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I'm much more worried about literacy, frankly. Understanding numbers is quite important but this understanding doesn't mean much if you can't interpret their me

I'm much more worried about literacy, frankly. Understanding numbers is quite important but this understanding doesn't mean much if you can't interpret their meaning in context. I live in an extremely poor city and I would estimate about half the adults I interact with cannot read, write, or articulate anywhere near the level you'd expect from the high school I went to twenty years ago. And I believe the problem is getting much, much worse with the rise of youtube and the collapse of diction into a shared set of social-media memes—if you can't express yourself through those memes, you may not be able to communicate well at all. Some portion of this can be written off to being a very attractive immigration target for those, like most, who don't speak english as their native language. I don't want to entirely write this off to a money/social/government/education problem—it's more complicated than any single narrative can convey. But I am firmly convinced we are looking at decades of literacy continuing to fall. If we can't figure out a way to collectively parent each other and resolve this, I can't imagine this is going to result in the kind of social and economic stability most people generally desire.

ksymph 2y ago
To play devil's advocate: why does it matter? The purpose of language is communication, so it could be argued that if people feel they're able to understand and be understood sufficiently, classic ideas of literacy aren't really a useful metric. I suppose what modern language usage lacks in depth it makes up for in brevity and clarity, which seems like a natural correction to the low signal to noise ratio of a heavily interconnected world. Edit - I don't mean to challenge the value of literacy so much as speculate whether falling test scores necessarily indicate the loss of that value. Language, how it's used, and how changes spread are all very different in the information age. How do we know traditional literacy tests accurately measure the role it plays in people's lives now? As an example, written communication used to primarily take the form of writing letters. With instant communication, ability to put thoughts into words quickly has a higher relative impact on communication compared to being able to spend as much time as needed to find the perfect words to convey a message.
- axus 2y ago
  “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  the bar of being a productive member of society is much higher than "sufficient communication" (which I would argue the illiterate aren't capable of anyway)
- recursive 2y ago
  > they're able to understand and be understood sufficiently Communication isn't all or nothing. The more expressive power you have, the wider the scope of ideas you can communicate. It may be minimally sufficient to be able to communicate "me hungry" or "that crazy", but more is probably still better.
  - robbiewxyz 2y ago
    To add to this, expressive power also makes it possible to communicate nuance and discuss biases and fallacies.
- Pigalowda 2y ago
  It matters because of entropy. How many people can society carry before it suddenly can’t? Civilization doesn’t persist from inertia.
- robbiewxyz 2y ago
BobaFloutist 2y ago
Public schools have been teaching "cueing" instead of phonics for a couple of decades, despite research showing that it...makes kids worse readers. This is finally changing. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
- bushbaba 2y ago
  Public Schools near me in SF Bay area are more focused on political ideology than improving kids ability to attain Literary, Math, and Science education. There is a push for Equity over Achievement, by bringing the top performers down to raise the bottom. However the top performers have left for private school, and Public institutions declined. It's a downward spiral. There's hope it'll change either through full dissolution of the public institution (voucher programs) or through the dissolution of such "equity at all cost" political ideology.
  - emseetech 2y ago
    This situation, where it is true at all, is a vanishingly small minority when accounting for these across-the-board downward shifts in national data. Oppose it locally if you wish but extrapolating your local situation to a national level doesn't hold up. Whereas at least 75% of elementary students nationwide are learning cueing, so starting there makes more sense.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      Local changes can spread like a virus. San Francisco Unified School District implemented math sequencing changes that failed. District Leadership claimed they worked. Those changes were then cited by the authors of the latest California Math Framework. Because California is a big state (and with some popular state universities), the California Math Framework will influence curricula and teaching methods far beyond California.
      - emseetech 2y ago
tootie 2y ago
Exhibit A: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/12/10/are-adults-forgetting-how-to-read https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/12/10/a... It's a nearly global trend that literacy and numeracy are decreasing and not just in students, but in adults. I can only wave my hands and say "pandemic" otherwise I have no clue what's going on.
manquer 2y ago
Ability to read does not correlate interest to read or more importantly ability to understand Why is literacy important ? I don't think it is important at all. it is overrated today, it was far more important in the days when mass communication was largely written. It is not longer the case, cost and ease of video and audio publishing is extremely cheap. The issues in written communication are beyond production cost of writing, there are limits what can be described and how difficult it is do so for a large audience to understand, there is a reason why good authors historically were very influential. It is also more volume limited than say even speech/audio, you can say lot more with lot more meaning(using non verbal and non lingual sounds) in the same time it takes to read. Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful format, but is no different than painting versus photography and now animation, you can do great art by working with the limits of the medium, but it depends on the consumer to use his "imagination" to understand. Just as paintings were actual tools of communication in a bygone era and are art today and can be appreciated as such so is written communication, it is not essential mass communication tool that people need to really learn anymore. --- It is far important to be able to critically think for yourself and question the information presented to you and be able to understand the mathematics needed to do the above and navigate life. The need for widespread literacy is relatively new, of only few hundred, and was result of drop in the cost of written publishing which made it the most popular form of mass communications. More effective means of communication including speech and video have become cheaper and becoming even more cheaper with AI. --- This association of intelligence or critical thinking skills to literacy is flawed and frankly elitist it is merely a function of schooling. I grew up in a country where literacy is a still a problem particularly amongst older generation not because they didn't learn properly in school because they didn't ever go to one. I know just as many smart thinkers, world aware, inventors who are illiterate as I know dumb, idiotic literates. The country is larger, poorer than America yet has more robust political process that is diverse, with more involved electorate even if what the people want is at times authoritarian , there is no denying the robustness of democracy itself. The difference is the uneducated would likely picked up literacy if they had the opportunity, what we have in America is people failing to learn despite given the opportunity to do. The issue is deeper than literacy as a skill, it is a poor proxy for other skills actually needed in life and becomes more weakly correlated in the future .

