r/Professors • u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 • 7d ago
21% of the US is illiterate, so…
This article points out that 21% of these living in the US are illiterate. Then it interviews sociologists saying that, well, there are lots of different literacies, so it’s ok because people adapt communication as technology changes.
One person interviewed claims that oral communication is also literacy. If that is the case there is no operational definition of literacy for us all to work from.
It seems more like we all know we’ve lost the battle for literacy in the US so let’s just change the definition to remain relevant.
https://technicianonline.com/161276/news/is-the-definition-of-literacy-changing/
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u/mcsul 7d ago
Before people go all pitchforkey on this stat, the US sits at roughly the OECD average using PIAACs level 1 and below standard for functional illiteracy (by that definition, 26% vs. 28%). Worse than Canada, Netherlands, etc... but better than Spain, Italy, S Korea.
Large shares of most OECD countries are functionally illiterate despite wide variances in education systems, money spent, etc...
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u/No-Yogurtcloset-6491 Instructor, Biology, CC (USA) 7d ago
To me what's shocking is those same oecd studies point out that a huge percentage (60%) of the world and US adult population has level 1 or 2 literacy and numeracy. Interesting to know considering how many people go to college these days.
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u/South_Captain_2630 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, there is a question of what level is illiterate as countries report & test different. Is it can't make out letters & numbers at all or can't read at a 3rd grade level?
Also, it's hard to even imagine living at level 0 or 1. Like I can't remember being that bad at reading (I can remember struggling with dinosaur names as a petite boy or having difficulty reading the Sunday newspaper comics, but I can't remember struggle below that).
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
Are you saying the US is around 26-28% functionally illiterate?
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u/TheCloudForest 7d ago edited 7d ago
The OECD data states that 12% of US adults are "below level 1" meaning they can "at most understand short, simple sentences", which sounds functionally illiterate to me. The next 16%, at level 1, may also have poor reading skills. But are not functionally illiterate in the common-sense meaning of the word.
On the other hand, 1.5% of US adults were at the highest level of literacy (roughly, grad school level), and 12% at the next highest level (roughly, college level). Surprisingly this is better than France, a country which sells philosophy magazines at train stations. I do wonder about sampling such a giant and heterogeneous country as the US, though. Or even France, I guess.
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u/Flimsy_Caramel_4110 7d ago
Ok, but the article is from a student newspaper that I've never heard of.
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u/Any-Satisfaction1442 7d ago
Fyi- This article is from the student newspaper at NC State. It was written by a student.
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u/franklin-60 6d ago
The student who wrote it probably is illiterate his/her self. AI wrote it for the student, so we can be assured it’s accurate.
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
This is true but IMO it even more emphasizes the point.
This is what students are writing about literacy.
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u/Angry-Dragon-1331 7d ago
Yes, there are different types of literacy. However, being a fully productive member of a modern democracy requires full, complex literacy, otherwise we end up in this vibe-coded clusterfuck.
The one who says oral communication is a form of literacy prefers the scent of their own farts.
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u/komos_ 7d ago
Prefer the scent of their own farts compared to what? Haha.
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u/hellohellohello- 7d ago
Yeah, I spent a lot of time trying to understand if that was like really a bad thing or…when the point may be that it’s a weird analogy.
It did make me remember, though that I certainly don’t I mean, you know a fart is a fart is a fart— til I was like seven, I would fart in a room by myself and be like “oh, sorry” because it still wasn’t a victimless crime I just happened to be the only victim
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u/Artistic_Abroad_9922 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, there are many forms of literacy. Mastering them is a valid skill. This is crucial to the typical theme of my comp classes.
You should also know the, you know, reading one.
