The loss of things I took for granted

https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html

by Tomte • 2 years ago

34 80 2 years ago

slate.com

aszantu2• 2 years ago

tapped out at "Motivated by bigotry", good luck with whatever you're fighting for

jprd• 2 years ago

Not banning books?

Which, at least in modern history, has always been fueled by bigotry? I'm not sure that was a super opinionated take considering the subject, and I'm not sure I can think of another motivating factor unless you are scared of knowledge in general. The Church attacking Galileo was bigotry. It is kind of a thing.

Do you feel there are other good-faith reasons that justify these efforts?

Are you just frustrated at hearing that word?

User23• 2 years ago

Galileo was like an employee who publicly and loudly called the CEO of the most powerful NGO in his country and that his company got rules and procedures from, in the parlance of our times, a fucking idiot. Bigotry wasn’t the issue.

umvi2• 2 years ago

There's a difference between banning things (including books) for use in schools and the federal government declaring certain books illegal. We are dealing mostly with the former here. California doesn't want its schools reading Huck Finn and To Kill a Mocking Bird, Florida doesn't want its schools reading Gender Queer. Anyway, that's all mostly a red herring. There's nothing stopping kids in either state from going to a public library to check them out and read them.

aszantu2• 2 years ago

there's probably reasons to ban these books. Banned because of bigotry doesn't really go deep there and it's trying to prime my opinion is what I believe.

snakeyjake2• 2 years ago

From "Of Mice and Men" to "Maus" to "any book even slightly uncritical of LGTB youth" every book ban has been motivated by bigotry.

They may cloak their bigotry in morality or patriotism or whatever but it's still bigotry.

Kye2• 2 years ago

People are often surprised to learn one of those famous Nazi book burning photos was of the collection at the era's equivalent of a queer center. That fact is rarely conveyed along with the narratives about censorship that go with it.

It's an example of how even being factual can be misleading. It's a fact that they were Nazis doing censorship, but the facts that are omitted reveal a lot about who's sharing it: either they don't know, or they don't want you to know.

antod2• 2 years ago

I wonder if they included that pretty much irrelevant book banning bit at the beginning to prove their point about people being unable to concentrate long enough to actually read anything? Nah, probably not.

If you had read further, it was mainly about a bunch of other stuff. I can't really remember what though, so I'm proving their point too.

phoe-krk9• 2 years ago

Let's play devil's advocate for a moment.

Reading used to be necessary, since most of media was produced in written form, therefore consuming any sort of media mandated the ability to read it.

In the video-centric world of 21st century, where most media is produced and consumed on television and Internet via visuals and spoken language, why do you even need to be able to read? What's the need that the ability to read would resolve that cannot be resolved in other, simpler and/or more rewarding ways?

dragonwriter• 2 years ago

In the video-centric world of 21st century, where most media is produced and consumed on television and Internet via visuals and spoken language, why do you even need to be able to read?

AV presentation is much better at evoking emotion chosen by the presenter and worse at conveying factual information that is retained accurately (visual presentation is obviously useful for conveying spatial relationships relevant for physical/mechanical tasks and skills, though, so AV isn’t uniformly inferior for things other than emotional manipulation.)

phoe-krk9• 2 years ago

You introduce a need to convey factual information. Why is such factual information required for living in the contemporary world?

canjobear• 2 years ago

Is AV presentation worse at presenting facts? I've learned a lot through watching videos on science and history on Youtube. Probably some of it is incorrect, but that's also true of written media.

And is AV presentation better at emotional manipulation than writing? Lots of emotionally charged ideas spread through writing.

electric_mayhem2• 2 years ago

Continuity, truth, being able to learn and reason from published facts from verifiable sources.

The ability to operate a machine without understanding its inner workings, and also the ability to crack open a book and repair said inner workings when necessary.

Convince a nation that they don’t need to teach their children to read and you’re on course to be able to undo the progress of centuries (if not millenia) in just a generation or two.

phoe-krk9• 2 years ago

What exactly do you mean by "continuity"? The concept of "truth" has already been discussed widely, to the point of the term "post-truth world" being coined. Why learn, why reason from published facts, how are these necessary?

People can learn from one another without any written instructions, which is how tacit knowledge is often transferred; why would one need to read to learn how something works if they can just get trained by someone else?

