America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Schools and parents are also banning cell phones and cutting down on computer use, which should help with the distraction angle.
The socioeconomic divide mentioned in the article is still worrisome, though. I doubt that kids in the bottom 30% of America have the same experience. And simultaneously, the middle class has largely stopped having kids, which means there's a top 20% and a bottom 30% and pretty much nothing in between. If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.
Back in the 90's when they were looking for a killer app for browsers, who knew that video would be the real killer app (of the brain and attention).
It's telling that the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children. And children cannot be held accountable for poor habits that are largely a consequence of their environment.
You're right, and we see this everywhere. But at least adults already learned how to read, so this is not something that will stop their development during their critical formative years.
The core issue is that it's nearly illegal to discipline students now. There's a socioeconomic divide because child behavior is unfortunately negatively correlated to socioeconomics. Thus poor schools suffer more from the lack of ability for teachers to remove disruptive students.
Yes some excellent teachers are sometimes able to deal with it, most cannot.
Interestingly, in my mom's experience, kids from immigrant backgrounds (working class or undocumented Latinos bussed in and Asian Americans from all economic strata) never get in trouble. It's only the "American" parents that try to overstep on educators toes for "disciplining" kids.
The Latiné and Asian kids aren't "bussed". Meanwhile, a large portion of African American kids are though. White Americans who aren't 1-2 gen and the African Americans tend to have parents that push back on educators (as did the small amount of 2nd gen and older Asian Americans and Latiné American households - hence why I said "American").
California is not like the rest of the US. The racial dynamics are different, and immigrant families from poorer backgrounds are fine paying extremely high premiums or even rent out a garage to live within in order to send their kids to top school districts. "American" families don't do that.
On top of that, utilizing public services is viewed negatively in the American naturalization process, as it can be contested that an applicant is at risk of becoming a "public charge".
Additionally, the moment a neighborhood becomes too "Asian" or "Latino" in the Bay, all the White and Black families who can afford to end up leaving, and those who remain complain about us "changing the character" of our neighborhoods or "being too competitive".
The Western US (Dallas westwards) has an entirely different racial and ethnic dynamic from the rest of the US.
For example, continuing with your Atlanta example, the city of Atlanta is 84% white and black, and those White and Black Americans in ATL are overwhelmingly of southern origin in the US.
Meanwhile, an Asian American from Jiangxi is extremely different from someone from the Mekong Delta who is extremely different from someone from Jeolla in South Korea. The only similarly they have is looking kind of similar.
Same for Latiné communities as well.
East Coast cities have more "White" and "Black" people, but not as many Asians or Latiné.
Also, you have to remember the history of the Western US - much of the US west of Dallas wasn't part of the US until the 1840s, and remained a frontier backwater until WW2, so a number of Asian and Latiné ethnic groups had a longer history here than a lot of ethnic groups that are now pivotal in the US.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
There's probably a much better data source, but am on phone.
However, my concern was with the use of screens IN schools as part of the curriculum and as a replacement of textbooks and other sources.
At worst they can have a negative long term effect or a mild deleterious effect. But they do not have an acute deleterious effect.
> ...the excessive use of screens that kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move
Screens killing focus is clearly not backed by evidence. There may be other evidence that shows that when stratifying by percentile achievement, screen use places students at a percentile below where they would be otherwise. But it is clearly false that the use of screens kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move.
Killing focus is an absolute term. You don't have to compare against someone else to determine if focus was killed. If the kids have focus at the end, then it is not killed. And at best it could be slightly reduced.
e.g. If you have the hypothesis that mangoes are acutely toxic and kill people you don't have to sample a lot of people. You are claiming a strong effect size. If even 5 people eat mangoes and don't die then the answer is that they are not acutely toxic.
We're sitting here postulating massive effects and then we don't see massive effects. The effects, if they exist, must be incredibly small in order for these kids to be testing at the high levels they are.
I say this as a parent who has kept his daughter from screens and probably will. This stuff always comes up "Oh it absolutely kills focus" "Well, then why doesn't it for these kids?" "Actually, by kill focus I meant that it has a mild negative effect on focus which is not detectible and easily overcome by good teaching even if it were detectible which it isn't and also I didn't mean that screens kill focus. I meant that social media etc. on devices with screens do that" "Okay, so teaching with screens is fine" "oh no, screens absolutely kill focus"
Christ.
> But the smartphone thesis has a few weak spots. It’s not just middle schoolers and high schoolers whose performance is declining; it’s also kids in elementary school. Phone use has certainly increased among young children, but not to the ubiquitous proportions of adolescents. And even though smartphone use is almost universal, the learning losses have not been. High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses.
My kids are allowed to have screen time, but with limits. Most of their friends have similar arrangements. It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading. When you're limited to an hour of screen time a day, there's still 23 hours to do other stuff.
A confounding variable is how reading enjoyment is built and sustained across achievement levels. Presumably your kids and their friends are already high achievers, and as you said, nothing is stopping them from enjoying reading. I think that is great, and again, presumably in these households reading is encouraged as a fulfilling pastime.
The question is to what degree lower performers both come to enjoy and choose to engage in reading. If a household doesn't often engage in reading, or it isn't encouraged, or there is little parental support for a laggard reader, it stands to reason that "those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses."
My point is that if you're looking for an ultimate cause for why this snowball never gets started, I'd look at the very beginning, when kids don't learn the fundamentals needed to make that first leap into reading. Without phonics they don't have the tools needed to sound out unfamiliar words, without this, they really are just guessing all through the rest of their education. And without competence, reading isn't fun, so why would they do it for fun?
I'd actually go further and say that the causality between screen time and lack of reading goes the other way. The reason that today's social media industry looks the way it does, with lots of short videos, is because its primary audience can't read. There were plenty of text-based social media sites that catered to Millennials in the early 00s; one is literally named "Reddit". But images and videos started dominating around 2013 because the kids entering prime social media demographics couldn't read. It's a case of the market pulling the product out: text based social media is a niche product today, with Instagram dominating over Facebook, YouTube over Google+, and Reddit and Twitter/X moving to videos, because its primary market can't deal with text.
Maybe it’s because their parents are spending more time on screens (… and probably working due to the stagnation of wage vs. prices) instead of reading to/teaching their kids
Nice. I found almost all of the peers of my kid(s) had virtually no restrictions on phone usage. Needless to say that did not help my efforts.
And this article isn't about you. It's about average people, not 1% elites like you. Average people don't have "1 hr a day of screen time", they have 4hrs or more.
The harder problems are that both parents need jobs to make ends meet, meaning actual time with their children are both lower quality and less impactful due to lower energy and less time. Children are given devices to play with because the parents are exhausted and don't have the energy to fully engage with young children that are full of energy.
Education itself is also chronically underfunded, especially teacher salaries. Whereas before teacher salaries would pay something resembling a living wage, these days the cost of living has exploded and teachers are generally just simply left behind as an afterthought in public budgets.
So you have cohort after cohort of children with less quality education time with their parents being funneled into underpaid teachers who are expected to teach a class of 20-40 kids how to read, with poor support systems in place for everything from kids with behavior issues to even potty training in grade school.
As a society, we aren't valuing education - neither from the home side, to the workplace accommodation side, to the actual classroom. Until we all collectively agree that this is something worth investing in and we need to spend the time, money and energy to do it correctly, it won't get better.
Screens are a symptom but taking them away completely is just treating the symptoms instead of the underlying disease.
Second. Screen Time causes many issues in schools. Not the least of which is the distraction they causes children in the classroom and between classes. Another issue with screens and schools is the cost of these screens and these Chromebook and all the IT and infrastructure that’s required in order to basically just read some material. Prior to chrome books you simply had books and the books lasted for decades, potentially with no further expenses required. The whole educational system is an absolute mess with tons of waste and inefficient processes. Adding technology in Chromebook on top of it all was not helpful.
