/data?topics=Global+Education
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  Do you have opinions on Online school movements like Khan Academy? I know there are schools that provide a cookie cutter curriculum but maybe that is better than nothing that many economically disadvantaged students for all into? Having gone through public school in Texas and putting my own children through private school, I am warming up to things like https://highschool.utexas.edu/ https://highschool.utexas.edu/
kaon_ 2y ago
Senegal only 5%? I thought it was a well educated country. Maybe something wrong with the data?
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  With respect. Go to the map of school attendance percentages by nation. Once there, compare Senegal's school attendance percentage to the attendance percentages in the rest of West Africa. And the bad news is that percentages in Senegal are likely juiced and then reported given the way the government works in Senegal. Whereas percentages in places like Ghana are likely reported as lower than they actually are due to the way the government works in Ghana.
m3kw9 2y ago
Those “read a novel” and write about it every chapter really helps. I wonder if that type of exercise would work now kids know about AI, my guess is that parents shouldn’t tell their kids about LLMs too early as they can depend on it and mess them up
- julosflb 2y ago
  They didn't wait for their parents to tell - they figured out with their friends.
- triceratops 2y ago
  Make them do it in class, on paper. Bonus: no homework.
cies 2y ago
So is it getting better, or getting worse? The title is quite alarming, but looking at the comments here it seems the number is growing... So it's more like a moment for celebration :) "This year half of teenagers globally can read with comprehension!"
deleted 2y ago
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dukeofdoom 2y ago
Reading aloud helps with comprehension. I sometimes read aloud myself, I think its good to speak a few thousand extra words everyday...words you might not usually say if you're reading a classic novel. Plus I usually take a long hot bath after workouts to help with recovery. So a good time to read while soaking in bubbles. Can recommend.
- thebiss 2y ago
  Do teachers and parents now actively encourage students to read aloud? I'd love to see a study showing this helps. When I did this in middle school I was repeated told to stop, and that doing so or talking myself through math problems were "signs of mental illness," and I needed to keep it in my head. I hated that it made it easier.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  I witnessed the most extraordinary use of this in the one year my wife's son lived with us during his pre-med coursework in undergrad. He would read aloud to himself (in a quiet voice). He explained that it was his way of keeping himself concentrated, because (in his description) he was reading, speaking, and listening all at the same time, and that that combo overloaded his attention and kept him focused. He went from graduating towards the top here in our middling uni, to being accepted into Johns Hopkins (but choosing to remain local), and then getting his first-choice residency. He is now an accomplished specialist doctor. Three notes: 1) He never drank alcohol in his life. It was a distinct advantage, especially in undergrad. 2) He said that he would not let himself be a patient to over 85% or 90% of the doctors that graduated with him from med school. 3) He had a grand total of FOUR HOURS of nutrition education in med school. I think that's insane, but the system is really about pills and procedures.
  - dukeofdoom 2y ago
    Congratulations to your son, that's quite an accomplishment.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
peterfirefly 2y ago
Reading ability (and reading comprehension) is very correlated with IQ. An IQ of 100 is not quite enough. Most people with that IQ can read (but not everybody, even discounting the dyslexics) and most people with that IQ can read relatively simple things. And the global average is a lot lower than 100...
- lcouturi 2y ago
  Isn't the global average supposed to be exactly 100 by definition, or did I misunderstand how IQ works?
  - peterfirefly 2y ago
    You did (not your fault). Usually a Western country is used, often the UK. That doesn't really matter, though, as long as a sufficiently similar scale is used when comparing. Tests can be (and are) recalibrated sometimes.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  Isn't 100 set to be the average? How can the average be less than the average?
- ericmcer 2y ago
  Well you would need to know what the test looks like. If the bar is to understand the passage "The dog runs fast", You don't need to be a genius to comprehend it.
752963e64 2y ago
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dredmorbius 2y ago
Advanced written literacy, as with advanced computer literacy and numeracy is generally far more limited than many people would think. I've been aware of this for some years now by way of both OECD studies on general computer literacy (find-and-replace functions are usable to perhaps 5--10% of the adult population) and US studies on adult literacy. I've posted the latter to HN a few times, the one time that took traction was about three years ago, on 31 Dec 2021: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146> It's based on "Adult Literacy in the United States" (2019), through the US Department of Education (one of the US federal agencies likely to be on the chopping block): <https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp> The OECD study is here: <https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...> I'd made a couple of explanatory comments in the earlier discussion about elements of this (and related studies) which I find highly illuminating, including suggestions that at least at the margin (and perhaps far more deeply) overall literacy and lifetime attainment are relatively insensitive to educational opportunities. (Both individuals and countries as a whole show ... counterintuitive ... behaviours.) I tend to suspect both innate and other environmental factors (overall stimulation, pollution and experiential degredation of potential, etc.). I'll hasten to mention that the innate capabilities seem to apply to individuals rather than populations, as high- and low-achievers can be found widely. TFA's UNESCO study does suggest strong regional variance, however...
robertlutece 2y ago
“The modern idea of testing a reader’s ‘comprehension,’ as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?” —Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
eonmist 2y ago
Globally half of children demonstrate reading comprehension. The 1st world at top and 3rd world at bottom. Results hint at half of the world being underdeveloped.
guilhas 2y ago
I remember as a teenager having a lot of trouble with this I think the school make a very poor job in making children curious about book stories, before start ramming you with 100s of pages of literary classics, so deep and powerful, that most teenagers are not gonna care Especially when they are not incentivised at home. And have other more attractive stories going on in the form of games or movies Read more in class, teachers know well most students haven't read anything at home. And most children will be afraid to admit to the class, and alone to the teacher, that they haven't read and are not following the story, so they don't get an explanation. Even though the teacher knows very well most students will be completely lost Even reading the "not allowed" summaries before the quiz was a drag. It was just an exercise in survival and making it up They should probably focus on shorter books, more captivating stories for children, like Harry Potter? ... tell the parents to read with the child at home and help them understand any difficult part, maybe get some comic books to start, maybe let children choose different themes like sci-fi action magic... Spend more time in the end hammering a 5 line story summary, the more important points that needed interpretation, why they are important...