ksymph 2y ago

To play devil's advocate: why does it matter? The purpose of language is communication, so it could be argued that if people feel they're able to understand and be understood sufficiently, classic ideas of literacy aren't really a useful metric. I suppose what modern language usage lacks in depth it makes up for in brevity and clarity, which seems like a natural correction to the low signal to noise ratio of a heavily interconnected world. Edit - I don't mean to challenge the value of literacy so much as speculate whether falling test scores necessarily indicate the loss of that value. Language, how it's used, and how changes spread are all very different in the information age. How do we know traditional literacy tests accurately measure the role it plays in people's lives now? As an example, written communication used to primarily take the form of writing letters. With instant communication, ability to put thoughts into words quickly has a higher relative impact on communication compared to being able to spend as much time as needed to find the perfect words to convey a message.

axus 2y ago
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
micromacrofoot 2y ago
the bar of being a productive member of society is much higher than "sufficient communication" (which I would argue the illiterate aren't capable of anyway)
recursive 2y ago
> they're able to understand and be understood sufficiently Communication isn't all or nothing. The more expressive power you have, the wider the scope of ideas you can communicate. It may be minimally sufficient to be able to communicate "me hungry" or "that crazy", but more is probably still better.
- robbiewxyz 2y ago
  To add to this, expressive power also makes it possible to communicate nuance and discuss biases and fallacies.
Pigalowda 2y ago
It matters because of entropy. How many people can society carry before it suddenly can’t? Civilization doesn’t persist from inertia.
robbiewxyz 2y ago

BobaFloutist 2y ago

Public schools have been teaching "cueing" instead of phonics for a couple of decades, despite research showing that it...makes kids worse readers. This is finally changing. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...

bushbaba 2y ago
Public Schools near me in SF Bay area are more focused on political ideology than improving kids ability to attain Literary, Math, and Science education. There is a push for Equity over Achievement, by bringing the top performers down to raise the bottom. However the top performers have left for private school, and Public institutions declined. It's a downward spiral. There's hope it'll change either through full dissolution of the public institution (voucher programs) or through the dissolution of such "equity at all cost" political ideology.
- emseetech 2y ago
  This situation, where it is true at all, is a vanishingly small minority when accounting for these across-the-board downward shifts in national data. Oppose it locally if you wish but extrapolating your local situation to a national level doesn't hold up. Whereas at least 75% of elementary students nationwide are learning cueing, so starting there makes more sense.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    Local changes can spread like a virus. San Francisco Unified School District implemented math sequencing changes that failed. District Leadership claimed they worked. Those changes were then cited by the authors of the latest California Math Framework. Because California is a big state (and with some popular state universities), the California Math Framework will influence curricula and teaching methods far beyond California.
    - emseetech 2y ago

tootie 2y ago

Exhibit A: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/12/10/are-adults-forgetting-how-to-read https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/12/10/a... It's a nearly global trend that literacy and numeracy are decreasing and not just in students, but in adults. I can only wave my hands and say "pandemic" otherwise I have no clue what's going on.

manquer 2y ago

Ability to read does not correlate interest to read or more importantly ability to understand Why is literacy important ? I don't think it is important at all. it is overrated today, it was far more important in the days when mass communication was largely written. It is not longer the case, cost and ease of video and audio publishing is extremely cheap. The issues in written communication are beyond production cost of writing, there are limits what can be described and how difficult it is do so for a large audience to understand, there is a reason why good authors historically were very influential. It is also more volume limited than say even speech/audio, you can say lot more with lot more meaning(using non verbal and non lingual sounds) in the same time it takes to read. Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful format, but is no different than painting versus photography and now animation, you can do great art by working with the limits of the medium, but it depends on the consumer to use his "imagination" to understand. Just as paintings were actual tools of communication in a bygone era and are art today and can be appreciated as such so is written communication, it is not essential mass communication tool that people need to really learn anymore. --- It is far important to be able to critically think for yourself and question the information presented to you and be able to understand the mathematics needed to do the above and navigate life. The need for widespread literacy is relatively new, of only few hundred, and was result of drop in the cost of written publishing which made it the most popular form of mass communications. More effective means of communication including speech and video have become cheaper and becoming even more cheaper with AI. --- This association of intelligence or critical thinking skills to literacy is flawed and frankly elitist it is merely a function of schooling. I grew up in a country where literacy is a still a problem particularly amongst older generation not because they didn't learn properly in school because they didn't ever go to one. I know just as many smart thinkers, world aware, inventors who are illiterate as I know dumb, idiotic literates. The country is larger, poorer than America yet has more robust political process that is diverse, with more involved electorate even if what the people want is at times authoritarian , there is no denying the robustness of democracy itself. The difference is the uneducated would likely picked up literacy if they had the opportunity, what we have in America is people failing to learn despite given the opportunity to do. The issue is deeper than literacy as a skill, it is a poor proxy for other skills actually needed in life and becomes more weakly correlated in the future .