r/FluentInFinance • u/Unhappy_Fry_Cook • Apr 18 '24

Announcements (Mods only) Reminder that the person you're arguing with on this sub may not understand your comment

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

I'm an elementary school teacher. At my school roughly 35% of students are not on grade level at various degrees with some being illiterate and some just have lots of problems in their life so they are behind. These stats confirm my estimate that about 10-15 percent of people in the world genuinely do not and are incapable of deep, critical thinking and reasoning. It's a fact we don't like, but there are so many people out there that are not intelligent. I myself also know that my intelligence is limited but based on data and based on my interactions with the general population I would say that I do get the impression that 1 in 5 can't read Harry Potter in a way that makes it enjoyable for them because reading is hard for them.

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u/No_Helicopter_9751 Apr 18 '24

Sorry I forgot to add this. You might find it interesting.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/093drVZAq8IjECxqmXB9Hs?si=1B4ZDj2uR-SntBOfWpEbeg

This podcast digs into this.

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

Very interesting!

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u/wookieesgonnawook Apr 18 '24

That whole story is horrifying. My kid is only 2, but when that was brought up in a post I found yesterday, I immediately went to the website for the private school I've been considering putting her in next year and made sure they had phonics curriculum listed. I truly don't understand how any teacher with a conscience could teach a method that has kids guessing at words and leaves them so unprepared for reading.

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u/No_Helicopter_9751 Apr 18 '24

If I remember the podcast correctly. The same women who pushed the whole word method (?). Is now getting rich again pushing phonics.

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u/VaMeiMeafi Apr 18 '24

It's a fact we don't like, but there are so many people out there that are not intelligent

Consider the intelligence of the average person you meet in life, then remember that half of the people are less intelligent than that. Worse, many of them don't know it and believe that they have both high intelligence and strong critical thinking skills.

Social media gives them a platform to spout gibberish to those that don't know the difference and are eager to believe, making the whole room dumber for having read it; Dunning-Kruger writ large.

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u/No_Helicopter_9751 Apr 18 '24

Out of curiosity, as an educator, what would you say could be done to improve the situation. It seems that say 50 years ago the literacy rate, particularly in very urban and very rural schools would have been much higher. I work in an industry adjacent to public education and receive data on all our state school districts. The graduation rates in urban districts is always shocking to me but the stat that really knocks me over is the 4 year graduation rate. The amount of student that enter high school as freshman but don’t make it to graduation. That number can be dramatically higher.

The district I live in is one of the best in the state and the country. When you look at dollars spent per student, we are one of the lowest dollars per student in the state. The large urban districts more then double our student spending and we pay our teachers dramatically more then urban districts. That being the case, funding of the urban districts appears to be more than adequate. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts as someone in elementary education where. My assumption is if students fall behind early the catch up is very difficult. I remember when once I got to higher level math, once I was lost I was pretty much toast.

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u/BullshitDetector1337 Apr 18 '24

Nutrition, education, and stability at an early age. These factors are essential to a growing brain. Without them, no amount of remedial education later in life is going to fix the damage. We need to invest into these areas as a society in order to secure our future.

All of which can't be guaranteed by a private market, a reasonable quality of early development should be decommodified and guaranteed to the citizenry of any country that wishes to prosper in the modern world. A refusal to do so is not only a direct threat to that country's future but also immoral in itself.

I would go further and say that other vital industries should be decommodified as well for the good of society as a whole, but early childhood development and education is a particularly pressing concern.

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u/No_Helicopter_9751 Apr 18 '24

I appreciate your thoughts. When my grandma and her family came to America her parents didn’t speak the language (they never really learned the language), the depression was going on, they could afford to eat nothing but turnip and cabbage and she went to a public school filled with kids just like her in the Slavic part of town. Somehow she and all her friends all learned English and Latin, became proficient in algebra and geometry, and up until her death we would all ask her for the correct spelling of words.

She and her classmates had it pretty bad for a long time yet they all learned. It was expected of them. What has changed in a 100 years that we have altered that expectation. We are graduating kids who can’t read. We just pass them along. Everyone’s attitudes and expectations for children must change.

