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Yeah the thing that explains this is Republicans spending 40 years (and a lot of campaign money) to destroy public education in every single way possible.

And more recently, brain rotted iPad / tiktok babies. Economy is garbage, parents work all the time, are still broke and stressed, hand the kid a distraction rectangle as a pacifier, it basically melts their ability to focus or concentrate, while also causing addiction to the rectangle.

Its another one of those things like Climate Change: Once you can see the problem in the world, prominently and obviously, it is way too late to fix without extreme coordination and effort.

And yeah, as other have noted, this makes Democracy unworkable, because democracy is just a marketing campaign battle.

So, cyberpunk dystopia, technofeudalism, here we come.

Why else do you think short form content took off and immediately became the dominant way many people get news?

Hah, this again. The uninformed yet self righteous comments that flow in the comment section whenever this is posted anywhere are more proof of the real issue than the original underlying article ever claimed.

I thought I was 2nd grade wtf!

If a NYT article is considered a "high benchmark", literacy in the US must be really terrible. I consider the NYT as educated, yes, but not exactly difficult. And I'm not even a native speaker.

The secret to using a semicolon is that there are no rules; people just make them up to tell you that you're wrong.

This is depressing, but it also explains a lot. If people can’t comfortably read the news, misinformation doesn’t have to work very hard.

Why hello there, hyper-literate fellows. Fancy exchanging some five-syllable words? Perhaps a few phrases? Or cock jokes? Cock jokes are nice too. I am hyper-literate, you see, so my cock jokes are veeeeeery long

Immigrants typically have a higher bar/burden to surpass than any naturalized citizen; I wouldn't ever think to even look there as a source of the problem. It's a home grown issue.

Another day, another time I have to copy-paste this comment clarifying the 54% stat:

For clarity: this is based on piaac test results. The literacy test results are sorted into 6 categories (1-5 and <1) for comparing the distribution internationally. 54% of Americans score less than 3, compared to top-scoring Japan and top-english-speaking Australia at approximately 35% and 45%. The task description for level 3:

Adults at Level 3 are able to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. They can identify, interpret or evaluate one or more pieces of information, often employing varying levels of inferencing. They can combine various processes (accessing, understanding and evaluating) if required by the task . Adults at this level can compare and evaluate multiple pieces of information from the text(s) based on their relevance or credibility. Texts at this level are often dense or lengthy, including continuous, noncontinuous, mixed. Information may be distributed across multiple pages, sometimes arising from multiple sources that provide discrepant information. Understanding rhetorical structures and text signals becomes more central to successfully completing tasks, especially when dealing with complex digital texts that require navigation. The texts may include specific, possibly unfamiliar vocabulary and argumentative structures. Competing information is often present and sometimes salient, though no more than the target information. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information, and often require varying levels of inferencing. Tasks at Level 3 also often demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate text content to answer accurately. The most complex tasks at this level include lengthy or complex questions requiring the identification of multiple criteria, without clear guidance regarding what has to be done

I could not find which source originally cited level 2 as “6th grade” equivalent, though the oecd recommends against drawing that parallel

"journalism output"

Who writes like that? The entire statement is poorly written, which is ironic.

Sometimes I will read a particularly insightful article from a scientific journal that a lot of sources have been referencing lately, and find that I can't quite follow all the high level technical jargon discussing the topic, and I'll feel just the smallest bit insecure about my level of intelligence.

But then I see posts like this and it all goes away lol

Is this why you can't say almost anything (besides regurgitating cliché pre-approved tropes) without being misconstrued, taken out of context, turned into a strawman, and attacked as a position completely different from the one you were taking?

I swear, I knew this was coming the moment I noticed that people were calling basic literacy and writing ability "elitism."

I was in a college English Composition class, of all places, and people were shaming me for insisting on using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It was an Honors course too, if I remember correctly. Like, why the fuck are you here if you really feel that way?

And why are colleges even admitting people who can't formulate basic sentences; at least without serious remedial courses before the 101 level. These people are graduating with degrees without learning anything, because professors are too afraid to fail them.

And I got all but chased out of campus for getting A's. It's not "favoritism" or "privilege," I just knew how to write.

It's not elitist to have basic standards.

Its both because people don't want to be intellectual because its depressing and alienating to be smart around a bunch of dumb people, but also the rich and powerful do not want us to be smart either.

I myself wish I was fucking stupid. I'd be happier.

That's not really a good scenario for a modern democracy to find itself in for reasons that are unfortunately already very clear

I've studied this a little before (at graduate school) and I don't think we know exactly why, mostly because it's a ton of factors and none of the different camps in academia seem to agree on one.

Your standard Lemmy user may appreciate that late stage capitalism probably is the biggest factor, since poverty and illiteracy are hand in hand. The professor I RA'd for, for instance, just did projects that gave families money and they just did better. It was really that simple, since a ton of this is in the home, even before starting preschool.

But others have argued that there's also an anti-intellectualism in our culture (even before MAGA, kids go "ew nerds") and even more say it's pedagogy. That includes theory, like whole word vs phonics (my advisor spoke of the reading wars of the 90s like he had PTSD lol) as well as practice, like memorization vs reading for reading sake.

And, of course, the government under Bush Jr. really did the opposite of research by enacting the bipartisan No Child Left Behind which fucked both poor folk with contextless "accountability practices" while pushing soulless memorization.

Sorry for a long rant, just, y'know in 2025 onwards it's easy to forget that education has been routinely fucked, usually by conservatives. I can always explain more though, just don't want to make this comment too long, lol

This is how Trump got elected twice. His ramblings actually make sense to a lot of people

I’ll take the win, I get to be elite at something

There are people in the UK that can't spell Britain, I've seen so many variations.

I personally don't mock illiteracy, I think it's sad and a shame, I grew up on an estate with really low levels of literacy. I learned to read when I was 3 years old, I could read news articles by the time I started school.