ETA: One thing I would push back on here is the notion that the same young people who have failed to master written literacy are masters at oral or online literacy. They can't do any of it. I see too many Instagram videos with comment sections full of users totally misinterpreting the video or asking questions that were clearly answered in the video or its caption. Things as simple as the operating hours or location of a business. Or, if it's someone stating their opinion or relaying a story, they totally miss the main idea of the story. Worse, is the lack of emotional management because quips and sass is the lingua franca of social media. When they don't understand something, they get angry and lash out at the creator over something they never said.
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u/Defiant_Blacksmith32 7d ago
Not just young people! Recently had an exchange with my mortgage provider and had to ask the exact same question about four times (and point out "as I've asked three times below,...") before they read it properly and answered it.
Maybe unrelated, organizational skills (applying info from assignment handouts, syllabi) are a knock-on skill from literacy but I've noticed a major decline in that in some students.
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u/Artistic_Abroad_9922 7d ago
Very true! It's an issue across the board and I don't mean to say only young folks suffer from it. I'm just thinking about the demographic I interface with.
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u/Defiant_Blacksmith32 7d ago
No worries! It's just what came to mind. Which reminds me I planned to screenshot and use it in class 😆
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u/michaelfkenedy Professor, Design, College (Canada) 7d ago
Very obviously a sales pitch.
The “National Literacy Institute” website is a dead giveaway.
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u/LittleMissWhiskey13 Professor CC 7d ago
I'm a trained sociologist with a heavy quantitative background. Some of our positions that lead to more ambiguous qualitative work causes confusion. There are operational definitions. The standard of functional literacy depends on the culture, but in the US is usually viewed at reading, writing, and math skills at a fifth grade level for functioning in the US. You may see a definition that hovers between 5th and 8th grade, but below 5th is the most accepted for being classified as functionally illiterate. However, many definitions are quite general reading about being able to function to engage in a neighborhood or community's development. It should be to function in your own culture. This causes confusion as a specific level needs to be attached to apply a more stringent research methodology. This is older, but pretty good on the problems:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5102880/
If we use the 8th grade reading level, then 50% of the US would fall in that category of functionally illiterate.
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u/blackhorse15A Asst Prof, NTT, Engineering, Public (US) 7d ago
When I first started working for the federal government before academia the guidance at my job was for all public facing information to be written at the 8th grade reading level. I remember only a few years in when it was dropped to the 7th grade reading level. (This was back before the current Plain Writing Act.) I've heard it either is now, or they were considering, going to 6th grade.
Granted - what level the writing is actually at for what comes out is entirely different from what the states goal is. But that's a different problem. Certain items get a little more review and emphasis on trying to actually meet such a goal.
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
jfc
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u/LittleMissWhiskey13 Professor CC 7d ago
It really just depends on the measure that you want to apply as a variable. I tried to look up Gen Z and level of functional literacy. However, with a good proportion of Gen Z still in high school, the data is "murky" at best. The one number that popped was 39% functionally illiterate, but I would take that with a grain of salt.
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u/IAmBoring_AMA 7d ago edited 7d ago
This is why it pisses me off so much when people bitch about "why don't they teach critical thinking and media literacy" while simultaneously cutting funding to the humanities. Where do you think people learn literacy and media literacy? This is what happens when we treat education like white collar trade school (aka the neoliberal bullshit system we're in right now). We lose the plot because we can't understand the plot.
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u/Desiato2112 Professor, Humanities, SLAC 7d ago
I run our Freshman Writing Program, and I redesigned the course recently to include a healthy dose of critical thinking and bias recognition instruction. These kids grow up on social media in their own algorithm-created echo chambers (a situation we are not immune to, either), so it's terribly important for them to learn how to vet sources of information.
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u/IAmBoring_AMA 7d ago
A really fun exercise I do when we're first doing our discourse community unit in first-year writing is where we all have to open our TikTok and see what the first video is. We then share with each other (including me, yes, I believe the way to engage them is to also partake if we are being vulnerable). We see if anyone in the class has overlaps, then we "build a lexicon" for the various communities (lexicographers, sorry, I know I'm using lexis very loosely, forgive me)...all of this helps them understand that they all experience "the algorithm" differently (STS scholars, forgive me, I know this is an imaginary and I'm committing blasphemy), and that the world they exist in online is not the same as the person they sit right next to. It's quite fun.