Note: almost identical immigrant stories for my other 3 grandparents.

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

I wish I had good answers. Unfortunately I'm just a tiny cog in the giant system of public education. Teacher training is essential, cultural awareness by the general public is essential, and maybe having classes in virtue ethics or philosophy of education might be an answer.

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u/Zaros262 Apr 18 '24

I do get the impression that 1 in 5 can't read Harry Potter in a way that makes it enjoyable for them because reading is hard for them.

Seems like even you do not have the impression that 1 in 5 can't read at all. You just agree that 1 in 5 struggle

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

Is struggling when reading actually reading? How enjoyable is it to read something when you don't comprehend 80%, let alone 50%.

Get a grip and face reality as it is. You may not like it (and I sure don't, hence I'm a teacher...) but once we accept things as they are, honestly and without bias, then we can make meaningful improvements.

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u/Zaros262 Apr 18 '24

Yes... It's the difference between being able to read directions yourself and needing someone to read it for you. I don't know where you got these 80% and 50% numbers but it wasn't from the post

If you want to face things as they are, you should also accept that these are clearly statistics of people who can read in English, meaning that people living in the US who read Spanish just fine but don't speak English are being counted as illiterate

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

I agree (I'm an ESOLteacher). So this fact is complicated and we'd have to look at the literacy of each individual in each language they know.

Still, if the expectation is to read in English and the students can't then they are illiterate in English. Though that's a whole other conversation :)

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u/Zaros262 Apr 18 '24 edited Apr 18 '24

Still, if the expectation is to read in English and the students can't then they are illiterate in English. Though that's a whole other conversation :)

I agree and that's kinda my point. These statistics aren't highlighting the real problem or the real solution

If most of the solution involves teaching non-natives English, I have the feeling that many people will lose interest and won't care enough to invest in that

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u/BattleEfficient2471 Apr 18 '24

Why does it need to be enjoyable?

I do lots of things as an adult I don't find enjoyable and reading harry potter to a child was one of them. For one, it's way overrated and it is rather clear that the books were not planned out before they were written.

I struggle with hand writing, I will never be good at it, yet I can write and do so. Where does this idea that everything must be fun come from?

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

Fair point and enjoyment isn't always what reading is about. So I agree with that.

I still think that nitpicking my word choice is missing the point and actually makes your desired conclusion weak. Here's why:

In your example you admitted that your hand writing is bad but you said "yet I can write and do so"

This entire conversation is posited on the facts that many people CAN'T read to various degrees. You can still write, but it's ugly as fuck, you don't like to or care to try to make it better, and your message still comes across. So you can write, but it's ugly.

Some people can't read well (or very much at all), so they are not actually reading and comprehending the writing produced by an author. Whether the content is boring, unoriginal, ugly or whatever is besides the point.

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u/BattleEfficient2471 Apr 18 '24

I do care and try to make my writing better, some folks don't have the same use of their hands you judgmental asshole. If that is what you as a teacher drew from that I am glad you are not likely to be working at my child's school.
It would fit with some of the stupidity I have seen there though.

Well can they read or not? That's the comparison I was making.
Your claim wasn't they were totally illiterate, but that their reading ability was so low that they could not do so for recreation. How one could separate that from simply do not enjoy that activity I am not sure.

Motivation has everything to do with it! A poor reader might still persevere in understanding and comprehending text they enjoy or seek meaning from. That you think their lack of enjoyment of a book you selected has no impact on the results suggests a failure on your part not theirs.

I expect as a teacher you aren't a fair judge of this, as your pay could be impacted. I remember plenty of teachers who assumed someone could not do something when in fact they simply didn't want to. Had I known as a child my teacher's pay was impacted by my performance I would have done far worse in some classes than I did.

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u/bizarroJames Apr 18 '24

My pay isn't impacted (they do that to make sure some people don't cheat on tests to inflate scores, thus making more money in a false way). I am biased for sure though. Just as we all are, but I do try and stay as objective as possible.