I’ve seen a number of studies and news articles with statistics claiming that around 20% of Americans lack proficiency in English literacy. I sometimes see people use that statistic as an indictment of the education system, but I also get the impression that the increase in immigration over the last few decades has also contributed, as people born outside the US are twice as likely to lack English literacy. I have two main questions here: first, does English literacy even matter? Second, what factors do you think are driving the reductions in English literacy, and is there anything you think we can or should do about them?
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I’ve seen a number of studies and news articles with statistics claiming that around 20% of Americans lack proficiency in English literacy. I sometimes see people use that statistic as an indictment of the education system, but I also get the impression that the increase in immigration over the last few decades has also contributed, as people born outside the US are twice as likely to lack English literacy. I have two main questions here: first, does English literacy even matter? Second, what factors do you think are driving the reductions in English literacy, and is there anything you think we can or should do about them?
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I think it’s important to be able to read and understand what you are reading.
It’s extremely important. An absolute top priority.
> first, does English literacy even matter?
It does, alongside other things, like numeracy, civics, and social sciences.
> Second, what factors do you think are driving the reductions in English literacy, and is there anything you think we can or should do about them?
Lack of education funding. We need to vastly increase the money we spend on education, while at the same time thinking about how to update instruction to the 21st century.
English literacy matters. Something like 8 out of 10 people in prison are “functionally iliterate”.
One of the biggest reasons was a shift in reading teaching that became very popular starting in the 90s I think? Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Caitlins were curriculums that looked great and gave teachers lots of books but weren’t really rooted in the “science of reading” (a buzzword you hear now).
Im not sure that’s the only reason, I’ll feel like it’s a big reason but not the only one.
English literacy is important because otherwise the population gets so stupid they elect despicable idiots like Trump.
The right’s constant attacks on education and incredibly lax home schooling rules are why do many in this country lack literacy.
>around 20% of Americans lack proficiency in English literacy.
It is probably time we stopped measuring people’s literacy based on old colonial methods.
Literacy rates are among the best methods for determining if a person will end up in prison or not.
We need to be able to fail students in K-12 again. You can’t pass if you can’t read.
>How much value should we put in English literacy?
High because most things in the US are readily available primarily in English
You might have more luck introducing parallel Spanish language bureaucracy here than French bureaucracy in Canada, just because Spanish is widely spoken across the country, but anything past that is going to vary too much
>sometimes see people use that statistic as an indictment of the education system
It’s an indictment of whole-word literacy
The metric is also skewed – “functionally literate” for us involves things like findings themes and allegories rather than raw literal comprehension. If we look at that instead, we’re about on-par with other developed countries at understanding our main language (it’s like 294 vs 292 points on whatever test they use to measure that)
To fix it, we need to go back to phonics-based reading education (very important since English spelling is very etymological) and introduce more accessible structured literacy courses for adults (also using phonics since that’s how second-language courses are usually taught, we just decided English as a first language shouldn’t do that)
Huge priority since mistakes in education, the over focus on STEM and STEM alone by parents and the damage screens are doing to kids have made real literacy plummet.