It turns out that uneducated people make really uninformed decisions and as a result, it’s tanked their economy and exploded corruption.
It manifests in a lot of ways on a daily level, from people who can't explain what exactly they want from a store, from a hospital. Communication breaks down easily so they are used to be shouting all the time when talking to try to get a point across, etc.
There was also, I think, a kind of naive view that intelligence was a pretty broad spectrum and a lot of kids were naturally going to end up illiterate. This was understandable if your point of view was restricted entirely to a small rural area where a small but significant number of adults were illiterate. It just seemed natural for some people not to take to reading, and that was just a normal part of life, not something a person should be punished for. (Most teachers had a much more progressive and modern understanding, and I really don't want to overstate the prevalence of this view, but a handful of teachers here and there is enough to produce a steady trickle of children falling through the cracks.)
Another factor was that there was not a uniform understanding of the purpose of high school and college credentials. Most people accepted the notion that a diploma should guarantee a minimal set of skills — functional literacy included. They valued the education and skills that their children were getting. Occasionally another feeling showed through, though, which was that educational credentials were a way of granting life success to some people and denying it to others, and requiring kids to succeed academically in school was just a way to perpetuate class and racial distinctions. This sentiment came to the fore when my state adopted a minimum skills test that kids needed to pass in order to get a diploma. This test was labeled "evil" by some people in my community because it pointlessly (in their eyes) denied their kids a chance for a normal life. They felt no anger or anxiety about the fact that their kids struggled with reading to the point where they couldn't pass a state basic skills test. They were only angry about their kids being denied an important life credential. And with Jared Kushner getting a Harvard diploma, you can't say it was entirely a made-up concern, even if they did adopt a counterproductive attitude towards their kids' education because of it.
We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive.
Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.
I get that world isn't fair and poor people keep getting the short end of the stick, but in this case - software bloat - it's really mostly just aggregate of individual choices. So for cryin' out loud, be a little more lean with frameworks and libraries you use. Treat it as if it was charity contribution, if you have to, because in a sense, it is.
I'll be teaching my kid to learn to go for the duck instead.
You don't have to know anything about computers to use them now. I would expect for most non-technical users, the computer consists of the web browser, and maybe Microsoft Office and a few games and that's it.
It's good that you don't have to know how a computer works to use it, but there are lots of downsides to that as well.
I'm disappointed that countries set such a high barrier to entry for immigrants (TOEFL level 6.5-7) when local people probably can't even achieve the same.
When you look at it from that light, I think it makes more sense.
Shrug, seems harsh but the local people have a somewhat arbitrary birthright to be there and these countries can afford to pick and choose who they admit.
Remember the three R’s? Now it’s down to two. Well, maybe one (American kids have long been using calculators).
But a deeper question is, what do we actually lose if people can’t write by hand or do arithmetic?
It certainly has in Japan and China, but I'm not sure that extrapolates to simpler writing systems. I suspect it partially does due to schools spending less time teaching handwriting.
If anything wouldn’t it get better in a sense, since you write so rarely and develop less shortcuts which might be more efficient but less formal/elegant?
Don't start with block lettering for all of pre and grade school, then switch to ONLY cursive for 3 years... now I can't write anything nicely. It's still readable, more so to me.
As for actual composition, don't force kids in to a rigid structure all the time. Maybe they've changed that too. It took me years to write in a more free form.
By the early 90s, my ability to write began to atrophy, not that I couldn't write fine, but that I couldn't write much without my hand getting tired. Now, I can't write more than a few sentences before my hand gets really tired, but I very seldom have a reason to write anything more than a short note. I still make hand-written notes while working (as a software developer), but I find I'm doing that much less than even 5 years ago.
At this point in time, I'd be more concerned about people's ability to compose good communication than their ability to physically write. If social media is any indication, a lot of people can't write simple sentences that follow basic grammar and spelling rules.
Still, turns out being able to type well and quickly is far, far more important in my line of work.