When you look at the conservative attack on public education, the prison industrial complex, et al., it really seems that this is the intention.
Is there proof the affluent ever were suffering? From the article we're discussing:
>Across grades and subjects, the NAEP results show that the top tenth of students are doing roughly as well as they always have, whereas those at the bottom are doing worse.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-...
I grew up near most of these districts, and and my mom taught in one of them. I was shocked at how low MCAS Reading scores have fallen. I was the first class to take them; it's not a hard test, and it's reportedly gotten even easier in the 30 years since I took it. And yet 30% of students in affluent districts can't pass them.
Also we encountered this personally when hiring a babysitter for our kids. She was a college junior, grew up in an adjacent city with $2.5M average house prices, was otherwise great with the kids. She struggled to get through The Lorax - my kindergartner could read it better than her.
>Although the kids who are lagging come from all backgrounds, they are disproportionately Black or Latino, live in a low-income household, are not native English speakers, or have a disability.
The "Income and Disability Achievement Gaps" graphs seems to show a higher percentage of non-income disadvantage / disabled students are meeting or exceeding expectations in the wealthy districts than statewide.
Anecdotal I guess but I feel like I'm seeing alot of people having kids suddenly.
It sort of is already. The segregation of Americans by school district based on what their property taxes are already accomplishes this. Observe the standards to which schools that are wealthier (because of better taxes) vs schools in areas with lower taxes. The parents of the kids in the former are expected to play a more imperative role, the kids are challenged a LOT more. My fourth grader was expected to do at least 3 detailed book reports, each book at least 200 pages per book, including learning to present her findings in a timed manner. They were graded informally on a detailed rubric. They advance kids to higher math grades based on the child’s skill level. So there are 4th graders doing 5th and some exceptional ones 6th grade math.
This contrasts with another school district we were in earlier. Very loving teachers. But they had no space to challenge the kids. Because the teachers had to own the responsibility of getting each kid across the finish line for the grade.
They still have drastically different quality of schools and student experiences though, because the kids are coming from very different home environments, parental expectations, cultural norms, etc.
That's not to say that the program wasn't helping, but the mere existence of such a program isn't enough to equalize that variable. Of course the points you bring up are important factors in education as well.
I'm not sure if the exact figures, but part of the issue is that it was a low tax jurisdiction in general, and presumably the program was implemented to patch the system and bring it up to par, which it only partly did. If the transfers were implemented on top of a system that wasn't already at crisis levels, no doubt net outcome would improve in kind.
I'm not sure it'd be desirable (let alone legal) to prevent that, though. The point is to raise up the kids that are doing poorly, not to make the kids doing well also do poorly.
South Bay?
The real issue is what you addressed with the introduction of phonics, which addresses the instruction and the material and how it’s taught. These are improvements that would be felt across all socioeconomic levels and schools across geographic areas. Another critical factor is parents and how they support their children and the time that parents have to support their children. Lower socioeconomic level families do not have time and do not have money to support children academically as they are working multiple low income jobs while trying to survive and pay rent and eat.
America is not solely made up of affluent kids.
The bigger issue is convincing education departments that phonics are the more successful way to learn reading.
It has examples of states which are seeing some improvements. Those states seem to be addressing one of the main problems this article highlights: they hold students to expectations and prevent them from advancing grades if they don’t meet the bar.
I just thought it aligned particularly well with the OP on that specific point.
While all this sold a story 'whole word' nonsense was going on in public schools (my mom was a public school teacher), our Catholic school (non union) used a phonics based curriculum. It was the teachers unions circulating misinformation to public school teachers about the efficacy of the 'whole word' method.
EDIT: Because I'm getting downvoted, let's go straight to the source. Here is the California Teacher's association itself highlighting its efforts to ban mandatory phonics-based instruction:
https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2025/04/read...
Mississippi Association of Educators (a teacher's union that is part of the National Education Association, aka the largest union in the US) supported the efforts to improve the literacy rates.
I'm fine with employees banding together. What CA and other states do (require teachers to pay dues to the union) is criminal.
Basically, the strength of the union correlates with educational outcomes: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/how-strong-ar...
As of 2006 (a bit dated), only 36% of MS teachers were in the union.
Person1> Don't trust Unions.
Person2> But you are using a union as an example.
Person1> No, my union is better than all the other unions. Mine makes a difference, thus I'm not a commie.
Person2> What?
> Teachers unions are political organizations that lean left. They are never going to want to get behind anything Mississippi does.
This teacher's union supported improved literacy rates in MS. Would be insane for any organization to not support that effort.
Also, the most effective left leaning organizations prioritize uplifting the South, including MS.
You're painting with an awfully broad brush there.
0: https://www.maetoday.org/about-mae/our-history
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate_Reeves
2: https://www.maetoday.org/about-mae/media-center/press-releas...
Because of this, the union has to do what teachers want, rather than vice versa.
I'm speaking from experience with the California Teacher's Association. CA mandates even non-member teachers to pay union dues.
EDIT: Here is an article from the CTA highlighting their efforts to fight phonics-based reading instruction: https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2025/04/read...
Woohoo! teachers unions!!!
also those kids who don't pass will hold those who do pass - as the next year teachers waste time teaching what the majority already knows
one complication is that standards for jobs you could live off of were at that point much lower... many more people could drop out and make a living, this is less often the case now
We’ve built a system where the performance of teachers and schools is measured by graduation rates, as if every student who doesn’t graduate on time is a failure of instruction. That’s nonsense. Some kids need more time. Some face life circumstances that derail their progress like undiagnosed learning disabilities, unstable home environments, trauma, poverty. There are hundreds, if not thousands of reasons a child might struggle in a given year, and pretending that all of them can be solved by pushing them forward anyway is not accomplishing anything but putting them in academic and later career situations that they are not prepared properly for.
What No Child Left Behind did was make an AWFUL perverse incentive where schools are indirectly ordered to pass every kid at every opportunity lest their already meager budgets get slashed even further. Children are not widgets moving along on an assembly line and we have spent decades now proving this fact.
It strikes me that US K-12 systems don't have a clear architecture to support, er, non-uniform progress. A student either moves to the next grade in all classes, or "repeats" a year. Or perhaps has remedial classes over the summer? Maybe in high-school the concept of "honors" classes becomes available.
Perhaps that represents a conflict between the social goals (keeping cohorts together) versus per-subject educational ones.
This works for middle and high-school students, where courses are somewhat independent. It doesn't for a third grader who can't read. They need the time to master what they haven't. Rushing that process compromises every year of education in front of them.
Obviously you could make a metric for this and if you're holding back say 50% of students there's probably a problem but a small portion isn't obviously a bad thing. Snark is fun but it isn't analysis.
Sending kids who haven't learned to read on to higher grades and having no standards for success is not a more "inclusive" policy than having benchmarks that must be passed.
Resources doesn't mean iPads and software subscriptions, it means teachers. Good teachers.
There's been a catastrophic collapse in numbers in the profession, and many of the leavers are at the more talented end. They're the ones who have the skills and quals to get better jobs elsewhere.
There's no point "raising expectations" unless you provide the resources to change what's possible.
Individually, students have the least agency in the entire system. They're at the mercy of parents, school boards, and administrators who may be actively hostile to the very idea of a broad liberal education, of corporate opportunists who are trying to sell unproven study aids of all kinds, and of the disapproval of their peer culture.
The one thing that can cut through this - sometimes - is inspiration and motivation from educators.
