askchapo

The way it has manifested most clearly in the situations I've encountered it is a basic difference in approach to writing and reading as concepts. They don't see writing or reading as a way to communicate, they see it as a puzzle they have to solve by following rules, so that they can return to communicating once the puzzle is out of the way. Unless they're in very casual/online settings, or very motivated to find specific information, they avoid the puzzle because it's annoying.

I have dyslexia and legitimately didn’t learn how to read until I was about 13 years old. I mean, I got by on memorizing clusters of familiar looking phrases. Vibes-based reading. Oh and lots of cheating and lying about homework.

Two decades later, I still struggle compared to my peers. But I have had the privilege and luck to learn strategies to make up the difference.

I’m also an elementary school teacher. There’s only so hours I can try to teach my students to read. One of the biggest determining factors for reading ability/comprehension is how much vocabulary children are exposed to at an early age (0-4 years old). Reading to young children is crucial for language development, reading ability, and a slue of related skills. I don’t know enough about linguistics to know this for sure, but I’m assuming most of my students have parents with restricted vocabulary. And probably just not talked to enough as babies. Something just has to have affected their kids cognition in pernicious ways. Them getting COVID 8 or 9 times in their lives probably hasn’t helped either.

So the other week with my fifth graders we’re doing intro geometry stuff. I said something like, “A cylinder is just like the rectangular prism. It’s just that its base is a circle.” And like okay, I’ve been trying for half an hour trying to distill the absolute cluster fuck this caused in my students brains.

“It’s similar to this coffee mug. See? It has a circular base and it’s a prism. I know you’re thinking a prism has to look like the rectangular prism. It might be helpful to think of the cylinder as a circular prism.” I said, exasperated.

“What are you even saying?” a child asks rhetorically.

I eventually have to say something like, “Listen, if you can’t understand this it’s a skill issue and kinda cringe.” There’s a million little things that are hard to put into words how utterly dysfunctional some of these kids brains are and will be later in life.

Oh and I have to speak to these children’s parents on the reg, which is its own sort of hell.

I had a roommate who grew up in a poor farming community. He has dyslexia but the school had no special education funding to address that. As a result he grew up completely illiterate and stayed that way into his 30s. He passively absorbed libertarian ideas from the media he consumed, but lacked the ability to cross-check any of it. I remember him giving me a history lesson from a Call of Duty game.

That clip of that Kik Streamer fascist Aiden Ross trying to whole-word-read "fascist" and then googling the meaning and then still being puzzled why someone would call Trump that.

It means they are easily propagandized to and won't have the critical reading skills to realize it

They can sound out words and know what most common words mean in isolation but their ability comprehend the meaning of a text is very basic, if present at all. Reading a short story, being able to summarize it and comment on themes, conflicts, character motivations, metaphors, allegory, how they relate to the story or certain characters are generally beyond them. Reading a political article and reading between the lines to get past the writer's bias is completely beyond them (tbf they would never read an article, they would watch a video or look at memes on facebook). That said, they have little to no ability to think critically so whatever authority figures beat into them when they were young becomes their worldview and everything that contradicts it is seen as an attack on them and society.

It means they have a difficult time parsing Parenti quotes. They can read it aloud, and they can tell you roughly what it's about, but they have difficulty following and comprehending the argument being made.

Reading at a 6th grade level is reading for plot. Just like, what happened? Who was there? More advanced things like subtext, metaphor, and unreliable narrators come later.

I found this online the last time this topic came up: https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/english-level-test/reading

Go ahead and read the story, and imagine that a lot of people cannot read and understand it.

There's also this article about how many kids are taught to read badly: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (amusingly, also available as a podcast)

What does it mean practically? Bad things. If you haven't read 1984, give it a go and think about why the authoritarian state benefitted from a diminished language.

My mom once stated in a FB post that socialism was evil, when I asked her to elucidate "It just is!"

"I used ChatGPT Bazinga to write this message"

Sometimes you have to be brought back to reality and realize that the vast, vast majority of USAmericans have not grappled with materialism, thus nearly all the connections they make are like a 6th grader writing out their 5 paragraph essay for the high stakes exam that determines if their school gets funding or not.

US self made brain drain is going to hit the country like a comically large boomerang, it already has essentially.

Do you have any stories or examples from your life?

A middle school textbook is pretty basic stuff. Think of all problems, blunder, mistakes, accidents, etc happening all over the US every day that are caused by the average American having difficulty understanding anything written at a middle school level or above.

With the rise of the internet along with it's dark side and the expansion of right-wing media - maybe it was enviable that a repulsive republican like Trump would be president not just once but twice. And maybe it's no surprise that huge number of Americans fall prey to conspiracy theories and snake oil salesmen like RFK. A large percentage of Americans hate vaccines and think they cause disease.

My worry is that not only will the problem not get fixed - it will most likely get worse over time. There is a concerted, bipartisan effort to ignore the problem. The GOP likes an uneducated public. Trump even bragged about it. The democrats will remain unwilling to even acknowledge the problem because they think the public will lose faith in American exceptionalism, the American dream, etc.

I find the OECD's levels of literacy more instructive than grade level. This page has a short definition: https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/

pdf page 75 (table 4.5) here has more detailed definitions: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2019/11/the-survey-of-adult-skills_d7f1bc16/f70238c7-en.pdf