Why do we need a global skill to read in order for the progress of centuries to be globally available? As long as some people, let's say a "caste" of those being able to read, retain the skill of doing so, why wouldn't we be fine with the rest of people consuming television and YouTube?

wrs2• 2 years ago

Text is much more information-dense, and much easier to search, skim, bookmark, summarize, quote, remix… Compare a movie to a novel, or a math video to a math textbook. One is not a substitute for the other.

Also, “most media” is video? Citation needed.

snakeyjake2• 2 years ago

why do you even need to be able to read?

Worker drones indeed don't need to be able to read beyond a level needed to follow instructions and consume the products needed to be consumed to keep the money flowing.

If you want to advance the state of your civilization and society you need a large pool of people who are able to read and understand long complex passages.

One cannot learn what needs to be learned in order to cure a disease or build a rocket through the consumption of memes, videos, and simplified ad copy.

The deeper the pool is the better.

phoe-krk9• 2 years ago

If I understand your logic correctly, then impairing the ability to read would be a force against advancing the state of a given civilization and society. The article mentions book bans as a conscious political effort and the prevalence of modern mobile media as a side effect of technology evolution; if I understand correctly, then both contribute towards a grim outlook that is mentioned in the comments to my post.

PH95VuimJjqBqy3• 2 years ago

reading is far faster than video, there's no way it goes away.

Instead I suspect the issue is more due to kids being taught not to think too deeply on things. I doubt the professor is saying many kids literally can't read, but that they can't comprehend any sort of nuance.

Of course they can't given the world today.

coldtea4• 2 years ago

Reading was necessary because it's a highly evolved and compressed way to convey information, which refines, distills, and focuses thought, and gives access to millenia of civilizational expression, wisdom, and experience.

The video-centric world of 21st century is a Beavis and Butthead vision of culture, where we regress to stream-of-consciousness communication.

We don't gain oral communication (we always had that alongside texts). We lose reading.

082349872349872• 2 years ago

We don't gain oral communication (we always had that alongside texts). We lose reading.

The reason I've heard that we have public schooling in the first place is because the Prussian Army convinced the Prussian State (to the degree these were distinct organisations) that it needed literate soldiers as a prereq for Auftragstaktik; that having been successful, everyone else copied their system.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

rizzom5000• 2 years ago

Society is already structured to handle a population where approximately 50% of adults cannot read beyond the 6th grade level. For all the hemming and hawing and throwing money at education, it might be the best we ever get. I'd venture that our society would continue to operate just fine if that number went up to 75% of the population, considering the pareto rule about the percentage of workers who are actually productive and so on.

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

throwuwu• 2 years ago

Video and audio presentations are a much slower way to ingest information, even when played at 2x speed.

Text on a page allowed the reader to rapidly scan back to previous points to make connections between concepts. Similarly you can scan forwards quickly and then return and read more closely after identifying key words and topics.

Text gives additional structure to the information with clearly delineated paragraphs, sections, chapters and italicized or bolded words and phrases. Citations and footnotes, asides and figures can be referred to more easily than in a video or audio where they must occur linearly.

Text is also more easily modified and marked up by the reader making referring back to important parts simple, being able to do so at a glance of the page rather than scrobbling through the video or audio.

I’m sure others can think of many more but the point is that text is more information dense and less linear than video/audio.

fifticon7• 2 years ago

Ironically, we are preaching to the choir :-) It all won't be read by the nonreaders we sought to persuade.

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 2 years ago

That’s an interesting point. Is long form reading the new cursive?

Is it joining the club of skills that we no longer need to master due to specialization and technological advances, like being able to sow your own wheat fields, field dressing a dear and building a log cabin?

fifticon7• 2 years ago

It is, to the generation that 'read' that NFT's were a great idea.

bsza• 2 years ago

IIUC, they have no issues with reading, they have issues with understanding what they have read. Meaning they likely also have issues with understanding information presented to them in other formats. After all, understanding speech requires constant focus over an extended time.

fifticon7• 2 years ago

Yup, it resonates with when you hear someone claim 'well I'm more of a visual thinker'.

ipython2• 2 years ago

The information density and the ability to drive deep into a subject is far superior in written form than a video.