The "Mississippi Miracle" boils down to directing resources toward struggling kids. They hired reading coaches specifically for struggling students, provided teachers with literacy-based professional development resources, and created Individualized Reading Plans for struggling kids and their parents. Yes, they also held back kids who didn't pass a literacy exam (and moved them to teachers who specialized in helping struggling children), but failing more students was not the primary policy improvement here, and on its own it would do nothing.
"Low-expectations theory" (and the accompanying suggestion that progressives are somehow to blame) is an absurd diagnosis for a problem that was not solved by raising expectations, but rather by targeting available resources toward problem areas—a solution which is painfully obvious in hindsight. That doesn't have an ideological valence, though, and this article seems intent on sticking it to progressives somehow.
It would remove the stigma of "being held back", as there are no levels in a strict sense, just cumulative progress.
A system like this would address that issue, and could prevent education resources from being applied redundantly.
FTA: "Elements of so-called equitable grading, which is supposed to be more resistant to bias than traditional grading, have taken off in American schools. Roughly 40 percent of middle-school teachers work in schools where there are no late penalties for coursework, no zeroes for missing coursework, and unlimited redos of tests."
> It would remove the stigma of "being held back", as there are no levels in a strict sense, just cumulative progress
These students do worse. Absent a challenge, you get the pedagogical equivalent of button mashing. Evaluation is a necessary component of progress. It seems that if the evaluation is stripped of consequence, it ceases to evaluate.
To be clear, I am talking about replacing grade levels (K, 1, 2, ..., 12), not graded assessments. I updated my comment to clarify this.
Let's not even get into how kneecapped teachers are in classroom management. A student reported him for pointing at them and touching them when he was never fewer than 3 feet away pointing away from them. The students know they have the power now, and they're definitely not going to be told what to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholastic_probation
You could also reward students for outstanding accomplishments.
You might need more carrots and sticks since the penalty for being held back is lessened.
We already run colleges this way, granular down to an academic quarter.
There are methods that you could use to increase mentorship and attention by distributing expertise to less-credentialed individuals. This is done in many other credentialed institutions, like hospitals, colleges, or universities.
Beyond that, you could utilize technology in blended learning. This lessens a load on a teacher.
From what I understand, much of this cannot happen easily because there is a gigantic top-down system distributing rules to institutions. On top of that you have labor agreements that blend into those rules and so on.
It seems accomplishing major reform, outside of curricula alone, would be a massive undertaking.
Easy. Parents of young children are on their phones more than ever before. That means less reading and more screen time.
One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home. Kids who are exposed to books and reading at home overwhelmingly out-achieve kids who are not. It starts earlier than people think and the effects are longer lived than people think. School standards have almost nothing to do with it.
This "effect" is the textbook example of correlation != causation. By which I mean, it was literally in my AP Psych textbook in high school.
There's a correlation component, but also there absolutely is a causal connection of access to books and parents reading to children.
Lots of books in the home? Great: you have parents who read for enjoyment, have a stable space for living that has lots of room for books (in the pre-eBook/tablet era, my book collection at college was maybe 1/10 of the books in my parents’ house that were specifically mine, not theirs; just their casual reading filled a wall, and they could afford to install built-in shelves as opposed to moving frequently and having to move both books and shelves), and enough money to buy books. Imagination Library (or similar) can fix the last one, but not the first two.
With the extreme stratification of wealth follows the stratification of... everything else, really.
That's one reason that the solution to educational inequalities may not lie in education policy at all, but in tax/economic policy. Maybe the most expedient way to improve education outcomes is to just take a large amount of money from wealthy people and give it to everyone else.
Given the evidence in the article, wouldn't it make sense to try simply holding students to standards--the thing that caused the last wave of achievement gain--instead of another novel and divisive policy treatment?
FTA: “High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses.”
Disagree if you will.
Unless you think that men can't be good caretakers or something about it being a women's job, then good luck, your on your own lol
So actually in this sub thread the relevant age is 0 to 5.
By your own admission, a father cannot alone provide care for an infant. And if there are siblings then the critical time period will stretch - perhaps to 3 or 4 years.
Apparently the eldest would be reading chapter books by then, according to other comments in this thread. But I do not understand it.
It is a bitter choice. For mothers to have a life outside of motherhood it is the children who are deprived.
Cmon what you are saying is 100% false. Men are 100% capable of caring for infants and toddlers. Formula exists and there has been no large scale study that has shown a significant long term impact for formula usage. All benefits of breastfeeding are minor or unable to be separated from characteristics of the mother.
Women entering the workforce is not the death of child achievement. It is not even parents having time since there was only an extremely narrow window where the one parent household was a thing and it wasn't even the majority of the population. Income has always correlated with achievement and wealthy parents pay money for their child's enrichment not particularly engage with the children themselves. There are kindergarteners at my kid's school in tutoring to get them ahead. These kids are not even behind. That's not the mother spending time on their kid that's boosting the test scores in my district. It's wealth.
Breast feeding increases IQ: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26211556/
Formula causes obesity and diabetes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812877/
Breast feeding decreases infant mortality: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1...
You can do more of your own research if you want to be convinced. You can ignore it if you don’t like the sound of it.
A family friend of ours (retired Tesla engineer) taught his 18 month the alphabet. He did it with a bunch of alphabet puzzles [2] and blocks. My 16mo is showing similar interest, but unfortunately I don't have the time to sit down with him, go over each letter, and explain how they go together. He will grab a book (or 5) off the bookshelf, bring it over to me, and say "Read this", though.
For math - my kid had learned the powers of two up through 4096 by kindergarten through playing Snake-2048. My wife and I started introducing addition and subtraction just in ordinary life - we'd say "Okay, if we have 4 strawberries, and you reserve one each for mommy and daddy, how many do you get to eat?"
Now (age 7) he'll quiz me in the car with seemingly random numbers like "What's 177 * 198?", and it's a good opportunity for me to introduce a bunch of mental math tricks like binomial expansions for multiplying numbers near 50 or 100, or prime factorizations. I'll usually turn the questions back on him too, like "Well, that's 200 * 177 - 2 * 177. What's 2 * 177?" and then he's like "I dunno" and then I'll say "What's 2 * 180?" and he says "360" and then I say "Now subtract 2 * 3" and he says "354" and then I'm like "Okay, if 2 * 177 = 354, what's 200 * 177" and he'll say "35,400" (because he already knows the trick for adding zeros) and then I'll say "Subtract 354" and he'll say "35,046" which is the correct answer.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36IBDpTRVNE
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Attmu-Toddlers-Alphabet-Preschoolers-...
Similarly there’s a huge difference between knowing how to count up and down between small numbers under 10 and mastery of arithmetic.
Here, double digit addition is not covered until late 1st grade. The focus is addition under 20.
There are definitely preschools in Silicon Valley where the kids are reading chapter books by 4. We chose not to send our kids to one (we don't want them to miss out on play and socialization for academics), but we have a few friends that have sent their kids there.
Some things you cannot buy for love or money!
“Can you read? And by that I don’t just mean interpreting Logotype…” “No one uses that any more,” said Quin. “You’re talking about the symbols on your underwear that tell you not to use bleach. That sort of thing.”
“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.”
People making an actual good argument don't front, nor bookend it with a thesis on "the nature of truth".
I like using the term thermodynamic truth myself. Such as what you would find if you ran time backwards. The problem we humans have is we attempt to put absolute truth on complex statistical systems. They don't realize they outcome they saw once was either random or by a set of circumstances that can't be replicated.
“Can you read? And by that I don’t just mean interpreting Logotype…”
“No one uses that any more,” said Quin. “You’re talking about the symbols on your underwear that tell you not to use bleach. That sort of thing.”