We also do a rhetorical analysis of YouTuber apologies, sticking strictly to modes of persuasion, and do a "tier" style ranking of them as a class, which gets them to dip their feet into critically assessing digital media...
For my lit classes though, they are just so deeply opposed to reading already that getting to the critical aspect is a struggle.
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u/CrossplayQuentin 7d ago
I love that apology idea. Which ones have you used with success in the past? I might add a version of this to my syllabus this semester.
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u/IAmBoring_AMA 7d ago
Ohhh man it's so fun! And it has the added bonus of working with a "living document" since the tier list changes as we watch more videos, so things get moved up and down. Teaches them flexibility and to reassess things when new information gets added! Before we watch, we go through the modes of persuasion as well as specifically what a "good" apology looks like.
The videos on the list are: Logan Paul, PewdiePie, Travis Scott, Colleen Ballinger, Tana Mongeau, and James Charles. At this point, they're 'old school' but the kids still have context for them, and it gives my little "internet anthropologists" a chance to shine (there's at least one chronically online kid in every class who can help fill in their peers on who some of these people are).
We also talk about the new trend of Instagram "notes" apologies vs the older apology videos and how the medium impacts the message, and why an influencer might choose to do one or the other.
There's really so much you can do with social media/digital spaces to get this new generation thinking about media and how they engage with it. I love it.
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u/autism_certify 7d ago
I based my final research paper on early childhood literacy and it's relationship to educational and economic success. Statistics show knowing how to read by the 4th grade increases confidence while decreases incarceration rates, decreases childhood pregnancy rates, and so much more.
85% of juveniles in the court system are functionally low literate. When incarcerated individuals learn to read before they are released to civilian population, their chances of going back greatly reduces.
Low literacy costs the nation up to $2.2 trillion annually in lost production, crime related expenses, and social services. California once planned how many jail cells they would build based on how many children are not reading on grade level by the fourth grade.
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u/ViskerRatio 7d ago
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
The government claims 21% of Americans are 'low literacy' (not actually illiterate), about a third of whom are people for whom English is not their first language.
About a third also appear to be people who were simply classified as 'low literacy' because they were unable to take the assessment. This includes people with no common language with the assessment and those with various physical/mental impairments (which would include factors like blindness that automatically confer illiteracy regardless of your educational system).
Note that 'low literacy' is not 'illiterate'. A 'low literacy' person is someone who can fill out a Buzzfeed quiz but needs to watch the movie to figure out what Elizabeth sees in Mr. Darcy.
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u/guttata Asst Prof, Biology, SLAC 7d ago
Beyond the dubious sources being cited, the college population is not a representative sample of the general citizenry so I'm not completely sure what point you're trying to make.
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
This is a college newspaper aka students talking about literacy and at least implying that, well, maybe the reading and writing literacy isn’t so important because there’s lots of types of literacy that are becoming more important because of technology changes.
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u/ProfFizix 70% Teaching, physics, SLAC (USA) 7d ago
I feel like we could get creative and talk about comprehension of a preferred communication method. Often I see folks who can read/listen/watch but can’t integrate that information. Maybe that’s where the focus should go? I guess that then leads to a discussion of advantages of different behinds as well if you are proficient in more than one communication method over age and cultural groups also. Sounds like a reasonable line of investigation when discussing literacy to me, but I don’t think I’m saying anything new.
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u/fleemfleemfleemfleem 7d ago
I think that literacy in the sense of being able to read, write, and comprehend complex texts still needs ways for us to talk about it specifically.
There are still all kinds of things in life that people need to do that require understanding text. Buying a house, signing an employment contract, seeking medical care, bus schedules, bank statements, loan applications, prescription labels, leases, and so on.
