this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Gives some perspective on american culture and problems compared to the rest of the world doesn't it?
Source: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
I've heard nothing but bad things about American schools and they're said to revoltingly underfunded especially in poor and non-white communities. Seen from an outside perspective it seems like all American schools do is multiple choice tests, bullying, pledge of allegiance, school shootings, eat hot chip and lie.
Austerity and culture war has consequences, one of them is that students are not given then education they need.
Hey!! That's just NOT TRUE!!
...we call them french fries
The school shootings are statistically insignificant but magnified to enormous size by the media, but other than that yes.
I'm all for american self-depreciation but:
"34% of adults who lack proficiency in literacy were born outside the US."
https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/
I hate to extrapolate data as an idiotic internetter but being born in the US and being illiterate could also be because we have so many immigrants that aren't set up for success right away and aren't as concerned with education as they are with meeting their most basic needs.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigration-by-country
So? Takes like six months to teach an adult to read, that's not an excuse.
Which illustrates her point well. 2/3 were born inside the US then.
Could first/second generation immigrants born in the US be more likely to be illiterate? Is the American education system simply bad at teaching kids to read? No idea.
I just have a compulsive personal issue with people using data like they are justified to say they know what causes the statistic they quote. I realize social media is more of a way for people to get a little dopamine instead of trying to understand the world but I'm okay getting downvoted to add context lol.
Were you adding context though? Does it justify the situation if a percentage of people are migrants (who often are fluent in a language above the given literacy btw.)?
For real literacy skills in the US are a huge problem, it is a systemic problem of which the burden is heavily placed on individuals that are marginalized. Neolibs might quote:
I say watch the whole Parenti lecture if you can: https://twitter.com/a_lutacontinua/status/936363027502391298?lang=de
"Yellow" Parenti lecture
Parenti's questions:
Edit The fascists mentioned for example were the right wing Nicaraguan death squads, you can find more about them in the Jakarta method
So first of all, thank you for the civil discussion because that is the biggest lacking quality of scored comment sections like this site. It seems like discussion always brings details that are helpful when we are condemning an entire country with little information provided. This is why I like discussion and not militant downvoting and personal attacks.
I truly have no narrative here but I just searched for immigrant literacy and the first thing I found:
"41 percent of immigrants score at or below the lowest level of English literacy — a level variously described as "below basic" or "functional illiteracy"."
https://cis.org/Immigrant-Literacy-Self-Assessment-vs-Reality
Thank you for the info and sources. I do have time to watch the lecture, and will.
Even if you excluded them (which seems like a very
approach) these people are only illiterate because they're from brown countries", you still have an education system where 13.9% of people are coming out illiterate.
I am not american
Nice of you to edit in the part that confirms you're not just a nationalist, but a racist too.
Lol damn you don't have to call me racist. I'm not, and just saw someone using a pretty general statistic to imply American education is terrible or something. I'm just someone who sees appropriation of incomplete information to create a half baked idea that makes people feel like they understand something complex when in reality we are all probably wrong in this thread. Such is the internet though.
And I was talking about my own opportunity to self depreciate, and wasn't assuming anyone elses nationality.
Yes I did edit my comment lol. We do have a lot of immigrants that may come from poorer countries in search of a better life. Whats wrong with that? How do you know I'm not specifically proud of that for my country? You are the one implying Americans are less-than because of some statistic.
When you are so militant with discussions, how will you ever come to an understanding? Why be so mean?
"Calling me racist for blaming immigrants is so meaaaaaaan!!!"
If I didn't want to be called racist, I would simply not say something racist.
If I thought it was failing of character to be illiterate then you could maybe say I was blaming immigrants. I think it's a lot harder to uproot your life and risk it all to bring your family where the grass is greener than it is to learn your ABC's.
Why do you assume immigrants are brown? Because you are probably right. That's okay.
It's okay to have a lower literacy rate if our country is helping people have better lives. It's okay that discussions of immigration and nationality sometimes involve ethnicities. It just makes sense that those qualities are discussed and related.
It's also okay if american school systems need to improve. I promise everything will be okay.
Can you stop filling my inbox with nationalist bullshit? Christ, I couldn't read past the first line. Grass is greener my ass.
Hope you find the help you need. Let me know if you want to talk.
Ableism, nice.
When you stop emotionally reacting to people criticising your government let me know? You owe as much loyalty to governments as you owe to your boss.
Not everything is political. All we have is each other and we can choose to be kind. There's a lot of anger here and I can't know where it's coming from so I won't try to assume anything about you. I just don't appreciate you telling me I'm racist for saying America has a lot of immigration. Its not okay. You are assuming more about me than is fair.
It's a nice graphic for sure. I think what I'm trying to say is that while we must practice vigilance to maintain equality and freedom, we carry out these obligations so that we can enjoy our lives.
I don't understand what I've done to be a target for your activism. I'm not a bad person. It's relevant to point out that lower literacy might not be a failing of our education system as the statistic implies.
Mate why are you talking like you're giving a presidential campaign speech? And what equality and freedom are you bloody talking about? In america? Equality and freedom? Are you having a fucking laugh?
Genuinely taking the piss. I'm going to defer to my man Albert Einstein:
We have some degree of equality and freedom to maintain, even if it's not utopian. I'm not sure what preferable alternative exists to vigilance.