152 points by therabbithole 2y ago

For much history, most people were illiterate. Do we necessarily have reason to believe that proper reading comprehension is something that is available to everyone by virtue of proper education alone?

redundantly 2y ago
Should it be considered 'proper' education if it leaves people illiterate?
- sim7c00 2y ago
  if they learn to solve real problems in the real world and it helps them, they are more educated than when they started, regardless of literacy rates.
  - _6khi 2y ago
    Literacy is essential to living in society without getting scammed or taken advantage of. There's a scene in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person, where a grandmother tells a mother to save enough money over time and make sure the granddaughter can read. An excerpt follows: -- "Will it work, this saving?" "I swear by the Holy Mother it will." "Then why haven't you ever saved enough money to buy land?" "I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language; 'This is thine!' He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man's to sell. It was ... how do you say it in the English ... a schwindle." "Swindle." "Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will read on the paper that the land is yours. Only then will you pay." -- Yes, you can certainly be relatively more educated than you started by going to school, even if you are not literate by the end. But reading comprehension and literacy is a crucial skill that has practical value for living a better life.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      > that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person Does it? In practice, the average person, even the above average person, hell, even the greatest minds, will typically seek the services of a lawyer when buying land exactly because they lack the comprehension necessary to avoid the tale you tell. And once you are outsourcing comprehension, literacy doesn't really buy you anything.
      - redundantly 2y ago
        > The average person, even the above average person So, people who are likely to be literate will seek out assistance when they realise they don't understand something? One might wonder if their literacy has anything to do with that...
        9rx 2y ago
        Those who are illiterate, at least of those who could become literate, realize they don't understand something right from the get-go. It turns out they also typically seek the services of lawyers when buying land for the same reasons.
        redundantly 2y ago
        That’s a pretty rosy view of the world. If that were true, the 2008 housing crisis wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. People get taken advantage of all the time because they don’t understand what they’re signing—and society’s conditioned us to agree to whatever’s put in front of us, from cell phone contracts to software usage to major investments. Plus, lawyers aren’t everywhere, and they’re not cheap. Most people can’t afford to just hire one whenever they need help.
        9rx 2y ago
        > the 2008 housing crisis wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. I'm not sure I agree. Lawyers aren't rulers, only advisers. They can give you a perfect understanding of the situation, and if you are caught in a fear of missing out state, which was certainly the case for many leading up to that timeframe, it is likely you'll ignore their advice anyway. In fact, many US states legally require lawyer advisory before completing a real estate transaction. Those states certainly did not avoid the real estate bubble. > People get taken advantage of all the time because they don’t understand what they’re signing Absolutely. Being able to comprehend every situation is straight up impossible. Not even the greatest minds of our time are able to do that. Not even lawyers themselves, whose job is to comprehend written text, are able to comprehend every situation. They focus on narrow specialities for good reason. There is no avoiding that situation. If someone wants to take advantage of you, they'll find a way.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > if they learn to solve real problems in the real world and it helps them We have less evidence of this than of improvements in literacy rates. At least in the US, no part of the curriculum has anything to do with general life skills other than driver's ed and math, and innumeracy is far more common than illiteracy.
kleene_op 2y ago
Why wouldn't it be?
