New Study: 54% of American Adults Read Below 6th Grade-Levels

Ironic that there's a grammatical error in the headline... 6th-grade levels, surely

It's really important for folks to understand what is being talked about here, because I run into folks even here that are like "that's a wall of text, I'm not reading that". And that's kind of the behavior that's being talked about. Like, if you find yourself in "read the headline, not the story" you might be in this group they are talking about in this article that is linked. And do not let me come off high and mighty here, I absolutely have issues with this some times because I get all kinds of caught up with life and do not have enough time to maintain my reading habits. It is a complex issue on why there is this deterioration of reading skills. And I will likely say something to the effect of "Internet BAD!" but do know it is more than just that, it is just that is the easiest go-to for a "short" comment.

So that said. Nice little sample question one would see on a test that would test this is:

In Lions of Little Rock, two girls form a dangerous and clandestine friendship, that is challenged by racial segregation. Name, in chronological order, the multiple episodes of racist threats and violence and how they increased the tension of the relationship between the two girls.

It's not a question of "Can you read the book?" It is a question of, "Did you extract information from the book? Can you connect the dots asked in the question based on the information that you read?" Lots of people who identify themselves as literate have a lot of difficulty doing these kinds of things. So we have to understand that, this is not testing if a kid can read the word "onomatopoeia", it is testing if a person can extract useful information from written words.

All of that is different from the "eighth grade reading level" where you are typically asked things like "extrapolate what you think the underlying theme the author is trying to present." Sixth grade reading is mostly being able to put things back in the order that you read them, picking out the descriptive terms that were in the text, and identifying what the entire point was for this particular piece of work, among other things. One does not have to really get creative here, sixth grade reading is just "in slightly finer detail" being able to regurgitate what was just read. Now to get kids ready for higher reading, there is usually questions about "do you think this person at this point was feeling happy?" That kind of stuff that relies of extrapolating meaning which is usually above the "sixth grade level reading".

And it is indeed shocking how many people cannot do this. But in order to be shocked, I think people need to understand what is being tested here. A lot of social media does indeed condition folks to allow this level of reading to atrophy. The number of people who toss around TL;DR is really high and some of that is because it does not interest them. That of course is fine, but some of it is because 50% of the way through their brain is tired of reading text. AND THAT, is problematic. And really I can only touch on so much of the issue in this comment without it feeling like it is going on forever.

There are all kinds of assessment tests online that folks can review and see exactly the kind of questions that are being asked. The whence and wherefores on this matter and the causes for it happening are indeed complex and obviously I cannot cover them all here. But one big one, in my opinion, is education and its intersection with technology. Technology does indeed make lots of things easier for us, but some of those things that technology unburdens us from we should probably reexamine that relationship. Perhaps we need better education with technology or maybe we need less technology with that education, they both have pros and cons to them. There are not easy answers in this for the kind of background American education presents, which that is also an addressable matter in all of this.

Read to your kids. Use big words around them.

As a former child this is nothing new to me. I remember how much I hated when the teacher had people read things out loud in English class. Hell honestly any class. The amount of people who read like every. Word. Had. A. Period. And the people who would read any word longer than 3 syllables like it was hy-phe-na-ted. It was fucking torture.

20 minutes to read one single page.

As much as I'd love to jump on the "stupid Americans" bandwagon, this seems to be a big problem not only in America. After the reddit exodus and before I had a good setup for lemmy, I used Facebook for a short period. Most of my stuff there is from US, UK and Norway, and the number of people in the comments who can barely put together a coherent sentance is astonishing. Far below 6th grade level by any standard.

It looks like there's at least some bias as they only counted English literacy.

Maybe if we actually paid teachers and gave funding to education this wouldn't be a problem. Education in the US is god awful.

And yet "Terms Of Service" are supposed to be fair. When they're written at a college level.