I can think of a few reasons to support my assertion. First is simply the fact that you must dedicate much more time to read a book than a short form video. I just read Giles Whittell’s book Bridge of Spies, and it easily took me over 15 hours to read from cover to cover.

The next reason is the depth of understanding that you can gain from the act of reading. The author in that book wove in quotes from primary sources, details and nuance from the private lives to develop a nuanced view of the characters, all of which provides the deep understanding required to fully grasp the events that led up to the 1962 spy swap between two superpowers.

Finally, the fact that it took me 15 hours to read that book over the course of a few weeks meant that I had the ability to start synthesizing higher level understanding of the book rather than just recognizing a few facts. Sleep is important for the brain to organize thoughts during the day, and the fact that I had at least 10 sleep cycles to process the information I had learned in that “chunk” helps me truly remember concepts in the book in a way an hour long video cannot.

I find my ability to make rational arguments is greatly improved after I have the chance to dedicate time reading good books. I find my own kids ability to research subjects have been compromised- I can hardly convince them to do more than pump a literal question into Google and … maybe click on the first link? It’s terrifying.

smugglerFlynn2• 2 years ago

It took some effort, but I have finally evolved past boring and unrewarding ability to read…

Can anyone please share a hackernews-to-video converter? Tried finding it through TikTok, but without ability to read it is a pain to type something into their search bar.

phoe-krk9• 2 years ago

This hits way too close to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295526. I am now waiting for someone to start turning HN discussions into videos in the style of "MongoDB is webscale", which is both amusing and terrifying.

fifticon7• 2 years ago

I was going to reply, but ipython wrote it already, better. However, understanding his reply requires the ability to read it correctly. Notice that we are not having the hackernews discussions as a long list of small video clips. People who have not learned to read on a professional level, have a hard time grasping the volume, depth and speed with which you can transfer knowledge through text, using that developed skill. It is trivially true that a person who has not learned to read well, learns faster by watching videos. But this is not an argument for videos being the most capable mechanism, only the more initially accessible. You may be able to start running before I can saddle my horse, but once it is saddled, my horse will outrun your running start.

There is obviously areas in which video, 3d and computer systems/models surpass what a book can present, but outside those areas, the information in the world belongs to books,or the computer equivalent thereof. It is not about old books. It is about that written text is our strongest tool yet to present and capture a large connected set of ideas into a consistent argument, and similarly to RECEIVE such an argument. If you think a youtube video will do 'just as well', you probably need to read some more books :-) At work, I dread whenever I have to develop software for which I cant find written documentation, but must rely on random youtube guides sketchily explaining bits of it like and subscribe.

fifticon7• 2 years ago

I have a further, simpler argument. Movies. Ever notice that movie adaptations of books often suck? Well, there are some that don't. When shortstories are made into movies, it often works better. This is because the amount of content that fits in a shortstory, matches with what you can cover in a 90minute movie. If you try to communicate the contents of a book that takes 8 hours to read,to video, that video will be much longer than 8 hours. So, yes, possibly, you could turn your 8 hour reading assignment into a 40 hour video watching assignment. However, I don't know how you will manage your note-taking, now that you have given up on reading? Abandoning reading is abandoning our ability to organise and maintain knowledge, which we do with words and letters assembled and grasped with ability.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

As the author suggests, "The loss of things I took for granted"

Like the cognitive/emotional benefits of being able to read and write.

Never would have imagined anyone could question such things.

You don't miss your water. Till your well runs dry.

Scubabear683• 2 years ago

I agree phones and Covid play a big part in reading ability decline. But the last reason mentioned is a big one too. Curriculums have moved away from proven teaching techniques into psuedo science at the same time public schools focus less and less on teaching, and more on being social institutions. Moving away from phonics, dumbing down math, practically ignoring science.

Coupled with the increasingly common practice of grade inflation, kids are hitting college woefully unprepared.

