Unfriendly reminder that over half of United States adults read at or below an 8th grade level. My favorite part of this statistic is fact that, unless you’ve had your reading comprehension tested in an objective manner recently, you have no idea whether you fall in the upper or lower half. Statistically, half of the Americans reading this comment read it with a lower proficiency than a middle schooler.
I would like to point out that not everyone is from the USA. I for one come from Slovenia, where we have quite a good school system and a literacy rate of about 99.6%, compared to the USA with99%(source). I have no idea where you got the statistics. Can you maybe provide a source?
Literacy != Reading comprehension
I should have said half of the Americans reading my comment rather than half of the people reading it, though if we include all people who speak English as a first language, the statistics don’t change much—Americans make up more than 60% of all native English speakers, so at the absolute least, 3/10 of the native English speakers reading my comment are below an 8th grade level (assuming there’s no correlation with Lemmy users having higher than average literacy, which I’m sure Lemmy users would like to believe, but we shouldn’t make this assumption without data to back it up)
I would argue that non-native speakers who spend time on websites using a (to them) foreign language are probably above average on literacy and reading comprehension when compared to other people in their country though.
Ever since I learned that huge swathes of people younger than me in the US weren’t taught phonics when learning to read and instead were told to look at the letters and guess from context what the word is, it has made so many internet arguments make a lot more sense. A lot of kids will pick phonics up on their own to an extent, but the ones that don’t are just fucked.
It’s appalling because it’s basically how being functionally illiterate works, but for some reason now it’s the goal. And then they complain kids can’t engage with complex reading and ideas.
That explains a few things, but WTF.
If you don’t know phonics, how does looking at the letters help?
Magic.
Looking at the first letter and guessing based on what words you know that start with that letter, basically.
Where’s the Tumblr?
