It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. "Sold a story" had a huge impact on the educational establishment. My local district reintroduced phonics for the 2023-2024 school year, and reintroduced it in kindergarten. By the end of kindergarten, every single one of my kid's classmates could read. This class is today's 2nd graders; they are avid readers today, I'll usually run into one of them walking with a book in front of their face at aftercare. They're too young to show up in the test scores, though, because these kids won't have their first round of standardized testing for another 2 years.
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.
>>>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.
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.
Texas has "Robinhood" rules where property taxes from affluent areas are taken away and given to lower income areas throughout the state, so that the schools have more similar budgets regardless of income level in the area.
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.
California does too. Parents get around it in all sorts of ways. Donating (and having your employer donate) to a 501(c)3 PTA that then directly funds many of the enrichment activities at the school. Parent volunteers for things like robotics classes. In-kind donations: my kid's teacher let slip that they were running out of paper, my kid shows up to class the next day with 2 reams. After-school enrichment through things like Kumon or RSM. Home tutoring. Study sessions after school.
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.
I don't think that "home tutoring" or Kumon is "getting around" property tax redistribution. That's just raising your kid by investing your time and money, which is what parents have done since time immemorial.
I’ve heard teachers often dislike the term good or bad school district. And rightly so. The home environment that kids come from can vary. This makes a “great schools” score (or something equivalent) not a marker of the level of effort the teachers put in but rather a marker for parents to find “better peer groups” and “like minded pta”. Note I’m consciously avoiding the discussion of race here. Because in most suburban cases the good/bad doesn’t depend on race but more on income. This will obviously change if you look at urban districts.
I think the parents never really claimed or cared whether it's the marker of the level of effort the teachers put in, but they care whether it's the marker of "better peer groups". From the parents perspective, you care about outcomes, and the particular experience your kid will have.
Having had direct experience with a system like that, my anecdotal experience was that the affluent school still has more than enough money (anecdotal), while the poorer surrounding school districts were critically underfunded (not quite as anecdotal, newspaper stories from the time, 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.
How does that work if average is $15k per kid? In the class of 20 kids it's 300k per year.
It's hard to imagine it's not enough to fund decent education. Google tells me it's closer to 20k in California. That is crazy amount of money.
In NJ it goes further and the poorest towns have much better funded schools than average. Been that way for decades. Zuckerberg even gave us an extra $100 million just for fun. None of it has affected the disparity in outcomes.
Also, I attended a university in Newark NJ. Our city campus was adjacent to a Newark public high school. If you walked on the nearby sidewalk, you had to watch out for items being thrown out of the upper story high school class rooms, such as chairs and even desks. So I assume the teachers at that school had their hands full.
A friend's son just started as a teacher in a middle school in a low income district in NJ. On back to school night, for one of his classes, not one parent showed up. So, yeah, the outcomes are dependent on more than money.
I think that the amount of money spent per pupil is not a critical factor. It does help I’m sure to a certain point, but the issue with the educational system is not about money. For example, Many inner city schools spend far more money per pupil than suburban schools and yet these inner city school systems have terrible results.
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.
This isn't only reflected in educational standards. I've seen a ton more restrictions in traffic and speed limits in more affluent areas, and higher/less blatant enforcement in poorer areas, even when the poorer areas are more populated with children.
If you read the article, you'll know that the affluent kids never saw a decrease in performance begin with. The top 10% performed just as well as always.
The enemy of reading nowadays is not phonics alternatives, it is the excessive use of screens that kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move.
Is it actually? That's a very common bugaboo, but I'm not convinced that screen time use is really the main culprit, and I think it's self-evident that it won't have as big an effect as not knowing how to read. The article seemed to suggest as much as well:
> 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.
> It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading.
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."
Yes. It's usually more fun to do things that you're good at. Reading and academic performance generally has a snowball effect: if you're good at it, you want to do it more, which makes you even better at it, and so on.
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
The author completely forgot that tablets exist, so their credibility is quite thin.
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.
I think it's counterproductive to provide Chromebooks and iPads to students, but the "excessive use of screens" in my experience is by and large a parenting issue. And it's not just about boundaries around devices, like time limits or app restrictions. It's about setting the right example and providing an environment where reading a book is as stimulating and desirable and encouraged as playing a game every once in a while on an iPad.
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.
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.
In the upper income public school my mom teaches at here in the Bay, the "problem kids" are overwhelmingly classified as low-med severity special ed for that reason - it solves the disruption problem while reducing the need to deal with Karens
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.
maybe it’s not about race. Maybe it’s because the parents of the kids that are bussed-in are less confident to push back out of fear that their kids would lose the privilege of being bussed-in to the “better” school?
The part of Santa Clara County I'm talking about used to be lower middle class until the mid-2010s.
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.
I think the drop is an almost worldwide thing and not correlated very much to disciplining. Disciplining varies, the screens and the slop are universal.
For the purposes of determining the effect of screen time on education, we would need to compare the performance of Chinese or Indian students over time along with a measurable increase of the use of screens and compare that to say American students. Simply comparing American students to Chinese or Indian students is not sufficient.
> the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children
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.
I've got a zfold and it's the best ebook reader I've ever had. Currently have 500 papers and 30 books on it. Being able to screen read anything is also a plus for light reading like war and peace.
I mean I'm sure you disable most pop-ups and notifications on your phone too. The problem is most people don't and every type of distraction is vying for their attention every moment they are on that screen.
I would argue the problem is multi-faceted, and screens are a convenient boogeyman which is a relatively easy thing to point to.
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.
First, salaries for teachers must be compensated for the fact that teachers get three months off for summer amongst many other holidays that other workers do not get. Also, teachers get regular salary increases and have generous pension plans. I know several teachers personally that retired after working for 30 years and now have pensions paying 75% of their last highest salary for the rest of their lives, including survivor benefits.
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.
I mean the thing with parents both needing likely stressful jobs just to make ends meet doesn't just stop at education, it also impacts fertility. We won't even have kids to educate if something doesn't change. It shouldn't require two people working full time to be able to afford a home and have kids, and we need to push against the various forces that have driven us to that.
If the effect size is large (ie the screens are substantially damaging) we’d expect to simply directly observe something but these kids test near the top. You only need that kind of comparison if the effect is not acute.
Not sure what you’re saying here. I think you’re saying you can just observe the top performers and measure whether the top performers use screen time frequently outside of school. Not sure this works as it’s probable that the top performers are gonna be the same in both situations.
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.
>It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids.
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.
The low-income story gets most of the airtime because most people are not interested in reading about how rich people are struggling, but there was also a significant decline in affluent districts as well. See eg. this Boston Globe article about how even the top districts in the state (which itself is historically the top in the country) are using poor instructional methods:
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.
I'm still not sure that article supports that rich people are struggling. My take away is that the core point of the article is the achievement gap between rich and poor students, especially in affluent schools. It kind of drives home that the rich kids aren't struggling, really.
>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.
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.
When you look at the conservative attack on public education, the prison industrial complex, et al., it really seems that this is the intention.
The article, and presumably this discussion, is specifically about a recent decline, e.g. the largely public school system doing a worse job than it used to. It should obviously be worth thinking about the reasons, including things like the attacks on schools.
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.
"A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them."
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 proper job of teachers is to provide far more than simple "inspiration and motivation", especially to students who are at significant risk of failure. Teachers must be given the skills they need to provide clear and understandable information and direction to these students in the course of their job duties. They should actively educate, not just act as coaches who simply expect their "inspired" students to learn the school curriculum on their own, as with the now-popular "sink or swim" approach.
Why have grade levels at all? Instead, have a directed graph of skills that you need to advance through. Then, in order to advance, you can focus the labor effort toward correcting skill deficits in a dynamic way. This is not possible with how educational institutions are traditionally organized, but it doesn't seem intractable to restructure to support this methodology.
It would remove the stigma of "being held back", as there are no levels in a strict sense, just cumulative progress.
> Why have grades at all? Instead, have a directed graph of skills that you need to advance through
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.
This is exactly how it is at my husband's high school: no penalties, no consequences, unlimited turning in of work until the end of the quarter. Didn't finish it all and ended up with a D or lower? Doesn't matter, because you can't be held back anyway.
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.
There are other ways to introduce motivating factors that aren't tied to grade level retention. Sometimes this is done in secondary and tertiary education in the US, like preventing participation in extracurricular activities.
I'd love to see this tried. If you want to level up in writing, take those classes. If you reach minimum levels in enough subjects, you get a diploma. And you could make it as granular as you wanted.
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.
It really comes down to costs and efficiency. Having large enough class size and thus grade level makes things more efficient. As teachers do scale to certain number of pupils. Current schools can teach same material for say 15-40 students at one time. But in more tutoring like system you might be able to do 5. Which means you need 3-8 times more teachers.
I have a suspicion that you'd wind up with a lot of places that would care even less and with people making it to 18 without ever having advanced at all without some sort of stick ("being held back"), probably impacting the most vulnerable even more.
That might be a possibility, but from what I've read, retention (the stick) does more harm than good. One of those harms is that students get held back by struggling with one skill, like math, when they are progressing on other skills at a normal pace.
A system like this would address that issue, and could prevent education resources from being applied redundantly.
If you don't exclude people who failed to learn the material then the next year's material has to dumb itself down to account for the people who can't understand it. And conversely the students who didn't understand but went forward often still have some missing factor which means they'll spend 12 years not understanding and falling behind.
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.
People being held back a grade aren't being excluded from education, though. They're being educated.
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.
It's not exclusion. If you fail to meet standards, you should be retained for another year for additional time to meet them. That only becomes a "problem" when we treat it like one, usually because of warped institutional incentives or misplaced shame.
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.
> Or perhaps has remedial classes over the summer?
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.
US had that, but equity reformers dismantled it because it highlights socio-demographic inequalities in USA. Some problems are too hard to fix, so it's necessary to destroy anything that exposes evidence of the problem.
Is there any reason to think they would graduate with useful knowledge otherwise? The kids in my day who did poor may have graduated - but they still lacked knowlege and to the diploma was paper...
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
Lowering standards is why a high school diploma is nearly worthless, it wasn’t always the case. If you can graduate with a high school diploma while still being illiterate, innumerate, etc. it is a signal with no entropy.
when was it not the case? as far as I know teachers have been pushing kids through to their diploma for 50 years so they could get out of their hair and into the workforce... both illiteracy and dropout rates were higher
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
> remember when the popular academic consensus was "you can't imprison your way into a safe society."
Who said this?
I thought the argument was always you can’t do this and maintain the high living standards of a modern economy built on the rule of law. It’s essentially a challenge to a society: fuck up enough on security and you lose the fruits and freedoms of a modern state fielding a growing economy.
> more or less saying "you can't just discipline children."
Who said this?
I thought the argument was it inhibits learning in the long run and is not fair to poor kids or something. (We know that’s B.S. now.)
Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law, then the academic definition was wrong.
Both are related in the sense that they said you can't just discipline people, more or less, with the same spirit of focusing on people's good side, to their detriment. Different application, same principles, same failure.
Bukele has 91 percent approval according to Bukele. There are plenty of dictators with sky high approval ratings. I would also “approve” of somebody who has the ability to throw me in torture prison for the rest of my life on the flimsiest of evidence.
People obviously prefer safety to lawlessness, and El Salvador was uniquely awful. The issue is that once you jail everybody who might possibly be a criminal, you’re left with the entire extrajudicial infrastructure that now needs to find a new reason to exist. Not to mention in this particular circumstance that the government seems to have decided to pay off the cartels and use state violence pick winners and losers in order to quash the drug war. It works until it doesn’t.
> There are plenty of dictators with sky high approval ratings
Do you have evidence Bukele’s polling is corrupted?
Wikipedia lists several polling organisations [1]. And while there are building risks against fair and free elections [2], I haven't seen a credible monitor call that out as having already happened.
> Do you have evidence Bukele’s polling is corrupted?
Do I have evidence that the polling coming out of an autocratic single party dictatorship is corrupted? I mean, no, of course not. Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.
> I haven't seen a credible monitor call that out as having already happened.
One can argue that El Salvador is better off under Bukele than it was prior. I’d probably have to agree - things were really bad there and locking people up and throwing away the key absolutely works. Always has. It just isn’t sustainable and now that Bukele has successfully consolidated power, we just get to wait and see what happens.
Similarly, Yugoslavia generally loved Josip Tito. He was still a horrible dictator that butchered millions and when he died, the country collapsed.
> Do I have evidence that the polling coming out of an autocratic single party dictatorship is corrupted?
Yes, that's what I'm asking for. We have this for e.g. Russia [1], North Korea [2] and Venezuela [3]. I'm asking for similar evidence out of El Salvador.