The best decision my wife and I have made in our lives was to get our kids into private school 18 months ago. The difference is like night and day.

couchand• 2 years ago

This hasn't been our experience. Our public school kids are learning things we never would have dreamed of at their age. I distinctly remember being surpised at the worksheets on platonic solids that my kindergartener was assigned.

whoknowsidont• 2 years ago

I'd be interested to know where you live vs where the parent poster lives.

flerchin• 2 years ago

This has been my experience too. Educational standards are _not lower_ for math and reading than they were when I attended American public schools a generation ago. (by definition, because my children are in it now.)

adamhartenz• 2 years ago

This comment definitely sounds like someone yelling at the clouds. The fact it starts with "I agree" is a red flag. These are stats and facts that can be looked up. There is nothing to "agree" or "disagree" with. We know that reading for kids (an adults) increased by a significant amount during lockdowns. We know that kids write and read a lot more, in the form of social messages to friends using there phone than any previous generation. We know that the world in changed, and these young kids are kinder, and more socially aware than any of us ever were. Our generation is all about written communication, but for them, video chat is a new normal. That could be in the workplace, but also social media. Short form videos have completely replaced what we used to do on message boards or forums. That is for the general population though. The top academics are doing just as good or better than the top academics from any other older generations. Even though it seems like the Flynn Effect tells us otherwise, that is not the whole story. Anyway. I am always skeptical of old people saying anything negative about younger generations. Because it almost always turns out to be untrue.

taway_6PplYu52• 2 years ago

I don't want to debate your claims about the state of public schools, but wonder if it is worth thinking about what could cause this, and consider the types of investments our country is making in public schools and who is deciding on curriculums.

For example, in Wisconsin, one report finds that teacher pay is lower than it was a decade ago. https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/education/20... Wisconsin has a budget surplus, the money is there,

And in October 2023, the governer gave raises to all state employees -- except UW emploees. https://wisconsinexaminer.com/brief/lawmakers-approve-raises...

People who work in public education talk about what appears to be a long-running organized campaign to attack public schools and intentionally degrade them. I'm tangential to the debate so don't have evidence at hand, but I can say that the evidence is strong enough that there is a valid case. Obviously without hearing the other side we cannot draw a conclusion, I'm only claiming that the case is sufficient that it is worth hearing.

Scubabear683• 2 years ago

In our case, you can track school performance via state standardized test scores. Yea, they are somewhat flawed and biased, but can still give you a very good idea of how good of a job a public school is doing. In our case, our kids (now aged 15 and 12) were getting B’s and high C’a, but were both scoring single digits on standardized tests for math, English and science.

As it turns out our district overall state test were abysmally low.

The net result is general flight from the public system, either via home schooling, “Choice” programs that let you go to other districts if yours is inadequate, or private school. Graphing our school enrollment numbers has gone from about 970 students in district in 2017 to 670 in 2023.

inSenCite• 2 years ago

I wonder how much of this is the same/different across the world. Are academics seeing the same behavioural pattern in emea / apac?

happytiger4• 2 years ago

I think this professor has lot the plot by pinning this most recent decline on COVID and whatnot. This has been a much longer decline.

The pandemic and social media on phones are not the reason long form content is dying, though if one of those is to bear responsibility it would be social media. But it’s the death of individual passion in the teaching professions at the lower grade levels that is the direct result of common core that has a major, ongoing role in the disengagement of students from school.

It’s remarkable to sit and work with my teenagers on their homework these days. Almost all of their assignments are readily referenced online in common flash cards and study guides, and so much of the homework is droll repetition. But what strikes me is that there is no relief like there was in my time. There is no “now read chapters 3-7 of this book” in any of her homework. The passages, when there is reading, is assigned by packet and accompanied by some packaged lesson that requires you to fill in the blanks on the point of the reading, it’s key characters, and it’s learned themes and elements. It is perfect educational material put together by panels of experts and crafted to achieve the highest standardized level of understanding for most students.

And it’s incredibly, sincerely uninspiring and frequently boring.

I often spend time with my kids talking to them about subjects like ancient history, philosophy, writing, poetry, math and science in ways that are stimulating and it’s a constant refrain, “I wish school were this interesting.” We pick a theme a few times a week for dinner and have discussions with friends and family on that subject. Recently this has included subjects like demographics, geology, quantum mechanics, deep space research, sustainable energy, etc. Anyone can pick the subject.

School fails to be interesting, and we are in one of the better schools in our area. The kids are bored to tears and the format of school is incredibly unpleasant for kids that actually want to learn. This school won’t even let the kids take college classes and apply them, despite being less than five minutes from a UC and 20 minutes from a junior college. They can’t give me a good explanation as to why: they just say it’s against their policy.

