About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills (2022)

I didn’t look into the details of the survey described in this article. A large international survey that covers literacy is PIAAC[1]. You can read about their ‘levels’ of literacy in one of their reader’s guides[2]. The survey suggested that 17.6% of adults in the US score at level 1 or below (basic vocabulary, ability to extract a single piece of information in a short text) and 12.8% of US adults score at level 4 or 5. People with low literacy tend to struggle with vocabulary, or large blocks of text, and will be slow readers who can’t skim text.

You can find some practical descriptions of low literacy in UX articles like https://uxpamagazine.org/people_who_do_not_read_easily/ or https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2016/02/23/writing-content-for-every...

[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/survey-of-adult-ski... [2] See pages 115-116 of https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/the-survey-of-adult-...

I am bewildered by the low literacy ability of a significant amount of the people I hired. People with advanced degrees; can't take notes, can't really read either. Not idiots, but illiterate. How did they end-up there ? Do we now need to test for literacy in interviews ?

I always wonder what it means to have low literacy. I seem to be able to read, but my spelling has always been bad. Am I low, or just below average?

I know I am not stupid, and at least when it comes to software and computers are probably far above average. I always find my self in weird situations working with people who can spell and spot spelling errors so easy, but I am the one explaining how to do something technical or resolve a complex bug in software or how computers / compilers, or computer languages actually work under the hood.

So all that to say, what is literacy? And what part of it do you need to be successful?

This is frighteningly high when these days even highly educated people fall for propaganda.

This would also explain why we still have spam when everyone has heard of the Nigerian Prince scam.

It also explains why dark patterns are so popular and why products get dumbed down more and more. Websites look like duplo sets these days.

Ehm, I'm from the EU, being a former globetrotter, living in the EU and... Situation here and in other places of the world it not much different. Yes most adults do know where Tokyo is and where is Central Asia or Perù, but... In substantial literacy terms most have issues reading non-super-dumb articles understanding them, elaborate a not so super-dumb concept in their mind, ...

Most adults do not know the bare minimum about the society they live in, oh sure, they tend to know the last gossip, but nothing about politics, bureaucracy, global changes and so on. They have a poor vocabulary, they can't write decent documents and so on.

What are the historical trends? The definition of these standards sounds squishy and arbitrary.

Print desert? That's like saying there's a transportation crisis because people can't can't afford horses.

how does this actually happen, at the classroom level? Are the kids actually going to school or is it a case they show up and basically teacher can't control what's going in the room?

I'd be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from this; this test also involves some computer skill.

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...

That map of "low literacy" looks like a map of where large volumes of blue collar immigrants live. At a minimum, the presentation seems misleading. It is like noting that a disturbing number of people who own cowboy boots live in Texas. Probably true, but it doesn't imply anything important.

An earlier discussion of low literacy in North America: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25829959

In the article they talk so much about funding schools which will improve immigrant literacy. But I think, that funding is not the problem. When you migrate to a new country you just naturally get into a bubble of your nationals. Its much easier to make a connection with other people from your country because of your common experience and culture. Then you just live in this bubble. You are in US, but all your free time you are still talking in your native language with your friends and family. Probably, read news and books in your native language too. So English language just needs to be on the bare minimum to give you a job. Hence low English literacy results.

If this is hinting at 1-in-3 American adults being somewhat culturally deficient or otherwise intellectually challenged then that feels about right.

> Some of these high county-level percentages stem from high populations of immigrants, whose first language is not English. The PIAAC only assesses English literacy, though its background questionnaire is given in English and Spanish.

If you look at the map (and read the article), it's fairly obvious that they are NOT adjusting for non-English first language speakers. This is partly on purpose since it's those demographics that need the most assistance and funding to learn English. However, it's really disappointing that this data is used to make statements and titles regarding people's "literacy" or reading comprehension when it's specifically testing a single language.

"Literacy" is a ridiculously low metric as per the UN, I've read that a grade 6 reading level easily qualifies.

So it's not really a case of "low literacy skills" in terms of offical stats, but that the stats are lowish.

But what does one expect? For 100 IQ to be an average, there will be many below that number. The goal is to train all citizens as mich as possible, and literacy stats are to reflect that attempt.

Feature not a bug

> more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

This is framed as a bad thing, as if it is somehow self-evident that sixth-graders are intellectually deficient and illiterate. But if you turn it around as "sixth graders read about as well as the median adult," it doesn't sound so bad anymore, does it?

In any case, criticism of recent education policies based on the observation that the standards in school are higher than they are for adults is missing the point, unless you want to argue that the standards are too high.

Many school districts now have policy against praising achievement for fear of being accused of marginalizing underachieving students, so underachievement becomes a safe norm.

In a society that is increasingly less centered around reading, unused skills will atrophy and replaced with other things. It's not like the underlying genomics to execute the entire human spiel are getting better in step with societal change. Something's gotta give.

Furthermore, and despite my own inclinations, I have a hard time looking at literacy as an efficient delivery mechanism. In fact, I suspect the amount of time we spent reading for anything other than strictly pleasure will look fairly silly before long (at societal level and a humanity timescale).

In part that seems almost deliberate: Most of the "important" writing, to this day (and even though there has been some push back), prides itself in being fairly exclusive. Well, there you go.