For example, did Wola reject the 2024 election ex post facto?
Nobody is rejecting the 2024 election. Nobody is even claiming that. It’s late 2025 and things there have changed. Wola was (correctly) sounding the alarm on the implication of what Bukele was doing in El Salvador. It’s not Venezuela at this point there, but it sure as shit is like Nicaragua.
How meaningful is that approval statistics in a country where the government can put people in prison more or less arbitrarily without any kind of habeas corpus protections?
> How meaningful is that approval statistics in a country where the government can put people in prison more or less arbitrarily without any kind of habeas corpus protections?
There is diverse polling to support Bukele’s popularity [1].
Before the government suspended it; the murder rate was nearly the highest in the world, and every attempt previously failed.
Freedoms sometimes break down at scale given the right conditions. That's not comfortable to contemplate. If even 20% of people were involved in the gang and using GrapheneOS, you bet that freedom would be revoked. There is no guarantee in natural law that freedom is self-sustaining or chaos-resistant.
Freedom is the privilege of a stable nation that can hopefully stay stable, but freedom does not guarantee stability. Thus why we have outliers like Singapore - very stable, minimal freedom; and outliers like El Salvador previously - very free, very unstable. Stable always beats free, because unstable makes freedom a purely academic exercise in nonsense (sure, the government might not arrest you for saying something, but the local thug will happily do worse; bragging "I have habeas corpus" is idiotic when the local drug lord is your problem and he doesn't honor it).
The murder rate was falling for years prior to Bukele’s election
Obviously extremely “generous” policies for jailing people involved with or adjacent to crime will reduce crime further, but he’s not singularly responsible for improvements and it’s not clear at all where the cost-benefit will net out
North Korea also has very low crime rates, I hear!
It’s pretty unbelievable how many people think “give one person unlimited power to fix our problems” is a novel solution to anything
Throughout all of human history, the vast majority of awful people in power were consciously put there by people who wanted solutions to real problems
Our Founding Fathers’ insight was to say that it’s actually better the state struggle to solve some problems (including important ones!) than to create an extremely powerful apparatus that can be abused (whether that be with good or poor intentions, with or without popular support etc)
We’ve tried the whole dictator thing! Literally countless times in history! The reason we instead accept some amount of crime and “what the fuck why can’t we solve this?” is because dictators almost always end up being absolutely awful!
Approval rating for a president seems like a pretty poor relation to "feeling like one is living under the rule of law".
Meanwhile El Salvador is ranked 130th out of 180 in the Corruption Perceptions Index with a score of 30/100, and has mostly been sliding lower in the past decade.
> Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law, then the academic definition was wrong
I'd love to hear what you think "living under the rule of law" means, and how you feel that relates to approval rating?
The rule of law is not something the voting populace always values. Like, almost every populist movement supports or enacts something explicitly against the law but is popular with their citizenry.
> Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law
A starving man will rate highly someone giving him an ounce of food. That doesn’t mean their life is good. Just better than the hell it was.
El Salvador’s economy is middling [1]. It is growing faster than when it was ridden with crime. But it isn’t growing like a developed economy with the rule of law. (It can’t.)
El Salvadoreans made the best choice they could. When confronted with security versus long-term prosperity, most choose security. And who knows, they might slough off dictatorship as a transitional period like Korea and Taiwan did after all.
TL; DR It’s a straw man to claim what Bukele did was some revolution in social thought that confounded thinkers outside El Salvador. It wasn’t. Martial law has always existed. And Duterte had literally just wrapped up doing the same thing.
> they said you can't just discipline people
Who said this?
I can just as easily invent conservative straw men who didn’t like their idiot kids failing grades and getting their states to not implement ESSA. It’s narratively cohesive. But it isn’t credible, same as this allegation.
Of course you can imprison your way to a safe society. At the limit, you can just put everyone in prison. Nobody would ever say you can't imprison your way to a safe society. What people actually say is that the consequences of attempting to do that are not worth the trade off. Most people would not want to live in a dictatorial police state even if it is "safe".
Teachers unions are political organizations that lean left. They are never going to want to get behind anything Mississippi does. Their sole purpose is to siphon off as much public funding for their members, not to teach children. In fact failing kids justifies more money spent (guys, this is literally in the article as a point where liberal assumptions are being challenged; please read the article before downvoting me at least).
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:
> Teachers unions are political organizations that lean left. They are never going to want to get behind anything Mississippi does.
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.
MAE is a wholly different beast than teacher's unions in most states. Mississippi does not require teachers to join the union, thus the union needs to compete to attract teachers. Thus, it is incentivized to actually do stuff. Usually, when people say teacher's unions (or at least when I refer to them), I refer to the set up in the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, etc, where it is a requirement for teachers to join the union, regardless of what they think of the union.
I'm fine with employees banding together. What CA and other states do (require teachers to pay dues to the union) is criminal.
I addressed this in another comment. Unlike many states, Mississippi does not require teachers to pay dues to the union (California for example, does). Mississippi has a low rate of teachers union membership as a result (only ~36%). Mississippi has one of the weakest teachers unions in the country.
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.
You can disagree with the whole-language reading, but it's a stretch to claim that a union opposing mandates on teachers is not representing what the teachers want.
This is (anecdotally) not true for families in the highest income decile (in California). Kids are pushed harder to learn things earlier than when I was growing up. For example, nearly all of my kid's classmates could read before they started kindergarten. All could do basic arithmetic. Now that he's in first grade, most can read chapter books and have a grasp of multiplication. My mom pushed me hard to get me ahead of my peers, but I didn't hit those milestones until a year later. The standards and expectations are extremely high now because it's never been harder to get a spot at a top 20 university—perhaps because a top 20 school is the best chance you can get to maintain your living standards.
I've not seen anything saying all kids are lacking in important skills these days, but rather they all seem (to me) to imply that we're on the way to an even more-stratified society. Smart kids will be just as educated as smart kids used to be - probably even moreso. Dumb kids will fall further and further behind, and the middle range of "kinda smart at a bunch of stuff" will disappear.
With the extreme stratification of wealth follows the stratification of... everything else, really.
Everything is bifurcating now. Haves are having more and more, and have-nots are having less and less. Middle class jobs are disappearing in favor of a mix of 1. low-wage unskilled/service jobs and 2. "elite" jobs for the upper crust. There used to be a place in society for A, B, C, and D students, but now you're either top-college material or you risk being swept into a growing underclass.
> 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.
> 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?
How are they teaching 4 year olds reading and arithmetic? That wasn’t an option in my affluent area in SoCal. Somehow Chinese and some Russian kids can do it, but mine didn’t. Despite my paying $20k/year per child for preschool.
Same way they used to teach it in 1st grade, but 2 years earlier. There's often more of an emphasis on visuals, manipulatives, and songs too, eg. my kid's kindergarten teacher linked us to this song [1] on the first day, and there's dozens of similar resources on YouTube.
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.
But there's also a big difference between 18 months and 4 years.
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.
I'm from a blue class family in a non-affluent area and I could already read going into Kindergarten because my mom spent a lot of time reading with me before I got to school. This was 25+ years ago.
Formula is not as nutritious as human breast milk. Bottle feeding leads to long lasting anatomical changes.
You can look at the research confirming these uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.
Whooaa! You're going to give people whiplash with how quickly you're changing what's being discussed. Men are perfectly capable of reading to kids! That you use things men are perfectly able to do, rather than the things they're not, as justification for why women should not be in the workplace makes me think you're not nearly so loathe to utter it as you say.
Relitigating what's always been said seem like a waste of everyone's time, especially when you're already going to ignore the context in which you're having a discussion.
Breastfeeding generally stops at age 2 (or earlier). Your contention is that literacy is significantly affected by whether the mom or the dad is taking care of the child at age 2 and below?
Not just literacy but everything is significantly affected by the care rendered from 0 to 4. My concern was broader: the children’s and society’s future.
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.
I take it as an insult as a guy! Theres nothing in my gender that precludes me from being as good at housekeeping (cleaning, cooking). Unscientific drivel!
My mom taught me math by playing cards with me, and taught me reading by reading me books. It has nothing to do with money. I grew in a house that had a giant hole in the floor, lead paint, and asbestos tiles in North Carolina at that time. My mom is a high school graduate from New Jersey, my parents were late 20s and made barely any money in the 1980s.
> 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.
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.
But it’s also a big potential confounder, and I certainly don’t know the literature well enough to say how well they managed to account for that - not that education research has a ton of great studies, but they’re unlikely to all be colossal mistakes.
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.
It’s weird, and a little unnerving, to have a line from Anathem by Neil Stephenson immediately come to mind:
“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.”
Similarly, I thought of "A Canticle for Leibowitz." Stephenson is right, of course, but I think that Miller more fully understands that our fall begins not just with the fading of literacy and the rise of ignorance, but also in post modern relativism and the reign of cynicism. If one more otherwise clever person tries to explain to me how there's no such thing as objective truth, I might just scream.
“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.”
Heh, ya it seems that the term objective truth has been ate by conspiracy theorists and psychos.
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.
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.”
…
“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.
Things have been feeling very Snow Crash and Diamond Age, lately, except I don't think there are any literally underground sex cults that are worthwhile.
Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis (who wrote The Hustler and The Color of Money, and Queen's Gambit, and The Man Who Fell To Earth – quite an oeuvre!) has long been one of my favorite books and it's been eerie to see how right he was about how eager mankind is to hand over all intellectual labor to the robots.
(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.)
I thought that book was pretty dull, and had a terrible romance subplot. But I do have to say it pops in my head more and more often, just like Idiocracy. Someone should definitely do a movie so the illiterates know what they're missing at least.
It's a philosophy text with a lot of ideas masquerading as a work of fiction. The closest analogy to it that I can think of is the Symposium... which is a philosophy work that uses a plot and stories to express the ideas. Incidentally, there's a part of Anathem that feels a lot like the Symposium (complete with chatting about philosophy around a table).
Mediatronic glyphs on our chopsticks when? Love the way the Nell's vocabulary and disposition evolve as the Primer (or Miranda) teaches her to spell, read, and eventually understand Turing machines via binary and logic gates.
I don't remember that line in Anathem. It seemd pretty clear that the Saecular society at the time of the novel was a literate, 21st century tech level. e.g. there were characters like Samman who was basically a sysadmin.
They all use Kinagrams—a moving picture script. Very few are literate. Well-off burgers typically can read and write, but lots of the workers and virtually all the slines can't read.
Aren't Kinagrams and Logotype Arban forms of logograms, like Chinese characters or Kanji? I interpreted that as "most extramuros can read and type their daily language, but not the alphabet used for technical writing"
The extramuros language is “Fluccish” and it’s stated that it uses the same alphabet as Orth. I think it’s a little more pictorial (esp. Kinagrams with animation) than Chinese
Weren't the ita basically 'half-concents' essentially? Where the caste, despite being allowed more of the trappings and technological luxuries of the Saecular society, specifically were kept away from the other sciences to handicap them because they couldn't enforce the same asceticism on one whose job it is to maintain the technology.
Some young people have started to widely use emoji in personal communications. We may not be far away from a society that partially abolished written language and relies only on images and videos to communicate.
Well, I don’t, but unfortunately for me I am in, as you say, a small and dwindling minority.
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.
When I first read Asimov's Foundation, I thought the decline and loss of knowledge in the Galactic Empire within a few generations was unrealistically quick. It's been eye-opening to witness new parents who not only don't know that they're supposed to teach their children to read, but wouldn't know how to do so.
Late GenXer here. I went from a place with pretty good schools to one with with pretty bad schools and a strong religious/honor culture background. I went from a humans can accomplish anything to one of we are damned at a pretty young age. It seems so many people are fact resistant from a young age.
The people who need to find out aren't curious and aren't looking for proof that counters what they're inclined to believe. They won't check what locals are saying and the videos of nothing-much-happening they're posting. They watch the same handful of shocking crime videos on Facebook and are sure the cities are overrun with rampant lawlessness (and apparently the residents are just persistently too stupid, over decades, to do anything about it, voting-wise, and need the Federal Government to step in despite their protestations and save them? It's a puzzling world view if you think about it for even a second), watch Fox News showing b-roll of fire and violence from one city block on one night for weeks on end (or from another city and year entirely) and claiming that's the whole city all the time, see news sites doing the same (one infamously put a photo of early '90s LA riots at the top of one of these articles recently, JFC)
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.
In the 1980s, the BBC did a realistic nuclear war movie called Threads. It is a classic and always relevant. The scene I found most shocking was in the aftermath, when the children of the survivors can't read or even speak properly. There is this record player and they have no idea what it is for or what music is, because they have never heard of it. One of them plays with it, intrigued that the turntable moves, but that is about it, nobody is hooking it up to get everyone dancing.