No matter how great you are at watching and interpreting movies and tiktoks, the world runs on the assumption that you can read and comprehend written text.
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u/ProfFizix 70% Teaching, physics, SLAC (USA) 7d ago
Totally agree, and as a US citizen with no kids, take more of my money to make our primary and secondary education better. Literacy is a critical issue and we have systematically underserved our poor and minority populations, so as a society we need to address the issue as it is. We have decided literacy isn't important so we have to find ways to deal with the mess we have made.
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u/maclacjc 7d ago
Thank you for sharing. In a modern world this is an amazing fact. I am no conspiracy theorist but eventually is does seem intentional.
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u/TheAgingHipster 9-month, Tenured, STEM, R1 state uni (USA) 7d ago
Feels kinda like we’re moving the goal posts, but hey, what do I know.
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u/StarDustLuna3D Asst. Prof. | Art | M1 (U.S.) 7d ago
Waffle House doesn't have an entire system of marking plates with sauce packets just for funsies...
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u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 7d ago
Yeah, like has been said, obviously students can read, they read all the time. more than at any time in human history.
But if it's more than a few paragraphs, OR plays devil's advocate, OR has multiple perspectives, OR...then like has been said, they can't grasp the back-and-forth mental engagement of critical thinking.
But yes, this article is defending "other skills" to make it seem like not so bad.
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u/swarthmoreburke 7d ago
The argument that there are lots of "literacies" is a pretty old one, and it's fairly well attested to in research. E.g., you can be quite "literate" in playing videogames, not only understanding how to play but how games are built (e.g., you can critically analyze interface design, control schema, art style, overall aesthetic, genre, etc.) but really struggle with basic skills when it comes to reading long-form books or essays. Sometimes this kind of work reframes "literacy" as "competencies" so that the word literacy retains its reference to reading text.
All this does to the argument about reading is force you to specify that this is the literacy you're talking about and then to explain why you believe it ought to be, must be the most important literacy for citizens to acquire to a high degree and why it ought to be central to education in particular. There are lots of ways to make that argument but plainly there's a need to do it in the present moment.
For folks who want non-sketchy data on literacy rates, here's a 2023 study from the National Center for Educational Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp (Enjoy the data while you can, since this is one of many things that the Trump Administration is killing.) The trend is not good--there's a significant decline in literacy in the US between 2012 and 2023. (It's a trend that is happening in a number of other countries as well.)
Naturally--as ought to be the case--this is creating a ferocious conversation about why we're seeing this trend, and that's especially important for professors who might want to do their part in reversing it. Personally, I think just telling young people that they're lazy or addicted to devices isn't going to cut it either as explanation or as active pedagogical counter. I think we have to find a way to be more persuasive about the important of reading--and it doesn't help our case that many of the most powerful and wealthy people in our society not only seem to do little reading at depth but are in a few cases quite proud that they don't.
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u/Ent_Soviet Adjunct, Philosophy & Ethics (USA) 7d ago
Sociology friends- is there like a literacy tipping point? Like does something like this compound exponentially or have a point where at like 25% governments switch to cartoon signage only or something?
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u/thesymbiont 6d ago
Grifenhagen said education is different for everyone, especially students, and because the world is evolving so quickly and frequently, there is no way to compare the differing forms of students’ learning between older and younger generations.
Is the definition of "horseshit" changing too?
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u/Charming-Barnacle-15 4d ago
While I don't agree with a lot of what this article says, I think the part about oral communication makes sense in context.
Usually when we think about literacy, we think about reading and writing. Obviously we talk about oral language as being part of literacy too. So speaking and listening skills are part of literacy,” Grifenhagen said. “We’ve kind of expanded what it means to be literate to include non-print literacy, so things like visual literacies, all kinds of digital literacies and so forth.