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I think the point this report (from UNESCO) is trying to make is that this "proper education alone" is not available for everyone to begin with. That said, clicking further it has a chart that shows more than 80% of countries have "some form of basic education" at least, which is double that of what it was 100 years ago. But in countries where it is, it's highlighting that there's a way to go yet. It doesn't give all the data (after all, it's a website selling data) but it's pretty telling that a lot of countries that we think of as having good education (like most of Europe) are not in the top five.
- lucianbr 2y ago
  I'm sure your point is great and all, but with Europe having about 50 countries, most of them can not be in the top five for a given subject no matter what.
- throw646577 2y ago
  Putting aside that the top five can only be five, the second-best-performing country is in Europe: Ireland.
zamadatix 2y ago
I don't know where the idea "everyone" will be able to achieve a certain minimum reading comprehension came from and it's trivial to show that wouldn't be true. As I understand it, the topic is more about the differences between countries in the chart rather than somehow achieving 100%. E.g. how Ireland sits around 87% while Senegal sits at 2%. If Senegal were able to afford the same overall quality of education for their students as Ireland don't you think the would have significantly higher numbers?
throw646577 2y ago
At risk of self-fulfilling a joke, I don't know exactly what you mean here. The level of education UNESCO is talking about is not enormously challenging: "Minimum reading proficiency for the end of lower-secondary education means students can connect main ideas across different text types, understand the author’s intentions, and draw conclusions based on the text." So yes, I think that is a reasonable objective for 12-15 year olds that should be available to everyone by virtue of proper education alone. Indeed it is very difficult to give a 12-15 year old a proper education if they cannot do this. It's foundational. So one would almost expect any 12-15 year old who can be taught _anything abstract_ at an appropriate level to be able to do this. The alarming thing about the data shown here is that it includes children who are not even in education, which would skew it down a lot in, say, "third world" countries, but should not be skewing it so much in western countries, and yet... slightly more than one in five of UK and US 12-15 year olds lack this skill according to that assessment. Some of this might be fundamental reading challenges (visual impairment, dyslexia, attention and memory), but still, it is not a particularly good sign for the global figure if these rather ordinary western countries are scoring so low. (Singapore and Japan manage more like 85%) The full explorable graph appears to be here for 2023 data -- I can't find it for 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reaching-sufficient-reading-comprehension-by-the-end-of-lower-secondary-age https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reachin...
- MoreMoore 2y ago
  I don't understand how a country like Belgium could possibly only score a 67%.
  - krageon 2y ago
    Belgium isn't exactly a bastion of solid infrastructure, nor is it incredibly well-known for the quality of it's education. Why is that country specifically so surprising for you?
dialup_sounds 2y ago
These numbers include all children of middle school age, not just those who attend school.
francisofascii 2y ago
I wonder if the majority of people would have improved comprehension by listening or watching a video. For much of human history, knowledge was transferred orally, so maybe humans are naturally better at that. With the ubiquitous of video, do people really need to be expert readers and writers?
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > For much of human history, knowledge was transferred orally, so maybe humans are naturally better at that. I'm dubious of that inference: For much of human history (we are mostly unchanged from 200k years ago), we lived poorly and made no technological progress. When all we had was oral knowledge transfer, we spent at least a couple of 100k years making no progress. When writing was invented, progress came almost immediately. To me it seems fairly clear that progress was basically non-existent until writing was invented. This makes me think that oral knowledge sharing is the worst form there is.
etempleton 2y ago
Everyone? No. But depending on how reading comprehension is defined / tested I would suspect at least 90% of individuals are capable of full reading comprehension.
WeylandYutani 2y ago
For much of history women didn't get any education and were considered retarded. Who's laughing now?

