That clip of that Kik Streamer fascist Aiden Ross trying to whole-word-read "fascist" and then googling the meaning and then still being puzzled why someone would call Trump that.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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When I first saw this, I laughed my ass off and then cried because this motherfucker is an idol to so many people.
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It means they are easily propagandized to and won't have the critical reading skills to realize it
They can sound out words and know what most common words mean in isolation but their ability comprehend the meaning of a text is very basic, if present at all. Reading a short story, being able to summarize it and comment on themes, conflicts, character motivations, metaphors, allegory, how they relate to the story or certain characters are generally beyond them. Reading a political article and reading between the lines to get past the writer's bias is completely beyond them (tbf they would never read an article, they would watch a video or look at memes on facebook). That said, they have little to no ability to think critically so whatever authority figures beat into them when they were young becomes their worldview and everything that contradicts it is seen as an attack on them and society.
I had someone I know ask me what was wrong with the Korean PM declaring martial law since he was doing it because of a communist invasion. The article just repeated what he claimed he was doing and this guy hadn't thought about whether that was an accurate statement on his part. Just didn't occur to him that an official statement from a politician could be false.
He's not coincidentally a huge Chud with a lot of beliefs about a (((cabal))) running everything he doesn't like.
I legit think the only way to save these people is to very carefully word socialist theory in a way that they can understand through facebook level memes. But then you have to worry about the authority figures that actually can read seeing through it. 
I don't know that re-education is actually possible in this case, tbh.
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It means they have a difficult time parsing Parenti quotes. They can read it aloud, and they can tell you roughly what it's about, but they have difficulty following and comprehending the argument being made.
My mom once stated in a FB post that socialism was evil, when I asked her to elucidate "It just is!"
Reading at a 6th grade level is reading for plot. Just like, what happened? Who was there? More advanced things like subtext, metaphor, and unreliable narrators come later.
I found this online the last time this topic came up: https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/english-level-test/reading
Go ahead and read the story, and imagine that a lot of people cannot read and understand it.
There's also this article about how many kids are taught to read badly: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (amusingly, also available as a podcast)
What does it mean practically? Bad things. If you haven't read 1984, give it a go and think about why the authoritarian state benefitted from a diminished language.
so lets go a bit more in depths on the topic, what other lessons did you get out of 1984?
what other lessons did you get out of 1984?
that i should sport a mustache if i want to be taken seriously
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their site design is knocking my reading level down a couple grades
Not GDPR compliant, the disagree button just says fuck you you must agree to our cookies to read this plain text
I don't know how that test compares to grade level. It seems like a test to determine one's CEFR level, 20 correct answers out 20 gave me C1. It doesn't really say what it's based on, but it does encourage you to buy their product.
Ok actually, this seems to suggest B2/C1 is about 6-8th grade level and C1 is 9-12: https://wida.wisc.edu/news/wida-model-online-scale-scores-linked-common-european-framework-reference-cefr
I missed one and I got B2!!
Coincidentally, I answered
that her English was perfect instead of very good.
"I used ChatGPT Bazinga to write this message"
Sometimes you have to be brought back to reality and realize that the vast, vast majority of USAmericans have not grappled with materialism, thus nearly all the connections they make are like a 6th grader writing out their 5 paragraph essay for the high stakes exam that determines if their school gets funding or not.
US self made brain drain is going to hit the country like a comically large boomerang, it already has essentially.
Yeah, even if a person gets an undergrad degree they still have the capitalist brainworms unless they poison them with theory. Reading and writing education in the US is so formulaic as to be worthless. People are taught to follow a small set of rules and if they don't follow the rules, they fail. They are not expected to think. Even so, many people refuse to read or write anything, either paying others to do it for them or just turning in some AI slop without taking a single look at it.
And these people are armed to the teeth 
brain drain is going to hit the country like a comically large boomerang,
To where?
Slightly more seriously, the people who can actually do things will go to countries where they can actually do them. The US ripping the copper wire out of everything will reverse any sort of intellectual dominance that it once had.
How has it or will it impact the US? With America’s money can’t they just attract immigrant intellectual labour with high salaries?
Yes and no. We used to actively court immigrant intellectuals, now we're accusing every Chinese intellectual of espionage and frothing at the mouth to deport anyone darker than freshly fallen snow. People with advanced degrees see what's happening in the US and are choosing to go elsewhere.
Do you have any stories or examples from your life?
A middle school textbook is pretty basic stuff. Think of all problems, blunder, mistakes, accidents, etc happening all over the US every day that are caused by the average American having difficulty understanding anything written at a middle school level or above.
With the rise of the internet along with it's dark side and the expansion of right-wing media - maybe it was enviable that a repulsive republican like Trump would be president not just once but twice. And maybe it's no surprise that huge number of Americans fall prey to conspiracy theories and snake oil salesmen like RFK. A large percentage of Americans hate vaccines and think they cause disease.
My worry is that not only will the problem not get fixed - it will most likely get worse over time. There is a concerted, bipartisan effort to ignore the problem. The GOP likes an uneducated public. Trump even bragged about it. The democrats will remain unwilling to even acknowledge the problem because they think the public will lose faith in American exceptionalism, the American dream, etc.
Trump even bragged about it
What did Trump say?
I find the OECD's levels of literacy more instructive than grade level. This page has a short definition: https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/
pdf page 75 (table 4.5) here has more detailed definitions: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2019/11/the-survey-of-adult-skills_d7f1bc16/f70238c7-en.pdf