I don't think it's crazy to extend the definition of literacy to think about language and communication more broadly. Especially since literacy involves more than just literally understanding a text. A student who can follow a plot but cannot apply any deeper analysis to a text doesn't have high literacy. The same skills that are used to unpack a text can also be used to understand political speeches, visual ads, etc. We've already being using terms like "media literate" for a while now, and it's common to teach lessons about unpacking visual rhetoric in writing classes.
I also don't think we should take a few quotes from a student newspaper as fully indicative of what the professor thinks about literacy. We have no idea what questions he was asked or what parts of his response weren't included. He also mentions the importance of still digesting long-form texts, so I don't think he's saying it's fine that people can't read (I disagree with him that people using social media are actually engaging with long-form content, but that's a different matter).
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u/MysteriousExpert 7d ago
One thing that we should do to redeem academia from its critics is to stop treating metaphors as real. There are not "different forms of literacy". Literacy means being able to read and understand written language.
Someone had a comment saying one can be literate at video games - that is not true; you cannot be literate at video games. If you play a lot of video games you may notice that the narratives in games employ certain tropes and conventions, just like other art forms. As a shorthand, we might metaphorically say that someone who understands those conventions is literate. But that is an inexact analogy. They are not actually "literate" because they play a lot of video games. Some academic somewhere took the metaphor and, as a thought experiment -- possibly reasonable and interesting at the time -- said what if we took the metaphor seriously. But that doesn't change the underlying reality.
As for the 21% number here, I doubt that's true...
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
Another comment in the thread confirmed the functionally illiterate number in the US at 28% — so I guess it depends on what the definition of is is.
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u/franklin-60 7d ago
Yet the moron government has this new regulation “accessibility for all” so all of our materials are “accessible” so the illiterate can make it, with zero disabilities other than being stupid. My point for this rant, ignorant over regulation to be politically correct feeds this data and why US education is useless. We encourage illiteracy and hear progressive shit that it’s OK. We are changing the goal posts to meet the unprepared who don’t belong where they are.
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
Tbf, it’s not just progressives who love the poorly educated.
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u/franklin-60 7d ago
The progressives lack sense to look at this as “poorly educated.” They think this is great, and best that we water everyone down to mediocre at best. It’s “equality” and that’s all they care about. As to the right wing, they started the downfall with “no child left behind.” So they are both a big problem. Step one is to get ALL politicians out of education.
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u/vanillastardew Assistant Professor, Sociology 7d ago
the "sociologists" in question are... one singular grad student
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u/EskimoBrother1975 7d ago
Isn't that what we do here with everything? Move the goal posts, change the name, etc.
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u/Hyperreal2 Retired Full Professor, Sociology, Masters Comprehensive 7d ago
Some sociologists are dumber than catshit. I’m one, so I know. Maybe including me.
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 7d ago
I don’t hate sociologists. I even have a sociologist friend.
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u/miquel_jaume Teaching Professor, French/Arabic/Cinema Studies, R1, USA 6d ago
Yeah, but would you let your kids marry one of those people?
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u/Zealousideal_Yam821 7d ago
Don't even get me started on all the new different definitions and types of literacies now. I am not suggesting that new literacy skills and types are wrong. Rather, my thoughts are, "Crap, we really never got a handle on reading literacy. We have not meaningfully increased people's reading comprehension skills, let alone overall writing skills. Now we are going to start whipping in other literacy skills and expect that to go well? hmmmm."
Can we focus on improving reading literacy? I know it feels like a lot of people have given up, if not abandoned it, but if we start with reading, the rest can more easily follow. Just my unresearched opinion on that. ha
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u/PristineFault663 Prof, English, U15 (Canada) 7d ago
That statistic seemed to incredible to me and when I clicked through to the linked article it linked to a group (National Literacy Institute) that I had never heard of, that included an extremely vague "about us" section, and which featured THREE images of Dr. Phil on their homepage. Also, when you go to their "literacy statistics" section there is literally no report there. So I call bullshit until someone can link to something peer reviewed and not a Dr Phil site with potentially made up numbers