“Literacy” was always the most basic tool of totalitarian propaganda. If you are not literate you can’t be fed communist propaganda. The most steadfast anti-communist I knew in my childhood was my maternal grandfather who was illiterate. Communist propaganda did not reach him

A lot of people are commenting about how, so what, lots of people can read and are also stupid. Except this isn't about being stupid. Or dumb. Reading and writing is a skill you gotta be tutored into. You won't learn it through intuition. You won't learn it through osmosis, guesswork or because the Holy Ghost descended from the heavens to enlighten your soul. You have to be taught, step by step, how to decode writing in order to then develop it into other skills, like different levels of reading, making annotations, making summaries, prose writing, and so on. All of these things should ideally become second nature to you through a long process of 'scholarization', one that is formulated with full understanding of what kids of different ages tend to need, and what kids in particular may require of their teachers.

Think about it. This isn't like zoomers being unable to use Windows because they have phones. It's like not having a school system in the first place. Good god, the districts that keep this scam pedagogy in place are gonna create a lost generation.

I was thinking about this in the context of the UK the other day, and it makes sense to wear down the educational system as much as possible, mainly for two reasons.

Quality isn’t necessary. The education system up to 14-ish years old serves essentially as free(ish) daycare so parents don’t have an excuse not to work. This then allows rent/house prices to inflate up to what a couple can pay, rather than a single parent.

The uneducated masses are easy to control. I work/live in a very well-educated environment, but have regular contact with less educated people. It’s insane the things they’ll believe in.

I think adult illiteracy is pretty high in the U.S. as well. I have had multiple middle managers who cannot write a coherent paragraph to save their lives, to the degree that I have had to go literally ask them what they mean because otherwise it would be reading tea leaves.

Even worse is people who are lifer manual laborers, they can be very smart and great with their hands, but ask them to read something above very basic text and their eyes just glaze over. Something has gone seriously wrong here.

I'm not a teacher, but I had a job where I had to manage younger adults and a significant portion of communication was done in text. When I started the job I wondered why so many used weird short hand and what I thought was purposeful misspelling. I later learned that it wasn't shorthand, but that many were just barely literate.

This is from the thread. So, essentially, we have a whole generation of Charlies from Always Sunny. America is fucked.

I am legitimately sick to my stomach from anger after learning about this. A bunch of snake oil peddling cultists have scammed the American and other Anglo school systems, from the sound of it, for decades. And tens of millions, if not a hundred million kids have suffered for it.

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Thanks for the recommendation--will definitely be checking this out.

edit: I just listened to the first episode and WTF, the people responsible for getting this new curriculum into schools should be in prison. It's a crime of unfathomable proportions against children who have no way to defend themselves.

I think part of the problem is that being read to by your parents at a young age and having books in the home that you are encouraged to read does so much for literacy l, as much if not more than what kids are taught in school. And most parents don't have the time or the inclination, or they themselves are barely literate and have no basis for teaching their kids to be literate. And the cycle continues

Are there any serious, reputable papers which support the, actually American kids are stupid because of this one, simple pedagogical mistake, thesis?

Frankly this is the kind of pat explanation that should be easy to test for, and, if true, should be easy to fix. But my sense is that American education doesn't have an easy fix, and it's not because Big School Curriculum won't let your kids have access to the phonics books.

I mean even "educated" PhDs who "read a lot" are still stupid as fuck and cannot for the life of them realize that they are being swayed by propaganda so I think the problem goes way deeper than just basic reading comprehension

Actually now that I think about it, solving reading comprehension is a lot easier of a task than trying to un-brainwash these dumb "well-read Politics and Prose" liberals who drive around with NPR stickers on the back of their cars and laptops...

I've heard this podcast and it is utterly horrifying, however reading recovery and the scam has mostly been tossed out. Phonics has been brought back and a lot of the outrage in this podcast is more from the last couple decades.

I meant to look in to it more once my kid was ready for school, so I have no insight on how kids are currently being taught. Just wanted to share my experience listening to the podcast that it comes across like this is happening now when it's what has occured recently.

I remember there was a opinion piece saying that Education in the Eastern Bloc and China is a tool for the government to control people.

I guess not able to read is a way to not turn red

Bill "The Good Billionaire" Gates saw to that about 20 years ago and it started with an amazing piece of neoliberal propaganda called "Waiting For Superman." His buddy in the "reform" movement was , by the way, and even arranged to have special uncredentialed classes full of "students" to victimize in his spare time.

I always read better than other kids from my background because I read in my free time and had parents who were willing to read to me. The education system did indeed hinder rather than help. And this was decades ago.