No Stupid Questions

Part of the reason so many can’t read above a 6th grade level is that they are always written to on that level. Anything written for any commercial purpose is always written at a low level so any idiot can understand the menu / read the packaging / consume the magazine ad / whatever. Commercial writers write for the lowest common denominator and to an extent, news media do as well.

So a 6th grade reading level is really all you need to get by. Unless you actually read books or opt for The Economist or something else that doesn’t assume you’re a moron, 6th grade level is all you’re gonna see.

There’s some utility in this. Simpler language is also lowest-common denominator for second-language-speakers, of which we have many. Another reason to use it.

There are a lot of factors. The biggest one is they want people stupid. Stupid people are much easier to control.

One small part of the problem I only learned about recently is the Whole Language approach to teaching reading. Basically teaching kids to guess what words make sense instead of actually teaching them how to read. It was popularized in the 80s and 90s but continued to be used in some parts of the US into the 2010s. An entire chunk of the US population (and a few other countries as well) was literally not taught phonics/sounding it out because their teachers or schools followed this ineffective alternative method.

Of course that's far from the only factor, but it's one many aren't aware of.

@toosoon You must be ill-informed, quite biased and in favour of Québec bashing. The government has English translations available for its minority in “La belle province”. Educate yourself. The information is out there.

http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/publications/DepStatAlpha_eng.pdf

Same everywhere. I think 53% of people in Quebec are functional illiterate. There is an article today about French students being illiterates too.

The educational system wants this. I start to think it's by design.

My girlfriend is a math teacher, the number of middle schoolers that can’t do basic multiplication before is surprisingly high. Yet the schools keep passing the kids. I remember learning multiplication as a 4th grader, if I hadn’t, I would’ve never passed.

I’m not an expert, but I have to imagine it’s in relation to the fact that public education in the United States tends to be rather underfunded. Teachers often don’t have all the resources to do their jobs effectively, and many resort to paying for resources out of their own pocket.

Pair that with the fact that the average salary for a teacher in a public school is almost criminally low for a position that has a massive impact on our social outcomes, and you get students that are disengaged and overall not as prepared as they could be.

This is all just what I’ve gathered from reading news articles over time. I’m sure there are several other factors at play.

My mom: "because you're always on that damn phone!"

I have coworkers that were in the last few years of high school when covid broke out. They spent all day playing video games or watching Netflix and when it came time to graduate, well.... there wasn't a ceremony or anything. They just got their diploma in the mail.

Not saying covid is the absolute reasoning for it, but it did play a huge part in our youth having a hard time reading and writing