20 ms·
I never understand where these anecdotes come from. I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, rea
by spicyusername 10mo ago
I never understand where these anecdotes come from.
I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, read full books all the time and have since they were quite young.
The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class, and the kids you'd expect from the homes you'd expect read plenty.
So whatever the problem is, if there even is one, is less to do with school curriculums, english classes, screen time, or the availability of books, and more to do with the culture of many homes not prioritizing reading.
- fzeroracer 10mo agoOkay, now what's the literacy rate in your county? What does the data actually say?
- QuadmasterXLII 10mo agoPretty funny if it's Mississippi and they're just correct.
- spicyusername 10mo agoA quick Google search says 67% of elementary school kids scored at or above reading proficiency in my county. 73% for high school.
- idontwantthis 10mo agoIn Clark County high schools in NV, they do not read a single whole book in English classes even in honors.
- smelendez 10mo agoIs it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and remembered the details.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoIt's an aversion to giving bad grades to the inevitable bulk of students who just won't read it.
- serf 10mo agosomething still changed; i've been in classes where the bulk of the students got bad grades and that never stopped the instructor from handing them out. if we use grades as a yardstick for elementary progress and efficacy then you'd think it would be a bigger deal if a single cog in the system decided to systematically add inaccuracy to the measure simply because a failing student irks them.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoYou have the principal actors reversed. Teachers would generally love to fail more students. It is the administration that prevents or disincentivizes it. Grades are a yardstick merely for which district gets more prestige and funding. There is absolutely no incentive for anyone with authority to fail bad students. Reprimands or terminations result from a teacher giving consistently below average grades.
- watwut 10mo agoThere is no real way for teacher to check whether I read the book or not. People who read books regularly fail trivia tests and people who did not read them can quick read "about the book" analysis off web and call it a day. And crutially, my inclination to finish assigned book and my willingness to read books in general are unrelated. A kid that reads a lot wont neceasary enjoy and finish assigned books - I know I skipped quite a lot of them.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoIf your premise is that there is no way to test knowledge, then I can see how you might not want to assign books to be read, but I think there are ways to test knowledge and that reading a book should result in knowledge of the book.
- aleph_minus_one 10mo ago> I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, read full books all the time and have since they were quite young. > The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class, and the kids you'd expect from the homes you'd expect read plenty. Reading the expected books for school is very different from reading a lot privately at home. I know quite many fellow pupils who read a lot privately, but detested reading the required books for school (they at best got some summaries somewhere, which in my opinion actually prepared you better for the tests since the people who write summaries typically know quite well which parts/topics of the books teachers consider to be important, and thus do quite some explanations on these). On the other hand, I know fellow pupils who barely read anything in their free time (they had different interests), but for some reason actually liked (and liked reading) the books that you had to read for some classes.
- marbro 10mo ago[dead]
- nomdep 10mo agoYeah, that was totally me. The only book I ever read for school was by accident. I was already deep into it on my own when the teacher assigned it to us
- 1718627440 10mo agoI do not live in the US, but this was my experience as well. Actually having read the book made my grades worse, because I now disagreed with the claims the teacher wanted to hear. I was always like: no, I have also read the book and no the author doesn't say that.
- apparent 10mo ago> I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading I would not assume this, given that the states with the highest literacy rates are mostly rural and at least half red (NH, MN, ND, VT, SD, NE).
- theultdev 10mo agoBreak that down further and you'll see it's blue cities in those red states that have the highest illiteracy rates. Same with crime. Kind of goes hand in hand. Education in blue cities needs to be fixed.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- ku-man 10mo ago[dead]
- bdangubic 10mo agooh I am sooo stealing this “blue cities is red states” thing - well done mate wherever you picked this up from, well done!!
- mmooss 10mo agoThe parent repeats precisely the disinformation of a political party. That shows reading comprehension and some communication skills. If this was an English class, it might get a B if the assignment was about disinformation techniques. But this is social science and we need to apply other cognitive skills, such as understanding empirical evidence, controls, and causal inference. Using those we could generate other hypotheses from factors more strongly correlated than the leading political party, such as funding, generations of systemic discrimination, government violence, or other causes. Regarding political party, generally the better educated someone is, the more likely they are to be in the Blue party. The most highly educated institutions, including those of science, education, arts, etc., tend to be overwhelmingly Blue.
- 10mo ago
- ruszki 10mo ago> The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class That doesn’t mean that kids really need to read any single of those books any time in history.
- mmooss 10mo agoYou doubt there's a problem because you don't know of it happening in your rural town? In addition to teaching kids to read books, we apparently need to teach adults research and inference fundamentals.
- throwawayqqq11 10mo agoI can infere all the facts and logic perfectly well! But thank you.
- whattheheckheck 10mo agoEvidently not when you cite one anecdotal counter example and over generalize?
- mmooss 10mo ago(That's not the same commenter.)
- crusty 10mo agoWould be funny if it was... I would have thought making an anonymous throwaway account after posting from a 'real' account would be a 'too late' situation, but the plausible deniability here shows otherwise where the original content was not imbued with objectionable etiquette.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nothercastle 10mo agoIt’s probably because you are in a rural red state that isn’t concerned with equity and feelings