“We don’t have underwear, or bleach—just the bolt, the chord, and the sphere,” said Fraa Orolo, patting the length of cloth thrown over his head, the rope knotted around his waist, and the sphere under his bottom. This was a weak joke at our expense to set Quin at ease.
Quin stood up and tossed his long body in a way that made his jacket fly off. He was not a thick-built man but he had muscles from working. He whirled the jacket round to his front and used his thumbs to thrust out a sheaf of tags sewn into the back of the collar. I could see the logo of a company, which I recognized from ten years ago, though they had made it simpler. Below it was a grid of tiny pictures that moved. “Kinagrams. They obsoleted Logotype.”
We have cameras and planes and stuff. How is the idea that downtown is a burnt out hole in the ground full of rubble (or not) an actual controversy?
You can trace right-wing propaganda in the US painting cities as worse and more violent (and, specifically, overrun over by criminally-inclined immigrants who refuse to assimilate...) back to at least the early 20th century. The rhetoric from back then is uncannily familiar, as are the proposed solutions. But of course nobody who needs to realize that the "good old days of the good old days" were full of the exact same complaints (and we're all still here, everything turned out OK) will be curious & interested enough to find that out.
I don’t find them useful, really, but the bigger problem lately has been complex emoji (so, not just a thumbs-up) in a size that is fine for reading the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets but useless for trying to pack a lot of info into a very pixel-limited block. If you think this sounds nuts, wait until you’re about 45 and presbyopia kicks in. It is rapid and merciless.
…
“Why do you suppose it became obsolete, then?” asked Orolo.
“So that the people who brought us Kinagrams could gain market share.”
Orolo frowned and considered this phrase. “That sounds like bulshytt too.”
“So that they could make money.”
“Very well. And how did those people achieve that goal?”
“By making it harder and harder to use Logotype and easier and easier to use Kinagrams.”
“How annoying. Why did the people not rise up in rebellion?”
“Over time we were led to believe that Kinagrams really were better.”
…
“Where were we?” Quin asked, then answered his own question: “You were asking me if I could read, not these, but the frozen letters used to write Orth.” He nodded at my leaf, which was growing dark with just that sort of script.
“Yes.”
“I could if I had to, because my parents made me learn. But I don’t, because I never have to,” said Quin. “My son, now, he’s a different story.”
---------------------------
That section plus Samman's little bit about the "Artificial Inanity" systems that made the internet basically unusable are hitting way too close to home these days.
2008. Stephenson is 10 years ahead of the current discourse, as usual.
I live in the UK which has been slow compared to the USA when it comes to TV. In the 1960s, Americans were watching 4+ hours a day of colour TV, with a vast choice of channels. It took is about three decades to catch up in the UK. I think the same can be said for Europe and elsewhere outside the USA. We have just been behind with TV watching and several other American conveniences, such as driving everywhere and convenience foods.
At the start of this year I made 'reading part of an actual book' my new years' resolution. It was going well for all of six weeks (then I had to spend a log time from home, away from my books), but why did I need to make it something I was committed too with a resolution?
There was a time when I would literally fight over books, magazines and newspapers with family and friends. Before then, there was a time when, as a child, I would be reading by moonlight until the small hours.
Then, before my time, before TV, the cinema and radio, was a time when people would go out to a hall to listen to someone read the latest Dickens installment. That was 'peak book' even though literacy wasn't great for everyone.
Nowadays books have been relegated to what people have on show in the back of a Zoom call, sometimes contrived, often not so contrived. There is a long history of doing this. Middle class people used to buy books for the parlour to show they were educated, often with out of copyright classics, hardbound.
I suspect that some people read more for the 'bragging rights' than for the pleasure of reading. I also suspect that any surveys on book reading habits are going to be unreliable since it is easy to say 'year I read three books this year' and cite the three that you had to read under duress as a schoolchild.
(The last level 9 robot that hasn't killed itself is now the Dean of NYU, and in the 25th century it hires the first man who has learned to read in 400 years – to translate the title cards in silent films. Hilarity ensues. Well, no, but there is kind of a happy ending.)
As a video editor, I’ve encountered multiple moments where an older person is incapable of even noticing that we’ve cut from one angle to another, and the amount of times I’ve had to convince them that “yes the audience will absolutely notice that incredibly obvious mistake and we need to fix it” is astronomical.
I’ve seen video after video of old people seemingly incapable of identifying even the most basic CGI or AI videos. And all you techies know how clearly this issue extends into the basic usage of a computer interface. How many times do I need to remind my dad how to turn on the subtitles?
We can sit here and lambast the younger generations all we want, but I refuse to do it without accurately comparing them to the previous generations, which IMO were clearly less capable than we previously thought.
Still, the idea of watching as much video, listening to as much music, et c., as most people do and not putting a little thought & effort into "reading" it better/more-fully seems like an odd choice, yet it's the norm. Apparently not even wanting to engage with the "why did the creator make that choice? OK, this part achieves effect X, but how does it do that? What does it seem like this other part was trying to do, and does that illuminate or enhance any elements of or mysteries in the rest of the work?" side of things seems totally alien to me.
I'm often impressed by the multi-media literacy and production capabilties of younger colleagues. But to be honest, I will likely always prefer to think and to communicate by writing and not by making videos.
I think your criticism is fair - assessing the quality and reliability of information is different today than it was 40 years ago. And getting harder as more of it becomes un-bylined, remixed, bot-driven propaganda pushed by platforms without reputational skin the game for truthfulness.
But I'm not sure I can be convinced that reading and writing aren't critical thinking skills, regardless of what other mediums exist. Maybe that's just generational myopia on my part. Certainly, these seem like more critical skills than mastering the remote control.
If I point out to my dad that the actors are in a slightly different position before and after a cut, I can imagine my dad saying "Okay. Who cares?"
The rule of law is holding on a bit tighter, and quality of life isn't as bleak as the States, but Canada needs some serious reforms to break the hold of the elite class.
Seriously, look at how the temporary foreign worker program enriched the elites and then is used by their centralized media machines to radicalize the population against immigrants. It's a bad joke, and this exact regulatory capture runs deep and wide.
The US only has one additional political party beyond China has, and arguably both US parties are simply 'wings' of a larger party owned by the actual ruling class, something neither party wishes to acknowledge. When viewed through this lens the US and China aren't that different politically, and at the same time China is far more meritocratic and promotes leaders on a much more results-oriented basis.
It's like a household where the voters are the kids and the leaders are the parents. In China the parents are happily married and communicate with each other. Kids can't really manipulate the parents, but the parents are reasonable and the household is demonstrably a successful one. In the US the parents are bitterly divorced, bickering, and are easily played against each other by the kids. The household is a disaster, in constant disarray and the kids are going to end up dropping out of high school. However, at the end of the day both of these households are overseen by the same leadership system: the parents.
What would happen if we took a more consequentialist look at democracy rather than caring mainly about the forms?
There's also a significant growing political push to transition away from FPTP voting in the US, which would dismantle the current duopoly.
You can get locked up with a 2 million dollar bond for posting a facebook meme in the US, as demonstrated by a recent case[1]. I don't know what value the transparency holds here? It's certainly already crossed the Rubicon into overt authoritarianism in the past year.
[1] https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-...
The transparency I referred to was primarily to the American political system's airing of its dirty laundry out in the open, which is inherently going to look more chaotic than disputes between internal factions of a single party because so much of it is performative.
as a European who frequently travels to both, in recent history it was at an American airport, not China that I was being asked for my social media profiles and had a 30 minute discussion because they didn't believe me when I told them that I don't actively maintain a social media presence.