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.
Symbols are archaic, time to replace language with something self-organizing, self-teaching, concatenating and concatenated, ruled by verbs, and defanging nouns and agentic occlusions.
“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.”
This was from the part where Fraa Orolo was interviewing Artisan Quin about the world outside the Concent.
What I’m most surprised by is how visually illiterate the older generations seem to be.
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.
Back when high def TVs were relatively new and cable TV and separate channels for SD and HD feeds, it used to drive me crazy that my parents would watch the SD channel with the image stretched to fit the screen. I’d show them where the HD channel was (it was something like SD channel # + 200) but they just didn’t care. The stretched SD image was good enough.
Media literacy seems to be one of those things it's easy to forget you ever had to learn. I'm routinely amazed at how little of it most other people are capable of, when a lot of it is now so automatic for me that I can't turn it off, it's just a permanent part of how I experience things—but at some point I'm sure I was about that limited, and I'm better at it now only because I found improving my literacy to be interesting and fun, so I effortlessly put a lot of time into it.
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 think some people simply have a bad visual cortex. Countless times I've tried to show people how to turn off motion interpolation on their TV to prevent the soap opera effect, and they just didn't see any difference.
As an "older" person, watching video critically wasn't a literacy skill that mattered throughout my education. I was taught how to use a (physical) card catalog, how to distinguish primary and secondary sources, how to use printed indexes to discover relevant news articles, how to find and read material on microfiche, ...
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.
Maybe they just have a different set of values. These older generations you're talking about may have grown up watching ultra grainy, ultra low def, low production quality(relative to modern), black and white TV. Maybe they just learned to look past visual blips and focus on the story.
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?"
Tech illiteracy at some age groups is insane to me. I understand that my 93 year old grandma wasn't great at this sort of thing. But I encounter people who are in their 20s who don't know how to print a document, or people in their 50s falling for obvious AI scams. Didn't Jurassic Park come out in 93? Did they just think people were getting eaten by dinosaurs?
Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a good 20-50 years.
In the US, the kids are doing poorly. But unlike China, there is actually a large number of children being born.
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.
Economic problems create their own demographic problems. The current government policies against immigration are a sure way to reduce population growth in the US for the next decades.
I do wonder, and this is probably way too optimistic - but if China or another country were to open their economy, I wonder if there would be benefit to perhaps some of the wealth leaving the US, especially as too many of our modern businesses are too extractive.
What's kind of depressing about this moment in general is that there isn't really a 'shining beacon on the hill'. If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. Europe is good in a lot of ways, but kind of muddling along in others - and won't even policy democratic backsliders like Hungary.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Kinda like the adult equivalent of learning that Santa isn’t real or finding out your parents are getting a divorce. I believe that we put too much faith in our “bedrock institutions” because we were taught to. Now, the facade is gone, and we’re left to figure things out as best we can. I don’t have a clue where the future will take us (nobody does). But, there’s usually some good that comes with the bad, and I do have the feeling that we’re living through history, much more so than I ever thought we’d get to. If we are truly witnessing the downfall of the United States, well… it’s going to be very interesting to say the least.
It's certainly not like it was perfect here in the past or that the mythology reflected reality, but it felt like there was a fairly long arc of 'getting better in fits and starts' The cold war was over and we stopped supporting heinous dictators. Everyone could vote. Gay people got the right to marry. Things weren't perfect, but we had the means to work hard to make them better.
Yeah, it felt like the U.S. was stumbling towards a more just and equitable future, and media and popular culture perpetuated a narrative that we were MUCH further along as a country and culture than we actually were. To the point of just representing a false reality. Then, all of the sudden, reality came crashing down, and it became pretty evident that a huge chunk of the country doesn't give a damn about any of that stuff, nor can they be bothered to waste a minute worrying about the consequences of re-electing a felon, etc. They just want cheap eggs, which they're still not getting, but they are getting an entirely new type of governance, which looks pretty darn authoritarian, but who am I to say...?
As a Canadian... Canada is weak, poor, and corrupted by the same plague that has lead America to where it sits.
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.
Also, the fact power is distributed among three levels of government that are rarely in alignment translates into severe dysfunction. Just like the US, Canada has lost the ability to build.
>If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US.
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
That sounds like "managing your expectations", as in the US is not supposed to be like China, but is becoming more like it. There's still a ways to fall though.
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
> If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US
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.
I think there's an important material difference between the two. China's single party is authoritarian and uncontested. America's two major parties are mildly authoritarian on different axes, but average out to a mostly liberal status quo in practice. The relative chaos and transparency of America's system are what they are, but it isn't an autocracy at this point.
There's also a significant growing political push to transition away from FPTP voting in the US, which would dismantle the current duopoly.
I imagine that analogy won't go over well with some, but at the very least I think it's an insightful look at how someone who was pro-CCP might look at the contrast.
Yeah, when Trump was in the news for having said in another world him and Biden would have been friends, it was celebrated, but to me it was just one more indicator that they have more in common with each other than with the people who put their faith in the one or other. Their lifestyles seem similar, the people around them are similar ...
Even when criticizing and mocking the people running things doesn't have any effect? The point of free speech was supposed to be that you'd be able to make material changes in your living conditions and government policies by convincing people that they should be made. That's not really true anymore for anyone in the US except the very, very wealthy. But don't take my word for it: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
What would happen if we took a more consequentialist look at democracy rather than caring mainly about the forms?
Everyone always complains that if you raise taxes, rich people will "leave", with the assumption that only the richest can actually run productive companies, which obviously isn't the case. On the other hand, there must be some fraction of the truly richest that are just relentlessly good at accruing wealth, and not much else, no? Wouldn't you _want_ those people to leave?
I think we have too many billionaires and not enough millionaires.
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.
Forget it. As long as China remains a dictatorship, investors will not pump in too much money - it's too uncertain what happens to your investment.
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.
All billionaires still in China (and some much who've left) exist only at the pleasure of Xi. I don't think Jeff or Mark or Warren want to worry about being disappeared. I think you're probably right here.
Reading is the most challenging thing we ever learn to do. Each letter is a symbol, those symbols make sounds, then add them together and the sounds and meanings changes.
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.
"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.
>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. ...
Anyone who spends any amount of time perusing discussions on social media will quickly observe what a rare gift strong reading comprehension turns out to be.
I notice the trend that people are reading much less in public and on public transporation -- before if you went on a long-haul flight you would bring a couple of books or magazines, now people much prefer to consuming video content. On a flight every row I saw passengers either watching a movie on their phone/laptop/ or screen seat.
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 really interesting research about children/people learning to read without formal instruction; as John Taylor Gatto points out in Dumbing Us Down, back when Thomas Paine was writing, there were ~600,000 copies of Common Sense printed for a population of three million. People learned to read on their own or with very little instruction because they were interested in reading.
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.
Purely anecdotal, but most of the kids in my son's cohort, early 20s, have received what would be considered by most to be a good education, but don't read for pleasure. I find that worrying.
I also didn't read for pleasure in my 20s and even much of my 30s. Forced reading in high school (of material I didn't enjoy, in quantity, and frequently fell behind on, and felt bad about failing) ruined it for me for about 15 years. But the trauma faded with time and now I read some 10-30 books a year. So maybe it's not permanent for your son's cohort either.
I second this. I hated (perhaps not consciously) being forced to read books in high school, however recently I’ve gone back and started rereading those books I was assigned and have loved it!
Don't we though? My generation is also known for watching hour long youtube videos (video essays), and even if that's not all of us, that's more than past generations (of course). And we are known for listening to hour long podcasts. Even if these podcasters are not necessarily as informed or as rigorous (same for youtube), I think my generation still in some ways shows a curiosity for information
That said I mostly agree with this and think for one, if foreign language was appreciated more here, maybe people would read more
The amount of words even an average reader can consume and understand in an hour is vastly higher than what one can gain from a video essay, even if played at 2x speed. For high performing readers, it's not even close to be remotely comparable.
I don't know. Watching x amount of quality videos and reading x amount of quality written works is surely better than just reading x amount of quality written works. And finally, of course the content of those words matters. I could read a 200 page academic work and if the work is poorly written then I haven't gained much.
> Watching x amount of quality videos and reading x amount of quality written works is surely better than just reading x amount of quality written works
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.
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.
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.
To pile on, You can learn a tremendous amount from reading difficult sources, specifically due to their difficulty. Nobody reads classical fiction for the facts.
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.
Oh, I agree. And by the way, I speak two languages and learned the second primarily through youtube. That was difficult, and difficult topics can be covered there. Certainly reading is harder! Of course I agree with that. I still couldn't read classical sources in that language. I just think we shouldn't altogether knock getting info in the form of audio.
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
Podcasts are horrible content slop that are appealing more because one can enjoy the parasocial relationship it offers rather than because the podcasters are insightful or informative.
It's probably not a good education. If your kid is in an average public school they were probably not taught to read phonetically. Unless you as parents taught that separately, all these kids are handicapped.
Sliding? I'd say we're running toward it, what with all the anti-intellectualism and attacks on education. After all, can't have all those smarty-pants kids turning into bossy-pants adults, now can we?
> Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it.
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.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
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.”
Slash education for a few generations, alienate & scare immigrants. In 20 years you will have American manufacturing jobs manned by illiterate children who cannot organise or unionize.
If you could quantify the benefits of literacy, I think you'd find a similar decline. The incentives for literacy, especially among kids, are less compelling than they used to be.
My concern for illiteracy, dropping participation in summer reading programs, and the like has informed some of my gift giving and material donations. All the grands get books. And holiday giving to Angel Trees or Toys for Tots includes books and/or comic books. I know this annoys the latter and it frustrates and annoys the hell out of me.
Does it take into account ESL? I know at least at my daughters school, kids with English-speaking parents score very well. The others score very low, on average. I notice when I pick up my daughter that the ESL kids group together and only speak their native language though. So, it's not surprising.
Not surprising considering the DoE has been failing the American people for decades. Now that we're slowly giving education back to the states, where it belongs, the trend will start to reverse if it hasn't already.
The recent move away from phonics has been disastrous, and states that are using phonics now are seeing better results.
> 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.
I know from my earliest memories that reading is possible from whole words if you are read to enough without being formally taught. Granted at that point my attention span was too lacking to really read books by myself, compared to being read to.
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?
I believe the issue is measures of 'achievement' and 'excellence' typically use the 20th and 50th percentiles, respectively. For example, most education studies focus on what improves graduation rates, passing rates, or the bottom 10–20% on standardized assessments. Most school districts' financial incentives rely on these metrics as well. Occasionally you'll get a study that looks at the median (and even more rare, the 90th percentile), but no standardized assessment even showcases the bellends of the distribution. This is why you get claims like this
> 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?
> 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.
This article is a weird mix of things. Early on we see:
> 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.
It's new information to me that parts of the South are improving the average student (relatively speaking). One thing they had already done well, in my experience, was cultivate the smarter poor kids. When I was a kid in the Deep South, they funneled kids testing above about 125 IQ to magnet schools, busing them in from all over the metro. My friend and I escaped our working class neighborhood school that way. Now, I live in Silicon Valley, where no such programs exist, and by-and-large the public school you go to is based on how expensive your zip code is. Talk about reinforcing inequality.
What I find slightly amusing is I strictly remember education people writing scathing articles about the 'No Child Left Behind' policies and how mechanistic and cruel was it towards children, and how could these evil fascists controlling education reduce children to simple numbers.
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.
> School spending did not decline from 2012 to 2022. In fact, it increased significantly, even after adjusting for inflation, from $14,000 a student to more than $16,000.
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.
The top elite kids aren't in public schools, so they don't even factor into the equation. Whether there is inequality in spending will depend on the state and whether the funding is local, or redistributive. But if you take California as an example, they do try to make sure money goes to poor students, and it has had no positive effect. California sends mor to Black, Latino, and low income students than white or high income students.
Actually this isn't the whole picture. Because a lot of funding for schools comes from local property taxes, affluent areas tend to have more resources for education than poorer areas, regardless of how they school their kids. And if a lot of higher income students aren't utilizing public school, that's less students to spend the increased money on, which would exacerbate the view when looked at as a national per-student average.
Still, poor students in california do dramatically worse than poor students in mississippi, despite california spending much more. I dove into the data a while back and adjusted for income and race, California schooling is much worse and only looks good because its students are rich
Mississippi cooks the stats by holding the poorest students back. You can probably adjust for this if you have the raw data, but it's something you need to adjust for.
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.