So, we do our best to keep kids interested in reading and learning, but it’s fighting against their mandatory education to do so. And I really think the school, despite their best efforts, is failing these kids.

And I blame common core. More than anything else. When I sit down with teachers the better of them confide sometimes that they are really not happy with how they have to teach, but they have to teach that way and have little flexibility in customizing things in their classrooms.

They have become “presenters” of material developed far away in academic laboratories, and while they are still teaching they are far removed from any innovation in curriculum. And without that control, they really aren’t able to overcome the gigantic bureaucracy of the educational apparatus.

lazyasciiart• 2 years ago

But what strikes me is that there is no relief like there was in my time. There is no “now read chapters 3-7 of this book” in any of her homework

That is the most bizarre complaint I have ever heard, and it’s certainly not a restriction coming from Common Core. Consider asking the school why they aren’t expected to read books.

happytiger4• 2 years ago

Oh they “read books.” They just don’t read books without weighty worksheets with “lessons” and themes discussion. The reading is always purposeful and always leads to some bloated exercise. It’s rarely just reading.

zoolily• 2 years ago

Some schools really focus on teaching to the test. Since the tests the student's take require answering questions based on passages, the school requires teachers to only use similar length passwords with no context during class. Their textbook is a collection of such passages.

graemep3• 2 years ago

This is not just an American problem. The same has happened in the UK, and it seems to be happening in many other places too. The problem is that the west has become addicted to beureaucratic central control and distrustful of the ability of trained professionals to do their jobs without incentives and standards.

I often spend time with my kids talking to them about subjects like ancient history, philosophy, writing, poetry, math and science in ways that are stimulating and it’s a constant refrain, “I wish school were this interesting.”

This is why I took my kids out of school. Once you get interests started and some basic skills in place kids will largely educate themselves.

happytiger4• 2 years ago

What did you end up doing with your kids and what age did you part ways with the school?

silverquiet2• 2 years ago

We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave them kids alone. Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone. All in all, it's just another brick in the wall. All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.

Given that that's a Pink Floyd lyric from the 70's written by men whose education would have been WWII era, it does indeed seem like a long-running theme.

antod2• 2 years ago

Not really sure it is the same theme though. The bullying belittling stifling culture of a postwar British classroom is practically the polar opposite of todays education culture.

FireBeyond3• 2 years ago

I think this professor has lot the plot by pinning this most recent decline on COVID and whatnot.
death of individual passion in the teaching professions at the lower grade levels that is the direct result of common core

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion.

The professor agrees with you, talking about Common Core in their first point, and only touching on the transient COVID decline in their second point, before circling back to phonics, Common Core, again.

Trying to categorize this article as "blaming COVID for falling reading standards" is railing against something that isn't happening: literally only one of the ten paragraphs of the article references the pandemic.

happytiger4• 2 years ago

Hardly. The author establishes that reading is a challenge and then attributes it to a multitude of challenges including smartphones, COVID and “broader cultural trends over which educators have little control” and balanced literacy approaches.

I submit its common core primarily that is causing the damage.

I don’t think your criticism is on point. I may not be writing well, but I think what I’m saying is largely different and certainly more single problem oriented.

Academics LOVE to sprinkle in a little of this, and a little of that to explain the problem. But the truth is not as complicated: common core is causing a decline in educational outcomes. It’s a crap way to teach kids and it should be tossed in the bin and power given back to teachers to teach and trust put back into professionals being able to teach better than centrally budgeted bureaucracy.

I could be narrow. I could be wrong. But I don’t think I’m missing the point I’m trying to make.

graemep3• 2 years ago

I am a bit doubtful about phonics. Everyone in my family learned to read before we were taught at school, and we all learned using whole word teaching, not phonics. It can be turned unto a game so it is easier to get kids to enjoy it.

vages• 2 years ago

This trend seems to have no borders. Norwegian students are worse at math, reading comprehension and science than ever: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/nyheter/pisa-undersokelsen... The pandemic, “studying for the test” and smartphones are the three most common scapegoats here too. A summary of the situation can be found in this (paywalled) article: https://www.morgenbladet.no/aktuelt/kommentar/2023/12/15/hve...

My money is on technology or other global causes. The decline started before the pandemic, and a decline in many countries at once cannot be attributed to Norwegian government policies.

The loss of things I took for granted

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