Of course China has no free discourse as such, but at least there is a gentleman's agreement in the sense that if I don't stage a protest they'll not bother me, whereas the US now increasingly looks like Latin America, where you need to be afraid of being harangued by some goon squad of people hired off the streets at the behest of some kleptocrat
it isn't though, that's the point. It's already more disorderly, arbitrary and unpredictable, the point is you have no expectation when you go to the US these days. You're not getting Prussian/Chinese autocracy in America, it lacks the people for it. You're going straight to Turkmenistan with the leader building himself golden statues of his favorite horses on the taxpayers dime, not the shiny trains
The reality is that everyone in China who managed to build up some wealth sooner or later exfiltrates it despite capital controls. And Russia prior to the war was similar. That's a large part of why London's and Vancouver's real estate markets got screwed up so hard - tons of real estate just sitting empty because it's just a proxy, a storage for wealth in a country that has laws and follows laws instead of the will of a dictator.
I’ve seen growing arguments, even on the right about wealth inequality being an issue. Like specifically too much of the S&P 500 is tied up in 10 companies.
And this video on a bro-podcast where a right wing marketer/economist talks about wealth consolidation: https://youtu.be/ajGmL1gus9A?si=5Vf4dW_7jtK8A5y2
Specifically something like “I’m right-wing on income but not on wealth”
One of the deep ironies of the current world order is that as America recedes in power, other countries are receding even faster (and less documented). America has too much in the way of natural resources and favorable demographics and can continue to fail forward for a long time.
edit: fertility rate in the US is near historic lows. maybe you're thinking of something else re: demographic trends, but that seems pretty alarming to me.
China is at 1.7, but I am not sure I trust the number if they report it themselves.
Either way, I have no idea where you take that there's a large number of children being born.
https://thefeminismproject.com/global-news/china-cracks-down...
"One in four students today is chronically absent, meaning that they miss more than a tenth of instructional days, a substantial increase from pre-pandemic averages. ... Roughly 40 percent of middle-school teachers work in schools where there are no late penalties for coursework, no zeroes for missing coursework, and unlimited redos of tests."
That alone may explain the declines in at the bottom. "80% of success is showing up", as Woody Allen once said.
Writes and Writes not (October 2024) https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html
>I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.
>One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who are good at setting up computers know how many people aren't; writers know how many people need help writing.
>The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard. ...
> States were given latitude to spend their funds as they saw fit, which, it seems, was a mistake. Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems and obtaining electric buses.
And then later, discussing Mississippi:
> it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools.
Leaving aside the idea that capital expenditures on aging school buildings and busses is a mistake instead of an absolute requirement, the author criticizes states that spent money on professional development, and then later praised Mississippi for (among other things) training instructors—that's what professional development is.
> Billions of dollars are spent — and largely wasted — every year on professional development for teachers that is curriculum-agnostic, i.e., aimed at generic, disembodied teaching skills without reference to any specific curriculum.
> “A huge industry is invested in these workshops and trainings,” argued a scathing 2020 article by David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. “Given, on average, barely more than a single day of professional support to learn about the new materials; knowing that their students will face assessments that lack any integration with their curriculum; and subject to principals’ evaluations that don’t assess curriculum use, teachers across America are barely using these new shiny objects — old habits win out.”
> Mississippi improved its training through a 2013 law mandating that elementary school teachers receive instruction in the science of reading. It also sent coaches directly into low-performing classrooms to guide teachers on how to use material.
If you walk into a cafe it would be odd to see someone reading a book. And its almost impossible to buy physical newspapers even the Sunday edition for the NY Times as most grocery stores or convenience stores don't carry them.
Personally I'm also guilty of listening to more podcasts and background play -- but I only watch YT visual content when its interesting there is just too much stuff out there. I consume most of my news online -- so my reading comes from mostly articles. Its just more convenient and practical now -- though requires much less effort than say reading longer form content of a book or long essay.
Lately I've been going on TikTok just out of curiosity for entertainmentto watch amusing or funny videos. Its basically like digital crack -- before you know it you spent an hour just watching mindless content and its designed to get you hooked. It really is low-effort instant gratification at its worst (probably worse than porn -- because you stop after a while once satisfied.)
And you see kids as old as 1-2 years old with personal devices watching videos -- so it seems to be a disturbing trend And I heard that professors don't even assign books since they know their students won't read them and will just ChatGPT for summaries.
There's a convincing body of evidence that the way you get kids to read books is pretty simple: read them books that interest them and then give them access to more interesting books as well as time to read to self. Unfortunately, the lethal combo of Common Core and No Child Left Behind has left teachers at best too time-strapped (or, at worst, uninterested) in doing so because of mandatory curriculum and testing.
I read to my kids, make sure they see me reading, and talk to them about both what I'm reading and what they're reading. They've done fine despite awful reading instruction at school.
That said I mostly agree with this and think for one, if foreign language was appreciated more here, maybe people would read more
Why surely?
The reason I'd push back on that simplification is it's much easier to simply absorb--without engagement--information from video. The struggle that comes with reading not only measurably increases retention. It also increases the chances that you're going to notice you're not dealing with a quality source.
There are far fewer dumbfuck textbooks on almost any topic than negatively-informative videos on YouTube, for example.
> I could read a 200 page academic work and if the work is poorly written then I haven't gained much
Could you give an example? Not of a work that's wrong. Just poorly written.
Plenty of classical sources are, by modern standards, incredibly poorly written. Yet there isn't a substitute for reading the originals.
One can learn from videos as well as from written sources. But it's harder to do right. Easier to do wrong. And you'll have put yourself in a silo from experts, who tend to communicate via and thus reference writing.
It is an exercise in cognitive flexibility and challenge. It builds the capability to understand complex ideas and challenging contexts. These are important skills in navigating a world that is in fact complex and nuanced.
If someone can only understand short sentences and bullet lists, they will struggle in the real world and be vulnerable to manipulation.
Thanks for the nice reply. I think it's harder to skim a video and say you understood than it is to skim a long book and say you understood, and I know countless people who do this. So if I watch a video on a topic and someone else reads a paper on a topic, but they may have skimmed, I see merit in watching videos because of this. I would think blind people feel similarly. Can you even skim videos at all?
And yes, I do agree, Youtube can have false info. On the other hand, it can also have info that hasn't been written about yet, and I think there's a lot to say about the fact it covers stuff that otherwise might not get written about, but of course that's a separate topic.
To be honest, there are lots of bad books. I guess we'd have to measure what types a book a person reads, not just how often or how much they read. A local bookstore to me has a ton of westerns. Even if I read them all I'd be worse off. In fact I have read some, lol.
And now for an example!
https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/Deterritorializin...
Sorry to throw raygun under the bus, but I think her paper is a fantastic example.
And you're right, many classical works are by modern standards bad. I have read some of the norse sagas. And I do agree with you, it is important to read the originals!
Harder to do right? Again, uff. I don't know. Books certainly are more informative and more thought out, and more detailed. I think I agree there, and I too hate that people don't read for entertainment.
But reading generally, outside a certain type of books / texts, I think there is still risk. But I do agree, there's lots of bad video / podcast content.
Sorry for the disorganized answer.
Everything else would be better read if you care about learning (being able to recall information and put it to use at a later stage).
Video essays and podcasts just provide a "trust me bro" level of understanding for the viewer, that is useless apart from arguing on the internet.