Almost every state will spend the most on inner city kids. You have a ton of commercial tax base for relatively few kids. For example Atlanta Public Schools spends the most per pupil in GA outside of a handful of tiny districts.
most spending-per-student goes to the poorest or most-disabled students, not to the elite students. By definition, elite students are a tiny fraction, so evern if they get overspending, it won't move the average unless they are getting absurd multiples of the median, which they are noy getting.
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.
I think the most important thing for literacy is a nationwide culture of reading.
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?
I have read maybe a thousand books of fantasy or science fiction, including 10k pages long fantasy series. Some of it was good, but most of it was pure slop.
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.
Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex? You seem to be focused on the idea of genre, which is orthagonal to the quality of the prose, the depth of the characters, the complexity of the themes, etc. You might as well focus on the size of the font.
>Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex?
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.
You're making three distinctions here and lumping them all into one. Let me check my understanding here. To you, for a book to be worthwhile, it must satisfy 3 criteria:
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.
Let me be honest, I despise your post. All your arguments are just made up and are totally disconnected from anything I said.
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: "We need to tell adults that reading is a worthwhile endeavor, especially when reading complex material."
Person B: "But how do you define complex?"
Person A: "What a meaningless question. It does not matter at all."
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 know what, I'm not even gonna wait for your reply. I'll come out and say it:
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.
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. That reading for the sake of reading is actually always worthwhile and that nobody should be judged for what they are reading. That all reading is a joy. That slop was just a way to categorize, but that each person themselves had to categorize themselves. That there is nothing wrong with treasuring what other see as banal or slop.
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.
"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."
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.
It's funny that you are trying to present your overt snobbery as a "realization" you had after "rethinking", when it was already there in your first post in the thread.
"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.
It also doesn't help when we have programs like Accelerated Reader. The original goal of the program, from what I understand, was to encourage reading by rewarding kids for succeeding at reaching goals. Unfortunately, schools decided rewarding was bad and punishing was good. So instead of being an optional reward-driven approach, it became a mandatory part of your grade.
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.
Even treating it as a purely optional reward didn't work, at least for me. I remember doing AR and treating it like a game -- find the most points-dense book possible in the school library (for me it was The Hobbit, a whopping 70 points), read a summary of it online to get the details and ace the test. All without even opening the book. Well, I actually did try reading The Hobbit but I couldn't make it past the handful of pages without falling asleep.
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!)
As another DoDDS graduate, I'd add that (a) the military makes parents responsible for their children; (b) the worst kids gets deported back to the US; (c) the military can compel parental behavior (like family therapy); (d) DoDDS teachers are a self-selection for people with curiosity and an interest to travel and live abroad; (e) unit rotations mean a 1/3rd or more of the school population changes year to year - naturally breaking cliques.
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.
California is an economic powerhouse because people who could read (and more) moved to California for opportunity, not because they were educated in California.
Silicon Valley is full of immigrants. Any place that actively dislikes them and is hostile to them is probably not going to replace it.
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.
I know why saying those words makes you feel good in the moment, but read them back to yourself and imagine how they sound to someone who's not coming from that same place as you.
I'm not an American, whats wrong with what he said? If my areas reading score was plummeting I'd worry about our future viability, what is wrong with that?
It's declined because a generation of students was not taught to read because teachers decided that phonics was a conservative dog whistle. To not be associated with George w Bush, they failed our children.
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.
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
> What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it.
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.
This is a new and bad definition of illiteracy. America is more literate than it has ever been; it started with Harry Potter, and grew with the internet. Everybody can read, and that was not true when I was a kid, because English is hard to read. You mostly have to read to participate on the internet. The lack of basic communication ability of the people on the early internet was shocking, and that's all gone. I rarely run into people who capitalize Every Single Word any more, and I never thought that would happen.
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.
> From 2000 to 2007, the bottom tenth of fourth graders in reading ability showed substantial improvement, before stagnating. But by 2024, those gains had been erased.
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.
Reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... (2019) was eye-opening for me. It's a must-read companion piece if you want to take this Atlantic article seriously, particularly with some of the politicization the Atlantic article tries to inject.
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.
> Atlantic article could have done something similar, focusing on the methodologies at hand
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.
Yes yes it’s the children’s fault. We didn’t hold them to high standards. We didn’t… give me a break.
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.
Not saying it does but what I am saying is it’s not two brackets anymore. It’s not Math & Literacy defined by one’s ability to do long divisional polynomials and identify the problematic grammar of some sub paragraph from a book from 1880s.
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.
Right… like a trained monkey to put the blocks in the hole. I have yet to see anyone wield tools wisely that requires higher education outside of CERN.
the problem isn't test scores. if anything, that kind of metrification of education is precisely the cause of this inability to comprehend and understand.
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!!
This take is partisan and not aligned with fact. You may be surprised to hear that Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee are all seeing improvements.
The reason to fight against university education was laid out plainly in the 2012 Texas GOP platform. While not directly related to TFA, it clearly shows the reasoning to limit aspects of education.
> 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.”
This is a gross distortion. 2012 Texas platform did not oppose the concept of higher order thinking skills, it opposed a specific pedagogy Higher Order Teaching Skills, which was displacing knowledge based learning. Reasonable people can disagree on which works better, teaching low order skills first, or high order skills first.
Here is the exact passage, so everyone can make up their own mind.
> 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.
Yes, they are opposing a type of modern educational program, not the concept of thinking skills. If you are familiar with elementary school curriculums, they are opposing Everyday Math or Illustrative Mathematics and supporting memorizing multiplication tables.
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.
What is objectionable is the high opportunity cost. You could actually be teaching history. It is fine if you like the listen plan, but it is wrong to characterize people who think knowledge based learning is better as limiting education.
Religion was my partial read for "fixed beliefs" as well. I have been alive for quite some time now, and the major battle for the young mind in the US was regarding evolution vs. literal biblical interpretation. This is the reason for charter schools, destroying the U.S. Department of Education, and much more. Those "fixed beliefs" are very fragile when exposed to new information.
I think it is a side note on the charter schools issue. The main driver is terrible standards and discipline in public schools. There is a reason atheists are putting their kids in charter schools too, and even religious schools.
I hear you, solid point looking at the current state of public education. The next question is: why is our public education system so lacking?
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.
> ever since science started to counter strict religious teachings, a significant portion of the country stopped trying to improve the public education
The Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925 [1]. The issue has been divisive for longer than American public education started failing.
IMO it started with no child left behind, and a wave of public sentiment and legal precedent that places the worst performing and behaving students above the majority.
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.
That is not mutually exclusive. First, you can absolutely sacrifice the median to improve the average. Second, I was pointing out when I think it started. One hypothesis is that the negative impacts of no child left behind and similar programs were initially mitigated/compartmentalized by the heavy academic tracking used at the time. My understanding is that much of this has changed over time with a reduction in number of tracks.
It's because they still spank children with paddles there, and you know that since Trump (and especially Trump 2.0) they've been ratcheting it up in magnitude and intensity.
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.
I disagree because learning is cumulative. If you can’t read or do math at a 3rd grade level and we shove you through 4th, 5th, etc, you enter an unrecoverable state.
This was an intentional plan to keep the population stupid and fearful. It's been happening for the last 40 years or so. We've been systematically and intentionally dismantling and rendering ineffective, our education system.
It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. "Sold a story" had a huge impact on the educational establishment. My local district reintroduced phonics for the 2023-2024 school year, and reintroduced it in kindergarten. By the end of kindergarten, every single one of my kid's classmates could read. This class is today's 2nd graders; they are avid readers today, I'll usually run into one of them walking with a book in front of their face at aftercare. They're too young to show up in the test scores, though, because these kids won't have their first round of standardized testing for another 2 years.
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.
>>>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.
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.
Texas has "Robinhood" rules where property taxes from affluent areas are taken away and given to lower income areas throughout the state, so that the schools have more similar budgets regardless of income level in the area.
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.
California does too. Parents get around it in all sorts of ways. Donating (and having your employer donate) to a 501(c)3 PTA that then directly funds many of the enrichment activities at the school. Parent volunteers for things like robotics classes. In-kind donations: my kid's teacher let slip that they were running out of paper, my kid shows up to class the next day with 2 reams. After-school enrichment through things like Kumon or RSM. Home tutoring. Study sessions after school.
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.
I don't think that "home tutoring" or Kumon is "getting around" property tax redistribution. That's just raising your kid by investing your time and money, which is what parents have done since time immemorial.
> Kumon or RSM
South Bay?
Close. Peninsula.
I’ve heard teachers often dislike the term good or bad school district. And rightly so. The home environment that kids come from can vary. This makes a “great schools” score (or something equivalent) not a marker of the level of effort the teachers put in but rather a marker for parents to find “better peer groups” and “like minded pta”. Note I’m consciously avoiding the discussion of race here. Because in most suburban cases the good/bad doesn’t depend on race but more on income. This will obviously change if you look at urban districts.
I think the parents never really claimed or cared whether it's the marker of the level of effort the teachers put in, but they care whether it's the marker of "better peer groups". From the parents perspective, you care about outcomes, and the particular experience your kid will have.
Having had direct experience with a system like that, my anecdotal experience was that the affluent school still has more than enough money (anecdotal), while the poorer surrounding school districts were critically underfunded (not quite as anecdotal, newspaper stories from the time, 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.
How does that work if average is $15k per kid? In the class of 20 kids it's 300k per year. It's hard to imagine it's not enough to fund decent education. Google tells me it's closer to 20k in California. That is crazy amount of money.
In NJ it goes further and the poorest towns have much better funded schools than average. Been that way for decades. Zuckerberg even gave us an extra $100 million just for fun. None of it has affected the disparity in outcomes.
Also, I attended a university in Newark NJ. Our city campus was adjacent to a Newark public high school. If you walked on the nearby sidewalk, you had to watch out for items being thrown out of the upper story high school class rooms, such as chairs and even desks. So I assume the teachers at that school had their hands full.
A friend's son just started as a teacher in a middle school in a low income district in NJ. On back to school night, for one of his classes, not one parent showed up. So, yeah, the outcomes are dependent on more than money.
I think that the amount of money spent per pupil is not a critical factor. It does help I’m sure to a certain point, but the issue with the educational system is not about money. For example, Many inner city schools spend far more money per pupil than suburban schools and yet these inner city school systems have terrible results.
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.
This isn't only reflected in educational standards. I've seen a ton more restrictions in traffic and speed limits in more affluent areas, and higher/less blatant enforcement in poorer areas, even when the poorer areas are more populated with children.
If you read the article, you'll know that the affluent kids never saw a decrease in performance begin with. The top 10% performed just as well as always.
Most of the article is paywalled for me
And so it begins...
Ah yes, I am literate but I cannot read.
So, in the end, I guess only the affluent can read after all...
The enemy of reading nowadays is not phonics alternatives, it is the excessive use of screens that kills focus and the desire to learn anything that doesn't move.
Is it actually? That's a very common bugaboo, but I'm not convinced that screen time use is really the main culprit, and I think it's self-evident that it won't have as big an effect as not knowing how to read. The article seemed to suggest as much as well:
> 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.
> It doesn't seem to stop them from enjoying reading.
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."
Yes. It's usually more fun to do things that you're good at. Reading and academic performance generally has a snowball effect: if you're good at it, you want to do it more, which makes you even better at it, and so on.
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.
“My kids are allowed to have screen time, but with limits. Most of their friends have similar arrangements.”
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.
> it’s also kids in elementary school
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
The author completely forgot that tablets exist, so their credibility is quite thin.
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.
I think it's counterproductive to provide Chromebooks and iPads to students, but the "excessive use of screens" in my experience is by and large a parenting issue. And it's not just about boundaries around devices, like time limits or app restrictions. It's about setting the right example and providing an environment where reading a book is as stimulating and desirable and encouraged as playing a game every once in a while on an iPad.
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.
The screens thing is a diversion.
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.
In the upper income public school my mom teaches at here in the Bay, the "problem kids" are overwhelmingly classified as low-med severity special ed for that reason - it solves the disruption problem while reducing the need to deal with Karens
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.
maybe it’s not about race. Maybe it’s because the parents of the kids that are bussed-in are less confident to push back out of fear that their kids would lose the privilege of being bussed-in to the “better” school?
The part of Santa Clara County I'm talking about used to be lower middle class until the mid-2010s.
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").
Weird. Why are no Latin or Asian kids bussed?
Because we live in these neighborhoods.
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.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_charge_rule
I think the drop is an almost worldwide thing and not correlated very much to disciplining. Disciplining varies, the screens and the slop are universal.
This is an interesting take. Based on what you’re saying, then I presume that in India and China academic performance is dropping as well?