You are continuing to attack me because I talk differently than you? I am trying to be diplomatic. This is me.
People failing to buy into your delusional nationalism is not an "attack". You don't get to demand that people agree with delusional nationalism and then claim you're under attack when they scoff at them. The very heart of every single one of your responses is the flag waving nationalist bollocks mate, and it's deeply deeply embarrassing behaviour that completely lacks self awareness.
I'm seeing the opposite ideology as destructive though. Working with each other and the system to affect change is surely better than entrenching and dividing? You are saying it's bad to believe we can make the world a better place? What is more effective than believing that your country can do better? Shouldn't we be talking to each other instead of downvoting and blocking each other?
I don't understand much about what you want because you aren't talking about it. You just insult me.
The working class can not work with the bourgeoisie. The two have completely opposing interests. Anything that benefits the bourgeoisie comes from exploiting the working class, and anything that benefits the working class comes from reducing that exploitation by the bourgeoisie.
"Let's work together" is either the political theory of a child that understands nothing or the intentionally subversive lies by someone that does understand but wants to mislead others. You may as well be telling people in africa to work together with the colonial masters exploiting them.
Hexbear doesn't even have downvotes.
This isn't what you want. You do nothing except defend against criticism from people that want to make things better. Because your brain is full of nationalism and you can't help but leap to the defence of the state whenever it is criticised. This behaviour isn't because you want it to be better, it's because you view criticism as a threat.
Thank you, but what option do we have except working with the system?
I don't disagree that exploitation exists. It's hard for me to focus on that when I am benefitting from the exploitation of others.
Constructing a new system minus the limitations of the existing one.
But that seems impossible.
Not impossible, merely very very difficult.
And the alternative is no change and a dying world. So there is no choice whatsoever.
The thing is that so often people who have no clue about things and the real living situations of people do talk down on people who are experts about those questions or affected. Effectively a lot of what you did was muddying the water and thus implicitly justifying that there might be good or acceptable reasons.
You were nationalist and you were racist with that and you were also ignorant of your own history and by being that ignorant you again actively(!) marginalized the BIPoC people in the US, as well as muddied class. In your other answers you were ableist and not kind either. You could've been kind, but you weren't.
Well then don't act like one. Don't try to defend faults of your country, try to help the people affected by the faults. Listen to affected people and listen to experts. This is a chance to grow for you. You can be kind and you can create a welcoming place for others. To do that you would need some collective work though and maybe read How To Become an Anti-Racist (and you could also watch the liberal lecture series by Robert Reich to get more how red lining works).
That claim is not at all questionable!
However even if the US would do a good job, liberal economic professor Robert Reich does present in this course good reasons that the inhomogenity of the results and who profits from what is a problem in its own that ought to be solved in terms of schooling etc.
We can't trust anyone as an authority when users are anonymous. All claims are subject to the burden of providing supporting documentation.
Not questioning claims simply because they jive with the general sentiment that America is the worst is deluded.
You can assert whatever you want.
Why is it that every time I take a moment to check on the information presented i find that american literacy is consistent over time and with other countries? Figure 14-1 page 46.
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016100.pdf#%5B%7B%22num%22%3A212%2C%22gen%22%3A0%7D%2C%7B%22name%22%3A%22XYZ%22%7D%2C0%2C792%2C0%5D
I don't have time to look at studies on this. But I'm not asserting beyond doubt that I'm right. I just haven't gotten any supporting documentation from you or OP to support the idea that american education is terrible like he casually infers with a partially relevant statistic.
I hope you are a young person. Over time you will learn that understanding a field takes time and that you need to spend months to get the required minimum knowledge for it. I suggest to you to actually speak with people who work in the field and do research in the field, then you will have done a short cut and can judge whether you want to help fix the problem, the structures or help individuals or if you just wanted to be right online, no matter the real life consequences for people around you.
In any case you are currently lacking the knowledge to differentiate terms, how they are used and how certain numbers are generated. Instead of trying to become an expert I recommend to you again: Speak with the experts, it is a great shortcut.
Besides that you haven't demonstrated that you are willing to discuss, learn or do your work, which means that you aren't really a person to be argued with online.
I havent claimed to be an expert I have asked for support to claim that America's education system is terrible as was inferred. You linked me a high view course with many different topics and have not given any indication that you know about this topic.
You speak in generalities and tell me to find out the specifics for myself. If you asked me questions about my field in computer science I would be specific and try to be helpful for someone wanting to learn more about it.
Yes I am lacking knowledge on this topic. But I have a brain and when I see someone disparage a country's education system based off of a single percentage statistic I'm allowed to shit on it. The onus in on the person who makes a claim.
Yes, cause you don't deserve it. Information is at your finger tips, you can't comprehend them as you are not an expert of the domain, but you know how to contact some. While not always if one brings an extraordinary claim - like you did - or is uninformed their speech and sentiment is not on the same level to be regarded as others is. Especially since you do center your sentiment instead of that of affected.
Show me where you did do "shit on it" when a person was "disparaging" a country which gets negative media bias in the US. Btw. you have no clue if they did do that based on a single statistic, that was only what was posted. No one will read a book as comment. You assume too much here. Also: The want to defend a country (or its reputation) instead of helping the people who could be affected is a problem, this means you are more a nationalist (and you seem to be US American, that means you are even centering your own country) than you care about people who are as example functionally illiterate.