It depends on the material
> trust me bro
For what it's worth, we all know books can be this way too. I am just saying it can be productive to get information over video / audio, and I am not trying to say necessarily that Youtube for example is as reputable
The experience of a few outlier states gives reason for optimism. Matthew Chingos and Kristin Blagg, two scholars at the Urban Institute, computed “demographically adjusted NAEP scores,” examining how effective states are at educating kids after accounting for significant differences in socioeconomic status. Their analysis of the 2024 NAEP results found that Mississippi was best at educating kids in fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading, and eighth-grade math. (In 2013, Mississippi was at the bottom of the unadjusted league table.) When I computed the correlation between these demographically adjusted scores and state spending, I found that there was none. If you’re an underprivileged kid in America, you will, on average, get the best education not in rich Massachusetts but in poor Mississippi, where per-pupil spending is half as high.
There is actually no change in reading scores before covid if you adjust for demographic change in the student population: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-group-.... Scores for white, black, and hispanic students went up consistently from 2000-2012 then stayed flat until 2020. The drop came only after covid.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
- Carl Sagan, 1995
What we need to be ready for is adjusting our expectations that every kid has to perform at the same level. “Standards” are business models, and they don’t apply to children and developing minds. Schools should be willing (and allowed) to organize classes where students read and write at the same level. That would be more equitable than working towards the middle of the statistical range, which neglects both those students at the top as well as those at the bottom. Focus instruction where it’s most needed, and work just beyond where those students are capable of. That is what leads to progress.
And stop giving everyone the same test. Start there and adjust downward.
> In addition, since 1996, main NAEP assessments have been providing accommodations to allow more students with disabilities and students who were not fluent in English to participate. Traditionally, the long-term trend assessments have not provided such accommodations. However, in 2004, it was possible to provide accommodations and assess a greater proportion of students.
The only kids I could manage to get to actually read anything were the kids who admit their parents read to them every night, and they were proud to read/show off essentially in front of the other kids.
The majority of the kids couldn't do much more than look at the pictures and got bored (of their 15 page books!) before even flipping through all of the pages.
It seemed pretty obvious that "school" meant more of a daycare/vacation for the parents than a learning experience for the children.
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
It's largely discredited, yet it still persists.
That has stopped existing over the last decades. Parents do not read and so neither do their children.
Reading is now a niche hobby. If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop.
The amount of people actually reading intellectually challenging literature is miniscule. Is it any surprise to have an illiteracy problem in a country where nobody reads?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/science-fictio...
People read for a variety of reasons and I am not saying that people should not be reading their genre fiction slop. But to a culture of reading belongs the idea that reading challenging works is also important and that a deeper meaning is to be found in classical works.
If we want a society which reads we need books which are more than movies without images. We need to tell adults that reading is a worthwhile endeavor, especially when reading complex material. Only then literacy can rise again, because only then will people believe that it is important to be able to read.
Why do you just completely ignore what I say? The answer is already part of my last response to you.
Again, the distinction is the why if you read it for entertainment it is slop. Most of genre fiction is terrible slop which totally fails at "quality of the prose, the depth of the characters, the complexity of the themes, etc.".
You should ask yourself why you are so upset by this distinction. Classics are books which stood the test of time, which have been read for hundreds if not thousands of years. Engaging with that or the 1 millionth Harry Potter clone, magical school romance, is incomparable.
1. It must be "complex".
2. It must be over 100 years old.
3. The reader must seek it out for reasons other than entertainment.
The first one sounds good on paper, but I ask again (and observe how you tried to dodge the question): WHO defines which books are considered "complex"?
The second one is baffling. Certainly if a book is still sought out centuries after being read, it is probably good! But this also rejects the idea that anyone writing in the 21st century - or most of the 20th, for that matter - is at all worthy of consideration. I don't think we're going to create a culture of literacy by rejecting everything modern.
And the third, the real bee in your bonnet, the idea that people would seek out a book for entertainment, read it, and be entertained. You claim to want a culture of literacy, but you've spent more words bashing the fiction of Sanderson and Scalzi and King (and the readers thereof) than on the increasing number of non-readers this topic is about.
If Sanderson recommended that his fans read The Odyssey, or King recommended Poe, their readers would surely seek them out to be entertained, right? Does that eliminate Homer and Poe from your consideration?
You want to create a "literate society" which treats reading as an exercise in self-flagellation. Like giving yourself homework. I don't think this will work.
Say what you will about Rowling (and I will: she sucks!) but she got kids reading, and interested in mythology, for a good number of years. Notably before the rise of social media.
According to you I bashed certain authors, but I did not name any author at all. Nor did I even say that you should not read genres fiction, in fact I said it is a perfectly fine thing to do and that I was an avid reader of genre fiction myself. How you went from my words, to your claims about me is baffling.
>The first one sounds good on paper, but I ask again (and observe how you tried to dodge the question): WHO defines which books are considered "complex"?
What a meaningless question. It does not matter at all. What matters is that the reader is challenging himself.
>The second one is baffling. Certainly if a book is still sought out centuries after being read, it is probably good! But this also rejects the idea that anyone writing in the 21st century - or most of the 20th, for that matter - is at all worthy of consideration.
This is just false. A totally nonsensical arguments. Classics can exist and good authors can exist as well. There is no contradiction.
>And the third, the real bee in your bonnet, the idea that people would seek out a book for entertainment, read it, and be entertained.
What a convincing argument. Except I said the exact opposite.
>If Sanderson recommended that his fans read The Odyssey, or King recommended Poe, their readers would surely seek them out to be entertained, right? Does that eliminate Homer and Poe from your consideration?
No. How did you even get the idea?
>You want to create a "literate society" which treats reading as an exercise in self-flagellation.
Just another made up argument.
>Say what you will about Rowling
But I did not say anything about Rowling. Not a single word.
Genuinely. I hate your post. You are responding to an argument which does not exist. I hate talking to you. If you are the average genre fiction reader than illiteracy is truly preferable.
Person A: "The distinction is the why; if you read it for entertainment it is slop." Person B: "If we read Poe or Homer for entertainment, is it slop?" Person A: "How did you even get the idea?"
I will admit that I misunderstood your "classics" argument. I thought you were saying a book has to be a classic AND complex (a term which, at this point in the thread, is literally meaningless) AND not read for entertainment, but really you're saying it can be ANY of those, right? Like, Doyle's Holmes stories are not always challenging literature, but they are classics, and thus worthy of attention. Whereas if we were speaking in 1925, they'd be "genre slop". I think I now CORRECTLY understand your arbitrary criteria.
So complexity is determined by the reader's intention, to either challenge themselves or to be entertained? I found Dan Brown difficult to read, due to my dislike of his prose style and incessant brand name usage; would reading Dan Brown be a worthy self-challenge by your standards?
Also, a note for your future discourses: the phrase "say what you will" does not imply that you already said a thing. It basically means "bash this person if you want, they're up for it, but I'm about to say something semi-favorable about them". Is this the first time you've seen that phrase?
You want a culture of literary snobbishness. You want to look down at people who don't read "complex" literature, where "complex" is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder is you.
You think books that are recent, easy to comprehend, and entertaining are "slop" - a word used to describe pig food; you can't stop yourself from using it.
A lot of people don't actually want to look down on others in the way you're doing! If being a serious reader means looking down on others and calling their books "slop", you're going to drive people away.
Books should be for everybody. The full-time worker who wants to kick back at the end of the day and read some romance or fantasy (or romantasy :) ) is doing more for their literacy and empathy than any social media use would accomplish. By discouraging this - and you are, every time you call it "slop" - you are contributing to illiteracy.
All this is what I was trying to express to you. I tried to emphasize, because I am a reader of genre fiction and I do love books. Just like you.
But actually you made me rethink this. Reading slop is worthless. The only reason to do is because it is marginally better than watching tiktok. I will look at someone reading Kings slop novels just like I look at someone watching TikTok slop. Reading for the sake of reading is worthless. Someone being illiterate or only reading slop makes no difference at all. Yes I do look down at you. Reading romance novels does make you a worse person. Sci-fi is for people who are semi tech literate losers who do not shower enough. Fantasy is for people running around in plastic armor as if they were 5.