randcraw 2y ago

Is this new? Or has this been true for decades? What is the trend, both across countries and within each?

dv_dt 2y ago
Could it also be that teenagers are taking standardized tests less seriously if the stakes aren't apparent
- lolinder 2y ago
  This isn't an answer to their question about whether there's been any change for the worse, it's speculation about the reason for the change, assuming any such change does exist.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I don't think this is based on standardized tests because they're not standardized internationally; this would be presented more as a questionnaire or poll than a test, made to assess roughly the same in every country it was given.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  There have always been some. I remember kids just randomly filling in bubbles on the standardized tests 40 years ago when I was in school. There was no consequence to them and they just didn't care.
  - doubled112 2y ago
    "When in doubt, pick C" carried me all the way through college. Even when there were consequences, sometimes I still didn't care. I've since grown out of it.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I think you'll have to do that research for yourself, but I did a cursory googling for you and it seems fairly stable in the US since the 70's [0]. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

nashashmi 2y ago

Had a hard time learning comprehension myself. Acquired it when I was 16. Quite painfully.

noman-land 2y ago
Can you describe what this looked like in practice? Would you just read things and at the end have no recollection of what you read? How did you finally overcome this and what was the moment like when you finally crossed over?
- nashashmi 2y ago
  I was studying for SATs. I mastered the verbal portion’s analogy and sentence completion by memorizing 4300 SAT words. Got all questions in that section right except two, one was skipped and the other was wrong (sacrosanctity is the same as sanctity apparently!). The reading comprehension was the last bit (too much procrastination!). Used Barrons verbal SAT book, with its three difficulty levels segmented. Went through each level and understood it well enough to understand what I was doing wrong. Realization: Each phrase has to be split up into its own sentence. Then Each sentence has to be given a context. Then each context has to have connecting pieces with the next context. The reader’s job is to understand each sentence, put it into context, and identify the missing parts and pieces of logic, and come up with a possible explanation of the contexts that are missing. The possible explanations was a hardest one to get right. It was like I did not understand People and how they thought. (I was autistic and introverted with some adhd.) example: the class is a reflection of the teacher. Does that mean that the class is opposite of the teacher because that is how a reflection works? I had to watch many movies and tv shows to get this one right over the course of many years after I graduated and start earning money to pay for cable tv.

VagabundoP 2y ago

My kid is 14 going to secondary school in Ireland right now. And I'm helping them with their English homework and I notice how much of it is reading stuff and trying to get them to question what they are reading etc. Far more than when I was a kid their age, in my English class.

djaouen 2y ago

[flagged]

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
How would / do you assess your own reading comprehension level? I mean I'll freely admit I struggle with higher levels / legalese, and frequently struggle to express myself in words, both in my native languages and English. (I'm aware this is a subtle flex / humblebrag, lol)
- whaaswijk 2y ago
  Legalese seems to me a different category more akin to technical writing. I wouldn’t classify difficulty understanding a legal document as a general lack of reading comprehension. It requires specific domain knowledge.
- xxs 2y ago
  >(I'm aware this is a subtle flex / humblebrag, lol) Not really. Flex would be 4+ languages with at least two of them being C2. (edit: need comma after "I mean")
thrillgore 2y ago
Wouldn't be HN if there wasn't some jerk flexing.
pbmonster 2y ago
If you're competing - in any measure - with the bottom half of the global teenage population, you're in deep trouble.

cesaref 2y ago

'These numbers include all children of middle school age, not just those who attend school.' I think the low scores are telling you more about the pressure on children in poorer countries to work to support their families, rather than the quality of teaching when they are able to attend school.