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

And many adults choose not to read. It is almost as if they are connected

Here's an article with more details about the study: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy#:~:text=by EMILY SCHMIDT | March 16%2C 2022&text=This means more than half,of a sixth-grade level.

Dr. Iris Feinberg, associate director of the Adult Literacy Research Center at Georgia State University, points to under-served communities with "print deserts," poorly funded schools, and little internet access as being the places where the people with poor reading skills live. She also called it an inter-generational cycle of low literacy, so it's not just a recent problem with people not wanting to read.

Yup. And the map is pretty much what you'd guess, Mississippi is #1. That is, #1 for worst literacy rate in the nation. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas-Literacy-Problem

American's have been going down the dumbass road for a long time. And you rarely meet someone who is well rounded like you meet in Europe. Not to say there aren't dumbasses in Europe. There are many. But Americans don't even seem to try. Not anymore.

I wonder that the standard used for 6th-grade reading level is. I know that the 6th grade reading level at the beginning of the century is higher than the 6th grade reading level now.

I remember being extremely disappointed when I was in 6th grade and they had arbitrarily moved a lot of books up a reading level. There were a few in particular that I was looking forward to reading while in 5th grade that were at a 6th grade level. Then in 6th grade, I grabbed one of those books to check out but was told that I could t read it because it was now considered 7th grade and that I had to choose from the 6th grade level (which was largely the previous year's 5th grade level).

Explains a lot

pointedly doesn't look at the numerous Lemmings he's seen complain that relatively simple statements are grammatically confusing

And then this links to a picture of a headline, because who's actually gonna read the article.

3 min read

lol

This is such a huge percentage that it has to be incorrect, right? Over half of American adults can't really read? Or am I just vastly underestimating a '6th grade level'.

Is that 54% the Trump supporters?

I absolutely believe this.

We are required to write our customer facing self-help articles at no greater than an 8th grade reading level. Or people literally can't read to the end.

Largely removing and semblance of usefulness to them IMHO.

So this tracks.

My dad is at probably about 6th grade level.

My father is extremely quick, a sharp mind. He is able to articulate, but not very eloquently, can't spell really, and or he is self conscious of it and defers to others when writing.

To his credit, he doesn't really need any of that to live a fulfilling life, but, I wonder what would have changed if his education was better or if he got to grow up in a less broken home. How would that change my life? I'm sure I would be doing something much different than I am now. I'm not sure it even matters.

I'm thankful that my father is a kind soul who doesn't really seem meant for this world. He taught me many important lessons in life and I wish there were more genuine people like him. Everyone seems to gravitate towards him even tho he is by all accounts an "idiot". He's an anarchist in purest form. I'll miss him when he's gone, but I carry his spark within me. <3

Me fail English? That's unpossible!

Anyone have the stats on what percentage voted Trump or didnt vote at all?

Everyone surprised by this really baffles me. As someone who went to school here I thought it would be closer to 60%. Ever heard of "no child left behind"?

not entirely surprised

What's a good example of a 6th grade reading level?

(Also I old.reddit-ed that link and it took me to a post in r/funny titled 'nice hat' with an old picture of Lady Gaga, for some reason?)

It's not a new study though, it's kind of old.

Is there a country we can jump to? Kinda like when Reddit got lame we all jumped to Lemmy? Where is our Lemmy country?

About the amount that repeatedly votes Republican. Coincidence?

Permanently Deleted

To play devils advocate, is this really a huge issue? As a construction worker friend of mine put it quite plainly, Most Americans don't really need to be able to read anything more comprehensive than street signs to do their jobs, a 6th grade reading level is pretty proficient, maybe a bit slower but it gets the job done

Edit: a lot of you seem to be taking this weirdly personally, just read further and pretend I'm not attacking you directly

what's the concrete advantage of the average person reading at a high level is, past some sort of weird elitism?

they clearly haven't needed the skill in their lives, or their reading level wouldn't have "atrophied" over time, so what's the point?

i also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised