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There is a stat floating around that says "a majority of Americans read at a 6th grade level" and most people react to this with horror and "we need to teach people to read" or "people are so lazy and don't learn these days" kinds of reactions... but I was thinking about what really matters here.
Because with these kinds of stats we focus a lot on the mechanical process of reading. That is looking at symbols and interpreting them as words, sentences and at last ideas.
1/
I would be interested in statistics about how well people who watch a short video do on a test where they answer short factual questions about what they just watched.
I'd be interested if you show people a video of an experiment can they draw logical conclusions from what they see or point out limitations of the experiment.
And I'm interested in how people react to statistics, graphs and other methods of describing data.
These reasoning and interpretation skills matter more than reading. 2/
I'm very skeptical of anyone who is claiming that people are somehow less intelligent than in the past as this is used as an excuse for why those people may suffer.
If you look at the history of yellow journalism, of Church indoctrination, bamboozling the public is a problem that ebbs and flows through all of history.
Everyone passing a literacy test won't change that.
But, everyone learning about concepts like 'context' might make a dent.
3/3
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