According to PISA results, it seems that the US does worse on maths on average, but pretty close on reading relative to UK and Ireland.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
There's probably a much better data source, but am on phone.
For the purposes of determining the effect of screen time on education, we would need to compare the performance of Chinese or Indian students over time along with a measurable increase of the use of screens and compare that to say American students. Simply comparing American students to Chinese or Indian students is not sufficient.
> the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children
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.
It's true, but it's cold comfort. the amount of reading I can do in a single sitting has declined a lot.
I've got a zfold and it's the best ebook reader I've ever had. Currently have 500 papers and 30 books on it. Being able to screen read anything is also a plus for light reading like war and peace.
I mean I'm sure you disable most pop-ups and notifications on your phone too. The problem is most people don't and every type of distraction is vying for their attention every moment they are on that screen.
I would argue the problem is multi-faceted, and screens are a convenient boogeyman which is a relatively easy thing to point to.
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.
First, salaries for teachers must be compensated for the fact that teachers get three months off for summer amongst many other holidays that other workers do not get. Also, teachers get regular salary increases and have generous pension plans. I know several teachers personally that retired after working for 30 years and now have pensions paying 75% of their last highest salary for the rest of their lives, including survivor benefits.
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.
I mean the thing with parents both needing likely stressful jobs just to make ends meet doesn't just stop at education, it also impacts fertility. We won't even have kids to educate if something doesn't change. It shouldn't require two people working full time to be able to afford a home and have kids, and we need to push against the various forces that have driven us to that.
This. People skim, they don’t read.
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).
That can't be true because the Mentava and Alpha School kids use screens for instruction and they're doing well from parental reports.
You would have to compare it to a cohort using no screens to know whether there was a benefit or loss.
If the effect size is large (ie the screens are substantially damaging) we’d expect to simply directly observe something but these kids test near the top. You only need that kind of comparison if the effect is not acute.
Not sure what you’re saying here. I think you’re saying you can just observe the top performers and measure whether the top performers use screen time frequently outside of school. Not sure this works as it’s probable that the top performers are gonna be the same in both situations.
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.
>It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids.
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.
The low-income story gets most of the airtime because most people are not interested in reading about how rich people are struggling, but there was also a significant decline in affluent districts as well. See eg. this Boston Globe article about how even the top districts in the state (which itself is historically the top in the country) are using poor instructional methods:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/10/metro/reading-skills-...
https://archive.is/epEe5
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.
I'm still not sure that article supports that rich people are struggling. My take away is that the core point of the article is the achievement gap between rich and poor students, especially in affluent schools. It kind of drives home that the rich kids aren't struggling, really.
>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.
> It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids.
America is not solely made up of affluent kids.
>middle class has largely stopped having kids,
Anecdotal I guess but I feel like I'm seeing alot of people having kids suddenly.
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.
When you look at the conservative attack on public education, the prison industrial complex, et al., it really seems that this is the intention.
Oh yes, the public education that has done such a wonderful job. God forbid parents had better options. /s
The article, and presumably this discussion, is specifically about a recent decline, e.g. the largely public school system doing a worse job than it used to. It should obviously be worth thinking about the reasons, including things like the attacks on schools.
This was on HN a few weeks ago and provides a similar take: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy-is-a-policy-choi...
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.
"A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them."
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 proper job of teachers is to provide far more than simple "inspiration and motivation", especially to students who are at significant risk of failure. Teachers must be given the skills they need to provide clear and understandable information and direction to these students in the course of their job duties. They should actively educate, not just act as coaches who simply expect their "inspired" students to learn the school curriculum on their own, as with the now-popular "sink or swim" approach.
Why have grade levels at all? Instead, have a directed graph of skills that you need to advance through. Then, in order to advance, you can focus the labor effort toward correcting skill deficits in a dynamic way. This is not possible with how educational institutions are traditionally organized, but it doesn't seem intractable to restructure to support this methodology.
It would remove the stigma of "being held back", as there are no levels in a strict sense, just cumulative progress.
> Why have grades at all? Instead, have a directed graph of skills that you need to advance through
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.
This is exactly how it is at my husband's high school: no penalties, no consequences, unlimited turning in of work until the end of the quarter. Didn't finish it all and ended up with a D or lower? Doesn't matter, because you can't be held back anyway.
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.
There are other ways to introduce motivating factors that aren't tied to grade level retention. Sometimes this is done in secondary and tertiary education in the US, like preventing participation in extracurricular activities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholastic_probation
You could also reward students for outstanding accomplishments.
Right, the nodes of such a skills graph would require standardized evaluation.
To be clear, I am talking about replacing grade levels (K, 1, 2, ..., 12), not graded assessments. I updated my comment to clarify this.
I'd love to see this tried. If you want to level up in writing, take those classes. If you reach minimum levels in enough subjects, you get a diploma. And you could make it as granular as you wanted.
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.
It really comes down to costs and efficiency. Having large enough class size and thus grade level makes things more efficient. As teachers do scale to certain number of pupils. Current schools can teach same material for say 15-40 students at one time. But in more tutoring like system you might be able to do 5. Which means you need 3-8 times more teachers.
I have a suspicion that you'd wind up with a lot of places that would care even less and with people making it to 18 without ever having advanced at all without some sort of stick ("being held back"), probably impacting the most vulnerable even more.
That might be a possibility, but from what I've read, retention (the stick) does more harm than good. One of those harms is that students get held back by struggling with one skill, like math, when they are progressing on other skills at a normal pace.
A system like this would address that issue, and could prevent education resources from being applied redundantly.
Well, that's a simple way of "solving" the problem: exclude everyone who has the problem you're supposed to fix.
If you don't exclude people who failed to learn the material then the next year's material has to dumb itself down to account for the people who can't understand it. And conversely the students who didn't understand but went forward often still have some missing factor which means they'll spend 12 years not understanding and falling behind.
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.
People being held back a grade aren't being excluded from education, though. They're being educated.
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.
It doesn't exclude them, it just defers them for a year. Rich kids "red shirt" all the time.
The top ranked schools figured out long ago that removed students do not count against the scores that make them top ranked schools.
It's not exclusion. If you fail to meet standards, you should be retained for another year for additional time to meet them. That only becomes a "problem" when we treat it like one, usually because of warped institutional incentives or misplaced shame.
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.
> retained for another year
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.
> Or perhaps has remedial classes over the summer?
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.
A third grader is in school for 9 months. Why can't they handle 1 or 2 more months per year?
US had that, but equity reformers dismantled it because it highlights socio-demographic inequalities in USA. Some problems are too hard to fix, so it's necessary to destroy anything that exposes evidence of the problem.
This is a short term fix that may cause long term problems though, kids that are held back are more likely to drop out before graduating
Is there any reason to think they would graduate with useful knowledge otherwise? The kids in my day who did poor may have graduated - but they still lacked knowlege and to the diploma was paper...
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
When graduating is essentially just aging out, it isn’t really graduating
what does "really graduating" even mean in 2025? you're eligible for a slightly less bad minimum wage job?
Lowering standards is why a high school diploma is nearly worthless, it wasn’t always the case. If you can graduate with a high school diploma while still being illiterate, innumerate, etc. it is a signal with no entropy.
when was it not the case? as far as I know teachers have been pushing kids through to their diploma for 50 years so they could get out of their hair and into the workforce... both illiteracy and dropout rates were higher
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
Not having a highscool diploma or GED can limit one's future career options; an example is the US armed forces[1].
[1] https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements
Whats the point of graduating if you can't read?
jobs, it's pretty much the driving force of the entire US economy
"Jobs" don't requure graduation.
they certainly do more than they did 50 years ago
It's interesting that you'd prefer that they move upwards with their cohort and damage the education of those students too.
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"You'll graduate more competent students with this one simple trick." /s
There’s a few other things they do. The link I shared actually provides 3 examples.
I just thought it aligned particularly well with the OP on that specific point.
Ugh, 3 simple tricks sounds too hard. I'm not going to read something that long. (/s)
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> remember when the popular academic consensus was "you can't imprison your way into a safe society."
Who said this?
I thought the argument was always you can’t do this and maintain the high living standards of a modern economy built on the rule of law. It’s essentially a challenge to a society: fuck up enough on security and you lose the fruits and freedoms of a modern state fielding a growing economy.
> more or less saying "you can't just discipline children."
Who said this?
I thought the argument was it inhibits learning in the long run and is not fair to poor kids or something. (We know that’s B.S. now.)
But totally unrelated to El Salvador.
Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law, then the academic definition was wrong.
Both are related in the sense that they said you can't just discipline people, more or less, with the same spirit of focusing on people's good side, to their detriment. Different application, same principles, same failure.
Bukele has 91 percent approval according to Bukele. There are plenty of dictators with sky high approval ratings. I would also “approve” of somebody who has the ability to throw me in torture prison for the rest of my life on the flimsiest of evidence.
People obviously prefer safety to lawlessness, and El Salvador was uniquely awful. The issue is that once you jail everybody who might possibly be a criminal, you’re left with the entire extrajudicial infrastructure that now needs to find a new reason to exist. Not to mention in this particular circumstance that the government seems to have decided to pay off the cartels and use state violence pick winners and losers in order to quash the drug war. It works until it doesn’t.
> There are plenty of dictators with sky high approval ratings
Do you have evidence Bukele’s polling is corrupted?
Wikipedia lists several polling organisations [1]. And while there are building risks against fair and free elections [2], I haven't seen a credible monitor call that out as having already happened.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Nayib_B...
[2] https://freedomhouse.org/country/el-salvador/freedom-world/2...
> Do you have evidence Bukele’s polling is corrupted?
Do I have evidence that the polling coming out of an autocratic single party dictatorship is corrupted? I mean, no, of course not. Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.
> I haven't seen a credible monitor call that out as having already happened.
https://www.wola.org/analysis/el-salvador-election-integrity...
One can argue that El Salvador is better off under Bukele than it was prior. I’d probably have to agree - things were really bad there and locking people up and throwing away the key absolutely works. Always has. It just isn’t sustainable and now that Bukele has successfully consolidated power, we just get to wait and see what happens.
Similarly, Yugoslavia generally loved Josip Tito. He was still a horrible dictator that butchered millions and when he died, the country collapsed.
> Do I have evidence that the polling coming out of an autocratic single party dictatorship is corrupted?
Yes, that's what I'm asking for. We have this for e.g. Russia [1], North Korea [2] and Venezuela [3]. I'm asking for similar evidence out of El Salvador.
For example, did Wola reject the 2024 election ex post facto?
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/20/t...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_North_Korea
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/06/venezu...
Nobody is rejecting the 2024 election. Nobody is even claiming that. It’s late 2025 and things there have changed. Wola was (correctly) sounding the alarm on the implication of what Bukele was doing in El Salvador. It’s not Venezuela at this point there, but it sure as shit is like Nicaragua.
How meaningful is that approval statistics in a country where the government can put people in prison more or less arbitrarily without any kind of habeas corpus protections?
> How meaningful is that approval statistics in a country where the government can put people in prison more or less arbitrarily without any kind of habeas corpus protections?
There is diverse polling to support Bukele’s popularity [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Nayib_B...
Before the government suspended it; the murder rate was nearly the highest in the world, and every attempt previously failed.
Freedoms sometimes break down at scale given the right conditions. That's not comfortable to contemplate. If even 20% of people were involved in the gang and using GrapheneOS, you bet that freedom would be revoked. There is no guarantee in natural law that freedom is self-sustaining or chaos-resistant.
Freedom is the privilege of a stable nation that can hopefully stay stable, but freedom does not guarantee stability. Thus why we have outliers like Singapore - very stable, minimal freedom; and outliers like El Salvador previously - very free, very unstable. Stable always beats free, because unstable makes freedom a purely academic exercise in nonsense (sure, the government might not arrest you for saying something, but the local thug will happily do worse; bragging "I have habeas corpus" is idiotic when the local drug lord is your problem and he doesn't honor it).
The murder rate was falling for years prior to Bukele’s election
Obviously extremely “generous” policies for jailing people involved with or adjacent to crime will reduce crime further, but he’s not singularly responsible for improvements and it’s not clear at all where the cost-benefit will net out
North Korea also has very low crime rates, I hear!
This has the vibes of "if 91% of people feel like pi is 3.0, then the formal academic definition is wrong."
It’s pretty unbelievable how many people think “give one person unlimited power to fix our problems” is a novel solution to anything
Throughout all of human history, the vast majority of awful people in power were consciously put there by people who wanted solutions to real problems
Our Founding Fathers’ insight was to say that it’s actually better the state struggle to solve some problems (including important ones!) than to create an extremely powerful apparatus that can be abused (whether that be with good or poor intentions, with or without popular support etc)
We’ve tried the whole dictator thing! Literally countless times in history! The reason we instead accept some amount of crime and “what the fuck why can’t we solve this?” is because dictators almost always end up being absolutely awful!