eddsolves 2y ago
True, but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England (lived all three so still follow the local news and seen stories about this in the last two weeks).
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England Kids in rich countries have their brain fried from watching Cocomelon, Youtube Kids and Tiktok. They've been spawn-camped by ad-tech. Gotta get them when they're young.
  - runako 2y ago
    https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 The US scores are relatively consistent going back over a half-century. TikTok and Cocomelon are not the culprits.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - slaw 2y ago
        Do you think it is the same reason for Reverse Flynn Effect? IQ scores are dropping in western countries. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

icegreentea2 2y ago

Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". Global adult literacy rates have been drastically improving since the 1950s (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy https://ourworldindata.org/literacy). Today, global adult literacy rate is estimated at ~87%. I -think- this is the appropiate interactive plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reaching-sufficient-reading-comprehension-by-the-end-of-lower-secondary-age https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reachin... The controls are annoying, but world level data only goes back to 2000: * 2000: 38% * 2005: 41% * 2010: 45% * 2015: 47% * 2019: 48.5% (this is the closest point)

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". And one would argue that comprehension is more essential than ever, since every last thing you do in the modern world and nearly every product you interact with comes with a pages-long terms and conditions document in which you get the funny stuff like the inability to use iTunes to make nuclear weapons, and far more importantly, how a number of large platform services reserve the right to sell your soul to as many devils as they can. Like, on balance, I'm doing okay in life. I could have more savings put away but ultimately I have a good job in tech, I own a home, and basically have all my essentials handled with a side of a few toys to tinker on. I cannot fathom how I could get my life functioning without strong reading skills. It's... it's literally everything, it's communication in my office since I'm remote, it's filing taxes correctly, it's interacting with my local government, hell writing is a side hobby of mine and has been all my life. I can't fucking imagine what kind of utter hell it must be to even only be literate, let alone illiterate.
- relaxing 2y ago
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  - realce 2y ago
    https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-highly-educated/ https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-hig... >Germany had the world’s finest elementary school system, the highest literacy rate and the best universities; by 1913 more books were published annually in Germany than in any country in the world. Believing that authoritarianism stems from lack of education is a flawed ideology.

m3kw9 2y ago

I this why TikTok is so popular?

realce 2y ago
I this so to

lars512 2y ago

Hi HN! You may be interested in some related work: "Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?" https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning Our topic page on Global Education: https://ourworldindata.org/global-education https://ourworldindata.org/global-education Our wider catalog of education data: https://ourworldindata.org/data?topics=Global+Education https://ourworldindata.org/data?topics=Global+Education

rawgabbit 2y ago
Do you have opinions on Online school movements like Khan Academy? I know there are schools that provide a cookie cutter curriculum but maybe that is better than nothing that many economically disadvantaged students for all into? Having gone through public school in Texas and putting my own children through private school, I am warming up to things like https://highschool.utexas.edu/ https://highschool.utexas.edu/

kaon_ 2y ago

Senegal only 5%? I thought it was a well educated country. Maybe something wrong with the data?

bilbo0s 2y ago
With respect. Go to the map of school attendance percentages by nation. Once there, compare Senegal's school attendance percentage to the attendance percentages in the rest of West Africa. And the bad news is that percentages in Senegal are likely juiced and then reported given the way the government works in Senegal. Whereas percentages in places like Ghana are likely reported as lower than they actually are due to the way the government works in Ghana.

m3kw9 2y ago

Those “read a novel” and write about it every chapter really helps. I wonder if that type of exercise would work now kids know about AI, my guess is that parents shouldn’t tell their kids about LLMs too early as they can depend on it and mess them up

julosflb 2y ago
They didn't wait for their parents to tell - they figured out with their friends.
triceratops 2y ago
Make them do it in class, on paper. Bonus: no homework.

cies 2y ago

So is it getting better, or getting worse? The title is quite alarming, but looking at the comments here it seems the number is growing... So it's more like a moment for celebration :) "This year half of teenagers globally can read with comprehension!"

deleted 2y ago

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dukeofdoom 2y ago

Reading aloud helps with comprehension. I sometimes read aloud myself, I think its good to speak a few thousand extra words everyday...words you might not usually say if you're reading a classic novel. Plus I usually take a long hot bath after workouts to help with recovery. So a good time to read while soaking in bubbles. Can recommend.