I guess a thank you is in order for making me come to this realization.
If you wanted to say that, you would have.
You claim to see people browsing genre fiction in a bookstore as consuming "slop", but now that you're called out on it, you claim that everyone gets to decide for themselves what's challenging? You can't know what is challenging or complicated to those readers. You're being elitist and condescending when you judge people and books this way.
There's actually a pretty easy on-ramp from genre fiction to serious literature. You can take the average Sanderson reader and introduce them to more advanced genre authors like Bradbury, Wolfe, Le Guin, or Asimov. Here, they will find books which challenge the reader to understand the characters, and to reflect on their own society. At that point, the reader is primed for advanced reading - they'll have seen how themes, characters, and events all reinforce each other in interesting ways. And from this, you can introduce the "classics" and the "complex" and the "literary" - they'll be ready.
Where you see pig food, I see a path forward.
Do you really think I would care about the opinions of a slop reader after that.
"If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop."
You are no more judgy or condescending now than you were yesterday.
"What I wanted to say was that people should read books which challenge themselves. That the judge of complexity should be they and that it is not up to me to decide what people read."
What you actually said:
"If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop."
Perhaps before refocusing on your snobbery, you should educate yourself on language and sentence construction. Maybe something remedial? For there to be such a huge gulf between what you intended to say and what you actually said, is an indication of deficiencies whose correction is beyond what these forums could provide.
This sort of thing makes kids resent reading. Especially kids, like me, who were given extremely unrealistic goals to meet because they happen to have a high reading level. Plus you're restricted to books that are: 1. Your exact reading level. 2. In your school library. 3. Have A.R. tests available. That, especially in smaller schools, is an extremely difficult set of criteria for meeting a goal. It made me HATE reading because there were no books of any interest to me, but I had to read the most bizarre (and, frankly, age inappropriate) things to meet the goal and get a good grade.
Bring back Pizza Hut and toss A.R. back in hell where it came from.
At the same time I was a very avid reader, who spend a lot of time reading books.
Number of books Americans read per year is "a smaller number than Gallup has measured in any prior survey dating back to 1990"
per https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-...
> Test scores from NAEP, short for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released this year show that 33 percent of eighth graders are reading at a level that is “below basic”—meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea. That is the highest share of students unable to meaningfully read since 1992.
However, looking the NAEP report card, they say reading scores in 2024 are not significantly different from 1992, i.e. test scores stayed roughly the same, both for grade 4 and grade 8. For 4th graders, the average reading score went 217 (1992), 220 (2019), and 215 (2024). For 8th graders, the average reading score went 260 (1992), 263 (2019), and 258 (2024). In fact they state explicitly that there is no statistically significant difference in reading scores between 1992 and 2024.
> Compared to the first reading assessment in 1992, the average score was not significantly different in 2024.
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g4_8/...
Furthermore, the test was re-designed in 2004 to allow more students with disabilities to take the test:
> In addition, since 1996, main NAEP assessments have been providing accommodations to allow more students with disabilities and students who were not fluent in English to participate. Traditionally, the long-term trend assessments have not provided such accommodations. However, in 2004, it was possible to provide accommodations and assess a greater proportion of students.
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/bridge_study.aspx
This would suggest that the decline in scores for the lowest-performing students is due to ESL students or those with disabilities having greater access.
The idea that literacy rates are basically the same as they were in the 1990s is not as exciting or eye-catching as "America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy", but it seems better supported by the actual data.
> States were given latitude to spend their funds as they saw fit, which, it seems, was a mistake. Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems and obtaining electric buses. “The scientific term for this is that we didn’t get jack shit out of that money,” says Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank. “There are some studies that can detect small impacts, but they’re small. I think it’s also fair to say that a lot of the money was wasted.”
> Then, in 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which returned responsibility for improving low-performing schools to the states. But according to Martin West, the academic dean of Harvard’s education school, “most states have not been particularly ambitious in the design of those systems.”
Joe hill died for nothing it seems.
> Some have called it the “Mississippi miracle” ...
> A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them. In 2013, Mississippi enacted a law requiring that third graders pass a literacy exam to be promoted to the next grade. It didn’t just issue a mandate, though; it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools. Louisiana’s improvements came about after a similar policy cocktail was administered, starting in 2021.
I would be interested to know more about the approach with literacy coaches. I donate to a charity that does 1 on 1 reading tutoring: https://readingpowerinc.org/
If we cannot as a society teach our children how to read, something is very wrong and we need to invest heavily in fixing it.
But that basically amounts to probably just learning phonics indirectly through examples and drawing patterns, and specifically is an exception and not the norm. And children's books even if they don't use the phonetic alphabet teach through example when read properly.
I don't know enough about whole language learning theory and its development aside from the fact that it has been discredited. Perhaps it was based off of the outliers and wrongly assuming that the higher end of the early literacy bell curve's techniques would be generally applicable?
> High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses
in the article, when they're actually doing much worse as well, which can be seen from the median (or top) scores in STEM competitions. All the financial incentives are for schools and teachers to focus on their bottom 20% of students, and even if they cared about their top students (culturally, most education departments do not), it's not even feasible to collect that data, short of signing everyone up for the AMC 12. So, naturally, the percent of elementary schools offering gifted programs has declined by fifteen (twenty?) percent in the last twenty years, and the general standards and curricula have been lowered to teach to the 20th percentile. This also creates a cultural issue where many students recognize they're bored, and that schools are not trying to teach them, so they become disaffected and stop caring. My friends in high school joked that school was for socializing, and frankly, what other purpose does it serve anymore for most kids?
Schools have always been like that, at least if you ask the kids. The difference is whether the parents value education and expect their kids to work hard and study, or if they only see the school as a daycare center that allows them to work full time. And whether the wider society values education.
Somehow I ended up with a really high end education system, and went to public school my last few years. As I get on in age, I realize that school systems vary so wildly it is shocking.
I thought that English was taught in a specific way letters -> phonics -> words -> sentences, but it appears that was abandoned for "Whole Language" approach which upon reading sounds insane to me!
Some of my younger friends (young millennial, early Z) have real issues "sounding out words", and I guess that is the effect of no phonics.
As much as it is socioeconomic divide, a nice part of DoDD schools is that the corporal's kids and the general's kids all go to the same school. To be fair, they are usually well funded and have career teachers, along with what is shaped like a national curriculum. The reason for this is if you move, and you will in the military, you can continue grades easily without having to interrupt your path.
Ex: in DoDD school, 9th grade had "world history", which didn't coincide with my 10th grade move to public school which required "American history" in 9th grade, so I was held back(!) in history to take American with 9th graders when I was in 10th grade.
Education, for the basics, in my mind should not deviate too hard from what we have learned over the years. It is fun and exciting to experiment with "new methods" but pretty much everyone I know that had common core or new math or xyz new 21st century teaching method is abysmally behind both in speed and skill from people that were taught in more traditional methods.
It's very bad in the ~20yo segment from HS no college. My mom works at a deli shop and people don't understand fractions. Let alone fraction<->decimal conversions on the scales. She is in complete disbelief this is real. (She is 68, retired, and still works because she wants to be useful!)
There's really not much else to it. Laura Bush's push for literacy was well intentioned but she did not anticipate the anti phonics backlash that would ensue due to her husband's politics.
The is not some kook take, yet no one talks about it in general discourse, despite plenty of reporting on it. Teachers unions and public schools in general, which typically lean left, have been fighting a war on phonics for several decades. My mother, who was a teacher herself, noted this. She was not born in the US, so didn't understand why it was seen as political to teach children sounding out words.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2022/04/12/lets-n...