Approval rating for a president seems like a pretty poor relation to "feeling like one is living under the rule of law".
Meanwhile El Salvador is ranked 130th out of 180 in the Corruption Perceptions Index with a score of 30/100, and has mostly been sliding lower in the past decade.
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024/index/slv
> Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law, then the academic definition was wrong
I'd love to hear what you think "living under the rule of law" means, and how you feel that relates to approval rating?
The rule of law is not something the voting populace always values. Like, almost every populist movement supports or enacts something explicitly against the law but is popular with their citizenry.
it would be 100% but the other 9% are in prison
> Bukele has 91% approval. If that doesn't meet the formal academic definition of people feeling like they are living under the rule of law
A starving man will rate highly someone giving him an ounce of food. That doesn’t mean their life is good. Just better than the hell it was.
El Salvador’s economy is middling [1]. It is growing faster than when it was ridden with crime. But it isn’t growing like a developed economy with the rule of law. (It can’t.)
El Salvadoreans made the best choice they could. When confronted with security versus long-term prosperity, most choose security. And who knows, they might slough off dictatorship as a transitional period like Korea and Taiwan did after all.
TL; DR It’s a straw man to claim what Bukele did was some revolution in social thought that confounded thinkers outside El Salvador. It wasn’t. Martial law has always existed. And Duterte had literally just wrapped up doing the same thing.
> they said you can't just discipline people
Who said this?
I can just as easily invent conservative straw men who didn’t like their idiot kids failing grades and getting their states to not implement ESSA. It’s narratively cohesive. But it isn’t credible, same as this allegation.
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/elsalvador/overview
Red states went from dead last in education to still dead last in education but trending upwards.
I wouldn't hold your breath.
Safe for whom?
Of course you can imprison your way to a safe society. At the limit, you can just put everyone in prison. Nobody would ever say you can't imprison your way to a safe society. What people actually say is that the consequences of attempting to do that are not worth the trade off. Most people would not want to live in a dictatorial police state even if it is "safe".
America is already imprisoning more then other countries. Russia puts more people in prison, but that is it.
Georgia (the country) has Russia beat in the prisoners per capita game.
Isn't Georgia just Russia-lite these days?
Teachers unions are political organizations that lean left. They are never going to want to get behind anything Mississippi does. Their sole purpose is to siphon off as much public funding for their members, not to teach children. In fact failing kids justifies more money spent (guys, this is literally in the article as a point where liberal assumptions are being challenged; please read the article before downvoting me at least).
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...
> Teachers unions are political organizations that lean left. They are never going to want to get behind anything Mississippi does.
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.
MAE is a wholly different beast than teacher's unions in most states. Mississippi does not require teachers to join the union, thus the union needs to compete to attract teachers. Thus, it is incentivized to actually do stuff. Usually, when people say teacher's unions (or at least when I refer to them), I refer to the set up in the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, etc, where it is a requirement for teachers to join the union, regardless of what they think of the union.
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.
It still refutes your original point:
> 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.
So basically
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?
What about where MAE[0] got their Republican governor[1] to approve the largest teacher salary increase in state history[2]?
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...
I addressed this in another comment. Unlike many states, Mississippi does not require teachers to pay dues to the union (California for example, does). Mississippi has a low rate of teachers union membership as a result (only ~36%). Mississippi has one of the weakest teachers unions in the country.
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!!!
You can disagree with the whole-language reading, but it's a stretch to claim that a union opposing mandates on teachers is not representing what the teachers want.
This is (anecdotally) not true for families in the highest income decile (in California). Kids are pushed harder to learn things earlier than when I was growing up. For example, nearly all of my kid's classmates could read before they started kindergarten. All could do basic arithmetic. Now that he's in first grade, most can read chapter books and have a grasp of multiplication. My mom pushed me hard to get me ahead of my peers, but I didn't hit those milestones until a year later. The standards and expectations are extremely high now because it's never been harder to get a spot at a top 20 university—perhaps because a top 20 school is the best chance you can get to maintain your living standards.
I've not seen anything saying all kids are lacking in important skills these days, but rather they all seem (to me) to imply that we're on the way to an even more-stratified society. Smart kids will be just as educated as smart kids used to be - probably even moreso. Dumb kids will fall further and further behind, and the middle range of "kinda smart at a bunch of stuff" will disappear.
With the extreme stratification of wealth follows the stratification of... everything else, really.
Everything is bifurcating now. Haves are having more and more, and have-nots are having less and less. Middle class jobs are disappearing in favor of a mix of 1. low-wage unskilled/service jobs and 2. "elite" jobs for the upper crust. There used to be a place in society for A, B, C, and D students, but now you're either top-college material or you risk being swept into a growing underclass.
> 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.
> 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?
> This is (anecdotally) not true for families in the highest income decile
FTA: “High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses.”
How are they teaching 4 year olds reading and arithmetic? That wasn’t an option in my affluent area in SoCal. Somehow Chinese and some Russian kids can do it, but mine didn’t. Despite my paying $20k/year per child for preschool.
Same way they used to teach it in 1st grade, but 2 years earlier. There's often more of an emphasis on visuals, manipulatives, and songs too, eg. my kid's kindergarten teacher linked us to this song [1] on the first day, and there's dozens of similar resources on YouTube.
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-...
[3] https://www.miniplay.com/game/snake-2048-io
There’s a huge difference between knowing the alphabet and being able to read a decodable book like Bob, let alone getting to chapter books.
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.
But there's also a big difference between 18 months and 4 years.
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.
Really? Can you share the school’s name? Can you give an example of chapter book so I understand the reading level?
I'm from a blue class family in a non-affluent area and I could already read going into Kindergarten because my mom spent a lot of time reading with me before I got to school. This was 25+ years ago.
You touch upon an issue near to my heart but I am loathe to utter it: women in workforce is robbing our children and country of a future.
Disagree if you will.
What do you mean? Fathers can teach their kids to read too right? In what sense are mothers specifically at fault?
You probably get disagreement becasue your focused on one gender. No reason why we can't have stay at home dads.
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
Men are pretty bad at breast feeding or carrying a pregnancy.
You can formula feed or feed with pumped milk. Father's are capable of feeding children.
Formula is not as nutritious as human breast milk. Bottle feeding leads to long lasting anatomical changes. You can look at the research confirming these uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.
What are the long lasting anatomical changes? Would love to learn more because my kids were bottle fed.
Narrowing of jaws, airway, and higher change of sleep apnea into adulthood. You can see the difference even as a lay person.
This is false.
Whooaa! You're going to give people whiplash with how quickly you're changing what's being discussed. Men are perfectly capable of reading to kids! That you use things men are perfectly able to do, rather than the things they're not, as justification for why women should not be in the workplace makes me think you're not nearly so loathe to utter it as you say.
I was responding to someone claiming dads are just as good caretakers as moms. Clearly false.
Relitigating what's always been said seem like a waste of everyone's time, especially when you're already going to ignore the context in which you're having a discussion.
I have no idea what you’re saying. You could interact with the claims made instead of making a meta point using corporate speak.
You are being intellectually dishonest. What do carrying pregnancy and breastfeeding have to do with caring for a kindergarten age child?
1. Younger siblings 2. Spending enough time to teach reading and arithmetic BEFORE kindergarten.
So actually in this sub thread the relevant age is 0 to 5.
Breastfeeding generally stops at age 2 (or earlier). Your contention is that literacy is significantly affected by whether the mom or the dad is taking care of the child at age 2 and below?
Not just literacy but everything is significantly affected by the care rendered from 0 to 4. My concern was broader: the children’s and society’s future.
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.
women are better than men at housekeeping and raising children. why do women take this as an insult? its a compliment.
I never mentioned housekeeping.
I take it as an insult as a guy! Theres nothing in my gender that precludes me from being as good at housekeeping (cleaning, cooking). Unscientific drivel!
I don't know, but I new a guy who had gotten a 5 in AP calc BC before entering high school. He was understandably depressed
My mom taught me math by playing cards with me, and taught me reading by reading me books. It has nothing to do with money. I grew in a house that had a giant hole in the floor, lead paint, and asbestos tiles in North Carolina at that time. My mom is a high school graduate from New Jersey, my parents were late 20s and made barely any money in the 1980s.
Some things you cannot buy for love or money!
This is generally true for all professional (white collar) families.
Yes, but what is the proportion of the population reaching those standards? High income families are a very small percentage of the US demographics.
Depends where you set the bar, but GP's post explicitly said "Highest income decile", which means 10% by definition.
> 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.
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.
> One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home.
This "effect" is the textbook example of correlation != causation. By which I mean, it was literally in my AP Psych textbook in high school.
But it’s also a big potential confounder, and I certainly don’t know the literature well enough to say how well they managed to account for that - not that education research has a ton of great studies, but they’re unlikely to all be colossal mistakes.
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.
Except, programs which give free books to children in households without books demonstrably improve reading.
There's a correlation component, but also there absolutely is a causal connection of access to books and parents reading to children.
It’s weird, and a little unnerving, to have a line from Anathem by Neil Stephenson immediately come to mind:
“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.”
Similarly, I thought of "A Canticle for Leibowitz." Stephenson is right, of course, but I think that Miller more fully understands that our fall begins not just with the fading of literacy and the rise of ignorance, but also in post modern relativism and the reign of cynicism. If one more otherwise clever person tries to explain to me how there's no such thing as objective truth, I might just scream.
“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.”
Everyone who wants to tell me about objective truth is about to tell me about which group of humans it's okay to persecute in about 2 more sentences.
People making an actual good argument don't front, nor bookend it with a thesis on "the nature of truth".
Heh, ya it seems that the term objective truth has been ate by conspiracy theorists and psychos.
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.
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.”
…
“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.
> I could see the logo of a company, which I recognized from ten years ago, though they had made it simpler
2008. Stephenson is 10 years ahead of the current discourse, as usual.
Things have been feeling very Snow Crash and Diamond Age, lately, except I don't think there are any literally underground sex cults that are worthwhile.
"They had parties underneath the supermarket in Brooklyn..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5_0atkZTU
Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis (who wrote The Hustler and The Color of Money, and Queen's Gambit, and The Man Who Fell To Earth – quite an oeuvre!) has long been one of my favorite books and it's been eerie to see how right he was about how eager mankind is to hand over all intellectual labor to the robots.
(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.)
I thought that book was pretty dull, and had a terrible romance subplot. But I do have to say it pops in my head more and more often, just like Idiocracy. Someone should definitely do a movie so the illiterates know what they're missing at least.
It's a philosophy text with a lot of ideas masquerading as a work of fiction. The closest analogy to it that I can think of is the Symposium... which is a philosophy work that uses a plot and stories to express the ideas. Incidentally, there's a part of Anathem that feels a lot like the Symposium (complete with chatting about philosophy around a table).
I haven't read that book, but the concept is also in his book The Diamond Age.
Mediatronic glyphs on our chopsticks when? Love the way the Nell's vocabulary and disposition evolve as the Primer (or Miranda) teaches her to spell, read, and eventually understand Turing machines via binary and logic gates.
I don't remember that line in Anathem. It seemd pretty clear that the Saecular society at the time of the novel was a literate, 21st century tech level. e.g. there were characters like Samman who was basically a sysadmin.
It's in the first chapter. The quote you were replying to was in the book, verbatim.
They all use Kinagrams—a moving picture script. Very few are literate. Well-off burgers typically can read and write, but lots of the workers and virtually all the slines can't read.
Aren't Kinagrams and Logotype Arban forms of logograms, like Chinese characters or Kanji? I interpreted that as "most extramuros can read and type their daily language, but not the alphabet used for technical writing"
The extramuros language is “Fluccish” and it’s stated that it uses the same alphabet as Orth. I think it’s a little more pictorial (esp. Kinagrams with animation) than Chinese
Weren't the ita basically 'half-concents' essentially? Where the caste, despite being allowed more of the trappings and technological luxuries of the Saecular society, specifically were kept away from the other sciences to handicap them because they couldn't enforce the same asceticism on one whose job it is to maintain the technology.
Some young people have started to widely use emoji in personal communications. We may not be far away from a society that partially abolished written language and relies only on images and videos to communicate.
"some young people?" I hardly know anyone who _doesn't_, regardless of education level or age.
Well, I don’t, but unfortunately for me I am in, as you say, a small and dwindling minority.