thebiss 2y ago
Do teachers and parents now actively encourage students to read aloud? I'd love to see a study showing this helps. When I did this in middle school I was repeated told to stop, and that doing so or talking myself through math problems were "signs of mental illness," and I needed to keep it in my head. I hated that it made it easier.
MrMcCall 2y ago
I witnessed the most extraordinary use of this in the one year my wife's son lived with us during his pre-med coursework in undergrad. He would read aloud to himself (in a quiet voice). He explained that it was his way of keeping himself concentrated, because (in his description) he was reading, speaking, and listening all at the same time, and that that combo overloaded his attention and kept him focused. He went from graduating towards the top here in our middling uni, to being accepted into Johns Hopkins (but choosing to remain local), and then getting his first-choice residency. He is now an accomplished specialist doctor. Three notes: 1) He never drank alcohol in his life. It was a distinct advantage, especially in undergrad. 2) He said that he would not let himself be a patient to over 85% or 90% of the doctors that graduated with him from med school. 3) He had a grand total of FOUR HOURS of nutrition education in med school. I think that's insane, but the system is really about pills and procedures.
- dukeofdoom 2y ago
  Congratulations to your son, that's quite an accomplishment.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago

peterfirefly 2y ago

Reading ability (and reading comprehension) is very correlated with IQ. An IQ of 100 is not quite enough. Most people with that IQ can read (but not everybody, even discounting the dyslexics) and most people with that IQ can read relatively simple things. And the global average is a lot lower than 100...

lcouturi 2y ago
Isn't the global average supposed to be exactly 100 by definition, or did I misunderstand how IQ works?
- peterfirefly 2y ago
  You did (not your fault). Usually a Western country is used, often the UK. That doesn't really matter, though, as long as a sufficiently similar scale is used when comparing. Tests can be (and are) recalibrated sometimes.
Suppafly 2y ago
Isn't 100 set to be the average? How can the average be less than the average?
ericmcer 2y ago
Well you would need to know what the test looks like. If the bar is to understand the passage "The dog runs fast", You don't need to be a genius to comprehend it.

752963e64 2y ago

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dredmorbius 2y ago

Advanced written literacy, as with advanced computer literacy and numeracy is generally far more limited than many people would think. I've been aware of this for some years now by way of both OECD studies on general computer literacy (find-and-replace functions are usable to perhaps 5--10% of the adult population) and US studies on adult literacy. I've posted the latter to HN a few times, the one time that took traction was about three years ago, on 31 Dec 2021: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146> It's based on "Adult Literacy in the United States" (2019), through the US Department of Education (one of the US federal agencies likely to be on the chopping block): <https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp> The OECD study is here: <https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...> I'd made a couple of explanatory comments in the earlier discussion about elements of this (and related studies) which I find highly illuminating, including suggestions that at least at the margin (and perhaps far more deeply) overall literacy and lifetime attainment are relatively insensitive to educational opportunities. (Both individuals and countries as a whole show ... counterintuitive ... behaviours.) I tend to suspect both innate and other environmental factors (overall stimulation, pollution and experiential degredation of potential, etc.). I'll hasten to mention that the innate capabilities seem to apply to individuals rather than populations, as high- and low-achievers can be found widely. TFA's UNESCO study does suggest strong regional variance, however...

robertlutece 2y ago

“The modern idea of testing a reader’s ‘comprehension,’ as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?” —Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

eonmist 2y ago

Globally half of children demonstrate reading comprehension. The 1st world at top and 3rd world at bottom. Results hint at half of the world being underdeveloped.

guilhas 2y ago

I remember as a teenager having a lot of trouble with this I think the school make a very poor job in making children curious about book stories, before start ramming you with 100s of pages of literary classics, so deep and powerful, that most teenagers are not gonna care Especially when they are not incentivised at home. And have other more attractive stories going on in the form of games or movies Read more in class, teachers know well most students haven't read anything at home. And most children will be afraid to admit to the class, and alone to the teacher, that they haven't read and are not following the story, so they don't get an explanation. Even though the teacher knows very well most students will be completely lost Even reading the "not allowed" summaries before the quiz was a drag. It was just an exercise in survival and making it up They should probably focus on shorter books, more captivating stories for children, like Harry Potter? ... tell the parents to read with the child at home and help them understand any difficult part, maybe get some comic books to start, maybe let children choose different themes like sci-fi action magic... Spend more time in the end hammering a 5 line story summary, the more important points that needed interpretation, why they are important...