We have this idea in America that conservatives are dumb and want lower standards for education. Of course, figures like Trump totally substantiate this idea, but in reality, both sides are invested in making America stupider. Yes, Democrats attract more educated voters, but often times these voters are exceptional and their kids wouldn't suffer the same fate as a typical child. Until at least one party takes education seriously, nothing will change
Is this average spending per student? If so, then that is just a cover for inequality. Spending a vast amount on educating elite students, and spending hardly enough on the majority.
Other countries with much better education than the US spend less than $16,000 per student, but I imagine they are spending much more equitably. They don’t have one school that is incredible and then another school so broke that teachers and parents have to foot the bill for supplies.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-publi...
If you didn't let students into the 4th grade until they were 40 inches tall, you'd have taller than average 4th graders, but only because of survivorship bias.
Now it's getting praised in retrospect.
I'd wager this article is written if not necessarily by the same people, but most definitely by the same kind of people writing those previous critiques.
The NEAP follows cohorts which are four years apart in age - where (and how, and why) did The Atlantic rasterize this to "the decline"?
...and yes, the NEAP shows that all three of these cohorts suffered terribly from the school closures in parts of the USA, just as every serious expert predicted. The differences in the NEAP math unit are particularly obvious.
It feels very strange to cast this aside with a single sentence and no further analysis.
And contrary to popular narrative, the Bay Area boast school districts in the country. And if you look at top school districts in the country by any measurable metric, most of them are in blue states. I think Silicon Valley will be fine where it is.
A simple example. We recently blocked chatgpt in our org. A large number of people sent in tickets with justifications like, "I use it to write reports", "I use it to write email" and more.
My partner teaches at a major university (top 200 in the US). You know how they spend about 30 mins on test days? Making sure the students mark their scantrons correctly, so it matches the version of the test they took! The test are color coded, so if you took the "blue" test, then it's pretty obvious you need to mark the answer card with the Blue Test, not the yellow test, you've never took.
Bridge too far.
I won't go into how many have their fucking parents call the teacher to beg for grades, extensions, etc.
Talk about disheartening.
The Last Question book seems more prescient every single day.
Isn't there a video or a podcast of this?
/s
America is Sliding Towards Autocracy - FTFY
From the Atlantic article:
> An explanation that deserves equal consideration is what one might call the low-expectations theory. In short, schools have demanded less and less from students—who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.
The APM Reports article I linked above, in this context, would likely suggest that "low-expectations theory" might actually be an effect of a specific and well-intentioned methodology change: one that replaces phonics-based approaches with an effort to get pupils through books rather than being able to read every word. From APM Reports:
> For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by — memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know — are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process.
It goes on to describe the origins of the different methodologies, historical reactions, plenty of context on adoption, visual examples. There's an ongoing debate here, but it provides real food for thought.
The Atlantic article could have done something similar, focusing on the methodologies at hand. Instead, it tries to conclude by assigning blame based on political affiliation:
> But for Democrats, who pride themselves on belonging to the party of education, these results may be awkward to process. Not only are the southern states that are registering the greatest improvements in learning run by Republicans, but also their teachers are among the least unionized in the country. And these red states are leaning into phonics-based, “science of reading” approaches to teaching literacy, while Democratic-run states such as New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have been painfully slow to adopt them, in some cases hanging on to other pedagogical approaches with little evidentiary basis.
The article provides no quantitative backing for these statements, much less evidence of causality. (The research they do cite has Massachusetts in 4th place, and New York in 10th place, for adjusted reading scores: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographi...)
It's a good reminder to read articles critically, and seek external sources, when blame is being ascribed.
The Atlantic isn't delving into the details of these theories because, as you say, "there's an ongoing debate." Meanwhile, there is a clear connection between holding students to standards versus the equity-based approaches that turn graduation into aging out. Getting distracted by the methodology debate would have muddied the clear signal in the measurement discussion that isn't happening.
> seek external sources, when blame is being ascribed
I didn't see blame being ascribed, but hurdles highlighted.
Democrat-run states have higher educational attainment than Republican-run states. That doesn't mean, however, that the former have a monopoly on good education ideas. There are good ideas coming up in the South when it comes to reading. The author is pointing out--correctly, in my opinion--the hurdles policymakers in Democrat-run states and cities may need to contend with to implement those ideas.
It’s declining because media is shifting. It’s declining because tools are replacing that need. Smartphones yes but more advanced computers as well. Communication has increased in speed and people have never had more access to speech platforms to spread whatever diatribe they wish. Test scores that test one’s general knowledge are going to show gaps as we specialize.
The reality is the testing and scores don’t reflect reality and everyone’s in arms over it instead of looking at the testing methodology.
And that is what is actually happening here; it's not merely a matter of literally being unable to read and it's not merely limited to the written word. And it's frankly not even a matter of people being stupid or ignorant.
Sure, that’s what republicans want and it serves them well. Dismantling, arms twisting, and attacks on universities - is all from their playbook. They’ve started saying universities are indoctrinating kids. If you don’t speak against these evil creatures now, there isn’t going to be another chance. They are just taliban in a suit!!
Here’s more information on that: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy-is-a-policy-choi...
Are MS, LA, AL, TN students reading at a higher level by age ?
> Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/07/01/texas-go...
> Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Pl...
https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/k-5-math...
What about that passage?
Can you explain to me what "fixed beliefs" means?
Probably some blend of religious and moral values, political and civic beliefs and cultural views towards divisive issues.
My recollection is that ever since science started to counter strict religious teachings, a significant portion of the country stopped trying to improve the public education system, and instead began to undermine it.
I have a teacher friends who have to deal with students attacking them. One had a student break their hand and they could not suspend or expell them. Imagine trying to teach a class under such conditions.
FTA: "As controversial as it was, No Child Left Behind coincided with increased school performance, especially for those at the bottom."
The Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925 [1]. The issue has been divisive for longer than American public education started failing.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/q7gqms/usa...
https://web.archive.org/web/20141023181930/https://api.ning....
Fixed beliefs are things like America is a good nation. You should teach the whole of history, good, bad and ugly, but stop trying to make kids reinterpret everything through modern political lenses
I looked at the linked doc, and did not find anything objectionable. I cannot read other people's minds, so I am not sure what you are asking of me.
Are you saying that you cannot point me to what you are talking about in that lesson plan, to prove your own point? I am supposed to magically make your point for you? This is not how any of this works.
My comment isn’t an opinion piece; it’s just what’s out there in the real world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...
also "They can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits." from our drunk boi.
I'm mostly being glib (as usual) but consider that the general trend in recent times has been for a conservatification of reality, especially since covid. Places that are violent/authoritarian against the homeless are attracting more folks to move to them, hence why red sunbelt states are now doing well. Folks want violence on their children to be used to make sure they stay conforming.
It's the Singapore strategy.
The problem is that kids are stupid, because their parents are teaching them (and demanding they repeat) a number of bizarre views of the world, and all of the media they consume is propagandistic and dumb. That's what's showing up on reading comprehension tests. Not that they don't understand the words, but that they lack the ability to put together a complex thought because they have been encouraged not to have them; that complex thoughts are suspicious, weird, and try-hard and make them feel like they're about to look stupid; and that having a thought by yourself is the surest way to be ostracized and to deserve to be.
They're scared to think, they've been crippled. They just want you to tell them what to say, so they can get back to their video game, or to TikTok.
Your interactions with people online include the cohort whose reading scores improved while they were in school, and is unlikely to include many current young school children whose scores are falling.
A plan by whom and to what end? What does keeping the population afraid and stupid do that benefits the planner?