If all natural-born citizens has to go through the naturalization process before getting the right to vote, trump would never have been elected.
Not just because they don’t know the 100 (I think they changed it to 120 now?) questions, but also because they would not pass the:
“Have you ever been a member of any totalitarian party?
Have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?
Have you ever advocated the overthrow of any government by force or violence?
Have you ever persecuted any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion?” Questions(Fun fact: They can revoke your citizenship after the fact if they catch you lying, or if you do any “terrorist” activity within 5 years of naturalization. Jan 6 riotor types would never pass this. As a naturalized citizen, I’m kinda dreading this since last November)
I mean yeah, all those topics are covered in HS civics class…… Which they skipped.
Skipped or failed… Either or.
School starts at home (for many parents, this is an unbelievable idea). I had a classmate who is an anti-vaxxer, even though we did biology together and learned how vaccines worked. My classmate is alright as a person, but I think her environment outside of school made her not one of the sharpest tool in the class and never paid attention to the lessons. My point is that, if the home environment is not conducive to learning, the person is less likely to be intellectually driven. I know there are exceptions and it boils down to “nature versus nurture”, but as mentioned already, an environment that does not foster learning makes the person less likely to pursue knowledge.
This is also a big thing. If I may add to it, the environment may also help add maturity needed for certain topics. My HS had a banking and personal finance class. Many kids just didn’t care, others didn’t have any way to visualize it as they didn’t really get an allowance, and those with jobs who would benefit the most were often not taking the class because they needed to work.
I was lucky to be there. Really that I was able to credit by exam some classes; which gave me space in my junior and senior year to fill.
Republicans at work. A dumb electorate is the easiest to manipulate.
In case you were wondering why we’re losing our democracy to a felon rapist.
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.
This reads like a description of the D&D PHB.
…is that why so many people think they get an extra attack when they do something other than an Attack action? Yes, that includes the Ready action. You get one hit if you ready an attack.
I cast 5th level numeracy on the goblins, integrating them by parts.
Hmmm so back in 6th grade when i would read the questions on the test and fond the answer to ome question in a different question on a different page was that level 3 reading?
Which means 54% cannot write a competent book report hitting the major plots and themes.
And forget about picking up on allegories.
Lord of the Rings is a story about a long hike gone wrong. It has nothing to do with East/West dynamics, the question of power, masculinity, or the simple things of life.
What are you talking about? That’s like saying Patrick Bateman, of American Psycho and Rules of Attraction, is not an aspirational alpha male figure!
/s
For us foreigners, 6th grade is around 10 / 11 years old?
Yes, about. Ten years is peak reading for most Americans. And we wonder why they f-ck up the world.
Yep. God help us.
It took thirty years of cutting education spending but they are almost to a fully ignorant populace.
We’ve even hit the point where they don’t have to pretend to be pro education
Wait another 30 years and all the ‘educated’ people who are running the country now will start dying off leaving behind the generation that had little, limited or no education.
Sure you’re always going to have your best and brightest running the country … but they’re going to be severely outnumbered by an entire nation full of people who are dumb as bricks who raised children and grandchildren who are dumb as bricks.
As much as I worry about this I think the real scenario will be the rich keep their kids educated at proper levels and they start to look smarter than the poors. If this trend keeps up it will be easy to convince a population of uncritical thinkers that being rich makes you better.
I think it’s even sadder than that … a rich elite who believe they are raising more intelligent children but are in fact just raising slightly smarter kids that are one step brighter than an entire population of completely stupid people.
Money and wealth doesn’t make you intelligent … because often what happens is the wealthy get to the point of just buying or purchasing the credentials and diplomas like they do houses or cars because they see them as titles rather than academic achievements.
The fact that some replies don’t understand the title of the article and some are trying to explain it is funny af to me, I’m sorry 😂
The podcast called Sold a Story talks about how the school systems adopted a curriculum that doesn’t teach kids how to read. They are more like mimicking literacy. It gives appearances they they are reading but they aren’t comprehending.
Me Fail English? That’s unpossible!
Well, reading and writing is a 6 millenia old technology, thus it’s in dire need of replacement with AI readers /s
Yeah, we’ve noticed. Not that Europe is far behind I fear.
Literacy is definitely declining; people just don’t have the attention spans they used to. Between Twitter, TikTok and other brain rot, reading a book or simply a longer text just isn’t something a lot of people do.
knew an old man who couldn’t read. he could write phone numbers in a notebook and remembered who it was by where it was written. no names. Fort Worth 1980.
If you want some light horror reading, check out /r/teachers.
I dare not find out what my reading level is, for the same reason I dare not find out what my IQ is. I don’t gain anything by knowing it, and knowing that I’m stupid will only worsen my self-esteem issues.
I feel better assuming I’m roughly average for both measurements.
Here is the thing… You can work on both of those. Literacy is not capped by your intelligence, unless you are exceptionally challenged, like mentally unfit to live by yourself challenged. You can read more books, and journal articles, and expand your reading ability.
IQ is mostly bullshit. The test can help identify if you have a disability, but it’s relatively worthless for determining how intelligent you can actually be. You can practice pattern recognition and then take an IQ test, but all that means is that you are good at recognizing patterns. There are plenty of “High IQ” people who can’t figure out basic shit, like how to put on a spare tire.
So don’t feel bad if you don’t score well on those tests. They only measure how you did one time on one test.