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.
heh, my eyes have been terrible since I was a young child
When I first read Asimov's Foundation, I thought the decline and loss of knowledge in the Galactic Empire within a few generations was unrealistically quick. It's been eye-opening to witness new parents who not only don't know that they're supposed to teach their children to read, but wouldn't know how to do so.
Also, the Portland thing.
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?
Late GenXer here. I went from a place with pretty good schools to one with with pretty bad schools and a strong religious/honor culture background. I went from a humans can accomplish anything to one of we are damned at a pretty young age. It seems so many people are fact resistant from a young age.
The people who need to find out aren't curious and aren't looking for proof that counters what they're inclined to believe. They won't check what locals are saying and the videos of nothing-much-happening they're posting. They watch the same handful of shocking crime videos on Facebook and are sure the cities are overrun with rampant lawlessness (and apparently the residents are just persistently too stupid, over decades, to do anything about it, voting-wise, and need the Federal Government to step in despite their protestations and save them? It's a puzzling world view if you think about it for even a second), watch Fox News showing b-roll of fire and violence from one city block on one night for weeks on end (or from another city and year entirely) and claiming that's the whole city all the time, see news sites doing the same (one infamously put a photo of early '90s LA riots at the top of one of these articles recently, JFC)
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.
In the 1980s, the BBC did a realistic nuclear war movie called Threads. It is a classic and always relevant. The scene I found most shocking was in the aftermath, when the children of the survivors can't read or even speak properly. There is this record player and they have no idea what it is for or what music is, because they have never heard of it. One of them plays with it, intrigued that the turntable moves, but that is about it, nobody is hooking it up to get everyone dancing.
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.
Symbols are archaic, time to replace language with something self-organizing, self-teaching, concatenating and concatenated, ruled by verbs, and defanging nouns and agentic occlusions.
I don't think this quote is in the book.
The larger context...
This was from the part where Fraa Orolo was interviewing Artisan Quin about the world outside the Concent.It's in the first chapter.
What I’m most surprised by is how visually illiterate the older generations seem to be.
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.
Back when high def TVs were relatively new and cable TV and separate channels for SD and HD feeds, it used to drive me crazy that my parents would watch the SD channel with the image stretched to fit the screen. I’d show them where the HD channel was (it was something like SD channel # + 200) but they just didn’t care. The stretched SD image was good enough.
I’m almost certain that if we were to do a test, less than 10% of 60+ year olds would be able to identify a messed up aspect ratio.
Media literacy seems to be one of those things it's easy to forget you ever had to learn. I'm routinely amazed at how little of it most other people are capable of, when a lot of it is now so automatic for me that I can't turn it off, it's just a permanent part of how I experience things—but at some point I'm sure I was about that limited, and I'm better at it now only because I found improving my literacy to be interesting and fun, so I effortlessly put a lot of time into it.
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 think some people simply have a bad visual cortex. Countless times I've tried to show people how to turn off motion interpolation on their TV to prevent the soap opera effect, and they just didn't see any difference.
As an "older" person, watching video critically wasn't a literacy skill that mattered throughout my education. I was taught how to use a (physical) card catalog, how to distinguish primary and secondary sources, how to use printed indexes to discover relevant news articles, how to find and read material on microfiche, ...
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.
Maybe they just have a different set of values. These older generations you're talking about may have grown up watching ultra grainy, ultra low def, low production quality(relative to modern), black and white TV. Maybe they just learned to look past visual blips and focus on the story.
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?"
Tech illiteracy at some age groups is insane to me. I understand that my 93 year old grandma wasn't great at this sort of thing. But I encounter people who are in their 20s who don't know how to print a document, or people in their 50s falling for obvious AI scams. Didn't Jurassic Park come out in 93? Did they just think people were getting eaten by dinosaurs?
Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a good 20-50 years.
In the US, the kids are doing poorly. But unlike China, there is actually a large number of children being born.
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.
https://www.childtrends.org/publications/fertility-rate-unit...
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.
Economic problems create their own demographic problems. The current government policies against immigration are a sure way to reduce population growth in the US for the next decades.
China's fertility rate, even assuming it does not improve, won't cause problems for several decades. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-anything-knock-china-off-i...
Because women are trafficked into China and forced into marriages?
https://thefeminismproject.com/global-news/china-cracks-down...
What do you mean by fail? Even if we have flaws we still seem to have a decent education system
Looking at fertility rates online, the most recent numbers I could find is 1.6 in the US and 1.4 in the EU. Both indicate population decline.
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.
I do wonder, and this is probably way too optimistic - but if China or another country were to open their economy, I wonder if there would be benefit to perhaps some of the wealth leaving the US, especially as too many of our modern businesses are too extractive.
What's kind of depressing about this moment in general is that there isn't really a 'shining beacon on the hill'. If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. Europe is good in a lot of ways, but kind of muddling along in others - and won't even policy democratic backsliders like Hungary.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Kinda like the adult equivalent of learning that Santa isn’t real or finding out your parents are getting a divorce. I believe that we put too much faith in our “bedrock institutions” because we were taught to. Now, the facade is gone, and we’re left to figure things out as best we can. I don’t have a clue where the future will take us (nobody does). But, there’s usually some good that comes with the bad, and I do have the feeling that we’re living through history, much more so than I ever thought we’d get to. If we are truly witnessing the downfall of the United States, well… it’s going to be very interesting to say the least.
It's certainly not like it was perfect here in the past or that the mythology reflected reality, but it felt like there was a fairly long arc of 'getting better in fits and starts' The cold war was over and we stopped supporting heinous dictators. Everyone could vote. Gay people got the right to marry. Things weren't perfect, but we had the means to work hard to make them better.
Yeah, it felt like the U.S. was stumbling towards a more just and equitable future, and media and popular culture perpetuated a narrative that we were MUCH further along as a country and culture than we actually were. To the point of just representing a false reality. Then, all of the sudden, reality came crashing down, and it became pretty evident that a huge chunk of the country doesn't give a damn about any of that stuff, nor can they be bothered to waste a minute worrying about the consequences of re-electing a felon, etc. They just want cheap eggs, which they're still not getting, but they are getting an entirely new type of governance, which looks pretty darn authoritarian, but who am I to say...?
Canada could benefit.
To say Canada could benefit from USA's descent is like saying one's arms benefit from the person becoming paraplegic.
As a Canadian... Canada is weak, poor, and corrupted by the same plague that has lead America to where it sits.
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.
Also, the fact power is distributed among three levels of government that are rarely in alignment translates into severe dysfunction. Just like the US, Canada has lost the ability to build.
>If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US.
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
That sounds like "managing your expectations", as in the US is not supposed to be like China, but is becoming more like it. There's still a ways to fall though.
>but is becoming more like it
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
> If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US
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.
I think there's an important material difference between the two. China's single party is authoritarian and uncontested. America's two major parties are mildly authoritarian on different axes, but average out to a mostly liberal status quo in practice. The relative chaos and transparency of America's system are what they are, but it isn't an autocracy at this point.
There's also a significant growing political push to transition away from FPTP voting in the US, which would dismantle the current duopoly.
I imagine that analogy won't go over well with some, but at the very least I think it's an insightful look at how someone who was pro-CCP might look at the contrast.
Yeah, when Trump was in the news for having said in another world him and Biden would have been friends, it was celebrated, but to me it was just one more indicator that they have more in common with each other than with the people who put their faith in the one or other. Their lifestyles seem similar, the people around them are similar ...
Uh, in the US I can (still) criticize and mock the people running things. That's pretty important to me.
Even when criticizing and mocking the people running things doesn't have any effect? The point of free speech was supposed to be that you'd be able to make material changes in your living conditions and government policies by convincing people that they should be made. That's not really true anymore for anyone in the US except the very, very wealthy. But don't take my word for it: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
What would happen if we took a more consequentialist look at democracy rather than caring mainly about the forms?
Everyone always complains that if you raise taxes, rich people will "leave", with the assumption that only the richest can actually run productive companies, which obviously isn't the case. On the other hand, there must be some fraction of the truly richest that are just relentlessly good at accruing wealth, and not much else, no? Wouldn't you _want_ those people to leave?
I think we have too many billionaires and not enough millionaires.
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”
Forget it. As long as China remains a dictatorship, investors will not pump in too much money - it's too uncertain what happens to your investment.
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.
All billionaires still in China (and some much who've left) exist only at the pleasure of Xi. I don't think Jeff or Mark or Warren want to worry about being disappeared. I think you're probably right here.
Reading is the most challenging thing we ever learn to do. Each letter is a symbol, those symbols make sounds, then add them together and the sounds and meanings changes.
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.
From the article:
"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.
You must read well to write well.
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. ...
Anyone who spends any amount of time perusing discussions on social media will quickly observe what a rare gift strong reading comprehension turns out to be.
I notice the trend that people are reading much less in public and on public transporation -- before if you went on a long-haul flight you would bring a couple of books or magazines, now people much prefer to consuming video content. On a flight every row I saw passengers either watching a movie on their phone/laptop/ or screen seat.
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.
https://archive.ph/enwf6
There's really interesting research about children/people learning to read without formal instruction; as John Taylor Gatto points out in Dumbing Us Down, back when Thomas Paine was writing, there were ~600,000 copies of Common Sense printed for a population of three million. People learned to read on their own or with very little instruction because they were interested in reading.
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.
Purely anecdotal, but most of the kids in my son's cohort, early 20s, have received what would be considered by most to be a good education, but don't read for pleasure. I find that worrying.
I also didn't read for pleasure in my 20s and even much of my 30s. Forced reading in high school (of material I didn't enjoy, in quantity, and frequently fell behind on, and felt bad about failing) ruined it for me for about 15 years. But the trauma faded with time and now I read some 10-30 books a year. So maybe it's not permanent for your son's cohort either.
I second this. I hated (perhaps not consciously) being forced to read books in high school, however recently I’ve gone back and started rereading those books I was assigned and have loved it!
Don't we though? My generation is also known for watching hour long youtube videos (video essays), and even if that's not all of us, that's more than past generations (of course). And we are known for listening to hour long podcasts. Even if these podcasters are not necessarily as informed or as rigorous (same for youtube), I think my generation still in some ways shows a curiosity for information
That said I mostly agree with this and think for one, if foreign language was appreciated more here, maybe people would read more
The amount of words even an average reader can consume and understand in an hour is vastly higher than what one can gain from a video essay, even if played at 2x speed. For high performing readers, it's not even close to be remotely comparable.
I don't know. Watching x amount of quality videos and reading x amount of quality written works is surely better than just reading x amount of quality written works. And finally, of course the content of those words matters. I could read a 200 page academic work and if the work is poorly written then I haven't gained much.
> Watching x amount of quality videos and reading x amount of quality written works is surely better than just reading x amount of quality written works
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.
Longish reply:
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.
To pile on, You can learn a tremendous amount from reading difficult sources, specifically due to their difficulty. Nobody reads classical fiction for the facts.
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.
Oh, I agree. And by the way, I speak two languages and learned the second primarily through youtube. That was difficult, and difficult topics can be covered there. Certainly reading is harder! Of course I agree with that. I still couldn't read classical sources in that language. I just think we shouldn't altogether knock getting info in the form of audio.
You're comparing the time spent over 2x with time spent over 1x.
Tutoring works well as a video where after (or during) the video you put the examples the tutor gives into practice.
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.
> better read if you care about learning
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
Podcasts are horrible content slop that are appealing more because one can enjoy the parasocial relationship it offers rather than because the podcasters are insightful or informative.
Some are, just like some books are (not necessarily to the same degree)
It's probably not a good education. If your kid is in an average public school they were probably not taught to read phonetically. Unless you as parents taught that separately, all these kids are handicapped.
Sliding? I'd say we're running toward it, what with all the anti-intellectualism and attacks on education. After all, can't have all those smarty-pants kids turning into bossy-pants adults, now can we?
> Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it.
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.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
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
Slash education for a few generations, alienate & scare immigrants. In 20 years you will have American manufacturing jobs manned by illiterate children who cannot organise or unionize.
Joe hill died for nothing it seems.
If you could quantify the benefits of literacy, I think you'd find a similar decline. The incentives for literacy, especially among kids, are less compelling than they used to be.
Crazy not one mention of whole word learning and the disaster it has been since it's been rolled out across the country:
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
It's largely discredited, yet it still persists.
Truthfully I think this is actually getting phased out. That’s one win at least.
The performance of kids in school reflects adult behaviors.
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-...
My concern for illiteracy, dropping participation in summer reading programs, and the like has informed some of my gift giving and material donations. All the grands get books. And holiday giving to Angel Trees or Toys for Tots includes books and/or comic books. I know this annoys the latter and it frustrates and annoys the hell out of me.
