The scary part is the combination of declining education and the increasing illusion that all knowledge is available a mere click away. Prefect recipe for media saturation & propaganda
my grandmother was born during the early depression era and only managed to finish 8th grade before dropping out to get some shit job to support the family.
so like, it’s all falling apart still, but on a 100 year timeline, we’re not down too much.
maybe in another hundred years, americans will still know primary colors and be able to count to like 10.
The year is 2122 and to get to a food distribution center - a brave American soul has braved the outside with its toxic atmosphere and skin burning UV rays due to the partial destruction of ozone layer by climate change mitigation efforts. It is 120 degrees outside. And it’s much hotter inside her suit. She is at the center to get her monthly allowance of 10 units of food. “Food” is what it’s called anyway.
“Hey, droid. You gave me 9 units.”
“Incorrect. There are 10.”
“Count them yourself: 9. A unit is clearly missing.” Are even droids selling shit on the black market now?
“Dogs.” Cyberdyne Systems cyberdogs are programmed to kill in 13 different ways. For control purposes there are 3 dogs in the room. There are dozens patrolling the center.
“Hey, you know what? 10. I made a mistake. There are 10 here! I am a happy citizen!” She doesn’t want dogs escorting her home.
“Yes. Yes, you are. Next!”
I’ve argued with plenty of people on the internet who so badly failed address anything I actually said that I figured they had to be arguing in bad faith. A lot of them probably were, but it’s depressing how plausible it is that many of them were probably actually that stupid.
That number is only going to get lower with COVID
How do other industrial nations compare?
I’m not sure of the reading level, but America has a functional literacy rate of 87%. Functional literacy being the ability to read on a daily basis and do general literacy tasks without assistance (recipes, a bank statement, directions, etc). Most developed countries are around 99%. Former or currently socialist countries tend to be the most literate places.
The literacy rate actually lines up really well with the high school graduation rate, which is 88%. There are a lot of models that try to explain why American sucks at education, but I doubt it will surprise you to learn the probable answers are poverty, racism, and capitalism.
Underfunded schools, stressed out kids who con’t care, parents who are overworked and don’t care, children who are shuffled around any relative who will take them. I used to work in education and knew a lot of kids who were about 8 years old living with a bedridden older relative and no one else. It’s also a lot of racist political authorities and real estate developers who box all the non-whites into poorer living conditions and deliberately underfund public services. There are some people who also talk about lead poisoning from paint and water in impoverished areas causing learning disabilities and that sounds reasonable enough to me, but I don’t know anything about it for sure. Even if it weren’t lead poisoning the racism and poverty would do the job the same. A lot of it also might do with America’s hatred of immigrants, since something like a third of illiterate children in the US were born outside the country.
I don’t know enough about the history of education in other developed, capitalist countries to know why their literacy rates are higher. Might be something particular to American imperialism and expressions of racism, probably a lot to do with America’s history of slavery. Although Brazil didn’t outlaw slavery until 1888 and they have a higher literacy rate than America too.
Yeah, if anyone else here also has ideas on what causes this I’d like to hear them
just at a guess probably decades of institutionally not prioritising education