Does it take into account ESL? I know at least at my daughters school, kids with English-speaking parents score very well. The others score very low, on average. I notice when I pick up my daughter that the ESL kids group together and only speak their native language though. So, it's not surprising.
Not surprising considering the DoE has been failing the American people for decades. Now that we're slowly giving education back to the states, where it belongs, the trend will start to reverse if it hasn't already.
The recent move away from phonics has been disastrous, and states that are using phonics now are seeing better results.
> 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.
I don't even understand how one could learn to read without phonics.
I know from my earliest memories that reading is possible from whole words if you are read to enough without being formally taught. Granted at that point my attention span was too lacking to really read books by myself, compared to being read to.
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?
I believe the issue is measures of 'achievement' and 'excellence' typically use the 20th and 50th percentiles, respectively. For example, most education studies focus on what improves graduation rates, passing rates, or the bottom 10–20% on standardized assessments. Most school districts' financial incentives rely on these metrics as well. Occasionally you'll get a study that looks at the median (and even more rare, the 90th percentile), but no standardized assessment even showcases the bellends of the distribution. This is why you get claims like this
> 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?
> 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.
Fear not! Teaching kids to read and running national education policy are just like professional wrestling.
This article is a weird mix of things. Early on we see:
> 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.
An article posted elsewhere in the comments (https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy-is-a-policy-choi...) has a take that might explain a distinction:
> 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.
It's new information to me that parts of the South are improving the average student (relatively speaking). One thing they had already done well, in my experience, was cultivate the smarter poor kids. When I was a kid in the Deep South, they funneled kids testing above about 125 IQ to magnet schools, busing them in from all over the metro. My friend and I escaped our working class neighborhood school that way. Now, I live in Silicon Valley, where no such programs exist, and by-and-large the public school you go to is based on how expensive your zip code is. Talk about reinforcing inequality.
What I find slightly amusing is I strictly remember education people writing scathing articles about the 'No Child Left Behind' policies and how mechanistic and cruel was it towards children, and how could these evil fascists controlling education reduce children to simple numbers.
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.
> School spending did not decline from 2012 to 2022. In fact, it increased significantly, even after adjusting for inflation, from $14,000 a student to more than $16,000.
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.
The top elite kids aren't in public schools, so they don't even factor into the equation. Whether there is inequality in spending will depend on the state and whether the funding is local, or redistributive. But if you take California as an example, they do try to make sure money goes to poor students, and it has had no positive effect. California sends mor to Black, Latino, and low income students than white or high income students.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-publi...
Actually this isn't the whole picture. Because a lot of funding for schools comes from local property taxes, affluent areas tend to have more resources for education than poorer areas, regardless of how they school their kids. And if a lot of higher income students aren't utilizing public school, that's less students to spend the increased money on, which would exacerbate the view when looked at as a national per-student average.
Still, poor students in california do dramatically worse than poor students in mississippi, despite california spending much more. I dove into the data a while back and adjusted for income and race, California schooling is much worse and only looks good because its students are rich
Mississippi cooks the stats by holding the poorest students back. You can probably adjust for this if you have the raw data, but it's something you need to adjust for.
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.
Almost every state will spend the most on inner city kids. You have a ton of commercial tax base for relatively few kids. For example Atlanta Public Schools spends the most per pupil in GA outside of a handful of tiny districts.
most spending-per-student goes to the poorest or most-disabled students, not to the elite students. By definition, elite students are a tiny fraction, so evern if they get overspending, it won't move the average unless they are getting absurd multiples of the median, which they are noy getting.
My favorite paragraph in the article:
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.
can someone summarize this with emoji or an animated gif please?
They pretend to learn and we pretend to test them.
I think the most important thing for literacy is a nationwide culture of reading.
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?
"We should read fewer books that I don't like, and more books that I do like."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/science-fictio...
I have read maybe a thousand books of fantasy or science fiction, including 10k pages long fantasy series. Some of it was good, but most of it was pure slop.
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.
Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex? You seem to be focused on the idea of genre, which is orthagonal to the quality of the prose, the depth of the characters, the complexity of the themes, etc. You might as well focus on the size of the font.
>Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex?
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.
You're making three distinctions here and lumping them all into one. Let me check my understanding here. To you, for a book to be worthwhile, it must satisfy 3 criteria:
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.
Let me be honest, I despise your post. All your arguments are just made up and are totally disconnected from anything I said.
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: "We need to tell adults that reading is a worthwhile endeavor, especially when reading complex material." Person B: "But how do you define complex?" Person A: "What a meaningless question. It does not matter at all."
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 know what, I'm not even gonna wait for your reply. I'll come out and say it:
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.
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. That reading for the sake of reading is actually always worthwhile and that nobody should be judged for what they are reading. That all reading is a joy. That slop was just a way to categorize, but that each person themselves had to categorize themselves. That there is nothing wrong with treasuring what other see as banal or slop.
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.
"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."
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.
Are you sure that you read my entire post.
Do you really think I would care about the opinions of a slop reader after that.
It's funny that you are trying to present your overt snobbery as a "realization" you had after "rethinking", when it was already there in your first post in the thread.
"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.
It also doesn't help when we have programs like Accelerated Reader. The original goal of the program, from what I understand, was to encourage reading by rewarding kids for succeeding at reaching goals. Unfortunately, schools decided rewarding was bad and punishing was good. So instead of being an optional reward-driven approach, it became a mandatory part of your grade.
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.
Even treating it as a purely optional reward didn't work, at least for me. I remember doing AR and treating it like a game -- find the most points-dense book possible in the school library (for me it was The Hobbit, a whopping 70 points), read a summary of it online to get the details and ace the test. All without even opening the book. Well, I actually did try reading The Hobbit but I couldn't make it past the handful of pages without falling asleep.
I always hated school assigned reading. I could not really tell you why though.
At the same time I was a very avid reader, who spend a lot of time reading books.
I was a product of DoDDS system: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defen...
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!)
As another DoDDS graduate, I'd add that (a) the military makes parents responsible for their children; (b) the worst kids gets deported back to the US; (c) the military can compel parental behavior (like family therapy); (d) DoDDS teachers are a self-selection for people with curiosity and an interest to travel and live abroad; (e) unit rotations mean a 1/3rd or more of the school population changes year to year - naturally breaking cliques.
Sliding? You mean racing.
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.
If Mississippi can read, and California can't, the future of Silicon Valley might be in red states.
California is an economic powerhouse because people who could read (and more) moved to California for opportunity, not because they were educated in California.
Perhaps. Growing up though in the 70's, it was well known that California public schools ranked best in the country.
Silicon Valley is full of immigrants. Any place that actively dislikes them and is hostile to them is probably not going to replace it.
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.
I know why saying those words makes you feel good in the moment, but read them back to yourself and imagine how they sound to someone who's not coming from that same place as you.
I'm not an American, whats wrong with what he said? If my areas reading score was plummeting I'd worry about our future viability, what is wrong with that?
No, you don't understand, he totally owned the libs with this one /s
It's declined because a generation of students was not taught to read because teachers decided that phonics was a conservative dog whistle. To not be associated with George w Bush, they failed our children.
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
> What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it.
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.
TL;DR
Isn't there a video or a podcast of this?
/s
[flagged]
What the hell?
This is a new and bad definition of illiteracy. America is more literate than it has ever been; it started with Harry Potter, and grew with the internet. Everybody can read, and that was not true when I was a kid, because English is hard to read. You mostly have to read to participate on the internet. The lack of basic communication ability of the people on the early internet was shocking, and that's all gone. I rarely run into people who capitalize Every Single Word any more, and I never thought that would happen.
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.
> From 2000 to 2007, the bottom tenth of fourth graders in reading ability showed substantial improvement, before stagnating. But by 2024, those gains had been erased.
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.
> America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy
America is Sliding Towards Autocracy - FTFY
The authoritarian creep has certainly been facilitated by developing a culture of intellectual apathy.
Reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... (2019) was eye-opening for me. It's a must-read companion piece if you want to take this Atlantic article seriously, particularly with some of the politicization the Atlantic article tries to inject.
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.
> Atlantic article could have done something similar, focusing on the methodologies at hand
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.
Yes yes it’s the children’s fault. We didn’t hold them to high standards. We didn’t… give me a break.
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.
There is (some) truth to this but it fundamentally _does not_ replace foundational learning.
Not saying it does but what I am saying is it’s not two brackets anymore. It’s not Math & Literacy defined by one’s ability to do long divisional polynomials and identify the problematic grammar of some sub paragraph from a book from 1880s.
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.
But they do reflect ones ability to learn to get to the heights of education where you can be trusted to wield the new tools wisely.
Right… like a trained monkey to put the blocks in the hole. I have yet to see anyone wield tools wisely that requires higher education outside of CERN.
the problem isn't test scores. if anything, that kind of metrification of education is precisely the cause of this inability to comprehend and understand.
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.
Completely agree. The tests aren’t up to snuff with technology and how the world consumes media - text and academia included.
I love the poorly educated - DJT.
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!!
This take is partisan and not aligned with fact. You may be surprised to hear that Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee are all seeing improvements.
Here’s more information on that: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy-is-a-policy-choi...
The reason to fight against university education was laid out plainly in the 2012 Texas GOP platform. While not directly related to TFA, it clearly shows the reasoning to limit aspects of education.
> 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...
This is a gross distortion. 2012 Texas platform did not oppose the concept of higher order thinking skills, it opposed a specific pedagogy Higher Order Teaching Skills, which was displacing knowledge based learning. Reasonable people can disagree on which works better, teaching low order skills first, or high order skills first.
Here is the exact passage, so everyone can make up their own mind.
> 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...
Yes, they are opposing a type of modern educational program, not the concept of thinking skills. If you are familiar with elementary school curriculums, they are opposing Everyday Math or Illustrative Mathematics and supporting memorizing multiplication tables.
https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/k-5-math...
> challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
What about that passage?
Can you explain to me what "fixed beliefs" means?
This is one the lesson plans that was a trigger at the time. It is a typical constructivist pedagogy.
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'm sorry, what exactly is wrong with the lesson plan in that link? Can you please be very specific, such as citing passages?
You should try doing the work first instead of demanding others to teach you.
Why did you just go into rude and offensive mode?
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.
What is objectionable is the high opportunity cost. You could actually be teaching history. It is fine if you like the listen plan, but it is wrong to characterize people who think knowledge based learning is better as limiting education.
> 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.
Religion was my partial read for "fixed beliefs" as well. I have been alive for quite some time now, and the major battle for the young mind in the US was regarding evolution vs. literal biblical interpretation. This is the reason for charter schools, destroying the U.S. Department of Education, and much more. Those "fixed beliefs" are very fragile when exposed to new information.
I think it is a side note on the charter schools issue. The main driver is terrible standards and discipline in public schools. There is a reason atheists are putting their kids in charter schools too, and even religious schools.
I hear you, solid point looking at the current state of public education. The next question is: why is our public education system so lacking?
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.
> ever since science started to counter strict religious teachings, a significant portion of the country stopped trying to improve the public education
The Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925 [1]. The issue has been divisive for longer than American public education started failing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_trial
Sure, but look at this chart. It took a few generations for it to really take effect.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/q7gqms/usa...
IMO it started with no child left behind, and a wave of public sentiment and legal precedent that places the worst performing and behaving students above the majority.
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.
> it started with no child left behind
FTA: "As controversial as it was, No Child Left Behind coincided with increased school performance, especially for those at the bottom."
That is not mutually exclusive. First, you can absolutely sacrifice the median to improve the average. Second, I was pointing out when I think it started. One hypothesis is that the negative impacts of no child left behind and similar programs were initially mitigated/compartmentalized by the heavy academic tracking used at the time. My understanding is that much of this has changed over time with a reduction in number of tracks.
It's because they still spank children with paddles there, and you know that since Trump (and especially Trump 2.0) they've been ratcheting it up in magnitude and intensity.
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.
Putting a kidin 3rd grade twice, and then saying "more 4th graders can read" is just gaming the metrics.
Are MS, LA, AL, TN students reading at a higher level by age ?
I disagree because learning is cumulative. If you can’t read or do math at a 3rd grade level and we shove you through 4th, 5th, etc, you enter an unrecoverable state.
> This take is partisan and not aligned with fact.
My comment isn’t an opinion piece; it’s just what’s out there in the real world.
This was an intentional plan to keep the population stupid and fearful. It's been happening for the last 40 years or so. We've been systematically and intentionally dismantling and rendering ineffective, our education system.
> This was an intentional plan to keep the population stupid and fearful
A plan by whom and to what end? What does keeping the population afraid and stupid do that benefits the planner?
Who’s intentional plan? Where is this plan documented?