More (not so) fun facts:
54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level.
21% read below a 5th grade level, which is considered functionally illiterate.
High immigration numbers don't fully explain it either, as first gen immigrants only make up about 1/3 of those with low literacy.
I've studied this a little before (at graduate school) and I don't think we know exactly why, mostly because it's a ton of factors and none of the different camps in academia seem to agree on one.
Your standard Lemmy user may appreciate that late stage capitalism probably is the biggest factor, since poverty and illiteracy are hand in hand. The professor I RA'd for, for instance, just did projects that gave families money and they just did better. It was really that simple, since a ton of this is in the home, even before starting preschool.
But others have argued that there's also an anti-intellectualism in our culture (even before MAGA, kids go "ew nerds") and even more say it's pedagogy. That includes theory, like whole word vs phonics (my advisor spoke of the reading wars of the 90s like he had PTSD lol) as well as practice, like memorization vs reading for reading sake.
And, of course, the government under Bush Jr. really did the opposite of research by enacting the bipartisan No Child Left Behind which fucked both poor folk with contextless "accountability practices" while pushing soulless memorization.
Sorry for a long rant, just, y'know in 2025 onwards it's easy to forget that education has been routinely fucked, usually by conservatives. I can always explain more though, just don't want to make this comment too long, lol
They were supposed to bring critical thinking to the high schools and conservative parents in the US threw a shit fit because they truly believed their kids would no longer believe what they did. We never got critical thinking in high school and most people don't get an introduction to it until college.
Critical thinking should start in kindergarten and by third grade children should be able to create a simple opinion based on facts they understand. We are doing such a disservice to young people it isn't funny.
I'm not sure if it played out quite like that originally, though I guess there would be some people's parents thinking that way, especially in 2026. Keep in mind, NCLB was bipartisan.
In 2003, though, I read that the reality for a majority of schools is a bit more stupid, they don't understand testing and statistics at the federal level and designed a system of accountability that promoted teach-to-the-test methods, which is mostly memorization. That's because low performing schools (read: poor schools) got punished for not meeting an arbitrary test score, so it was a go to survival tactic.
Conservatives still get their desired result, though, which is an education system with minimal critical thinking practiced. Perhaps it was a poison pill, or something, given it's made Americans by and large even dumber since then (and we were already doing bad for other reasons and Reagan).
This was back in 2012ish when the Republican Party platform was the following.
"Knowledge-Based Education We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
Yeah, can't have it in high school because that's lib-rule college shit.
That's around when the tea party movement was taking off, so that tracks. You see the seeds of what we see today back even in 2008, too; but to bring it back to reading deficits, we've had problems long before then (which, obviously, snowball into what we see today, e.g. Florida banning sociology and such).
Ooh, I kind of forgot about the madness of schools being funded mainly by their local neighborhood, making schools in poor neighbourhoods poor. Could it be that increased segregation or relative marginalization have had an impact significant enough to bring the mean down?
That's quite correct, but it's two fold. Even if you have funding from the state and feda (which we do get to offset this effect), the home lives of these kids are generally much worse than middle and upper neighborhoods, which also brings down the mean. We're talking pollution, 80 hour work weeks, higher incarceration, etc. it all brings down the mean.
Then the feds have the gall to REDUCE funding if schools can't bring themselves to by the bootstraps? It's awful. That said, Obama admin did help a little in this regard, since at least they did listen to the educational research on this.
The fact that it's called "critical thinking" rubs me the wrong way. Makes it sound like there's also another way of thinking even though the alternative is just not thinking
liberal parents also hate critical thinking. it's not a partisan issue.
i live an in ultra liberal city and the parents are 100% against critical thinking here too. they just want their orthodoxies taught instead of conservative ones.
You have no idea what teaching critical thinking actually is, do you? It’s teaching thought exercises tin elementary that make students evaluate how they form their opinions and how to vet sources, in college or AP high school it turns into critical theory and trying write irrefutable dissertations of your position. It isn’t just CRT and it sure isn’t “identity politics“ though identity politics (which is an abhorrent term btw) can be defended through critical theory, see Judith Butler for instance. Anyhow you’re kinda dumb.
Oh I know that people who use insults to try and 'win' arguments are not people who know what critical thinking is.
And you are completely wrong about what critical thinking is, and proving my very point that it's been turned into nonsense indoctrination treating Judith Butler type figures as geniuses when they are hacks who's work is based on the thesis denying critical thinking is even possible, because we are all trapped by our race or sex or nationality and to be evil beings.
Judith Butler's and her cohorts work is basically taking the concept of original sin in Christianity, and just replacing the word 'sin' with race or sex. It's a dogmatic belief system.
If you had critical thinking skills you'd be able to recognize that. Critical thinking doesn't lead to belief systems. It tears them down. If you are trying to create a belief system or teach it as truth, you are not engaging in i critical thought, you are indoctrinating people. And one way to do that is to shame, shun and harass the non-believer.
You are believer.
Where and when does Butler state in any of their works that we are “trapped” by race or gender, etc. It’s on you to challenge her dissertations academically. That’s the whole freaking point of critical theory as a whole. It’s why weirdos like Jordan Peterson can’t win actual intellectual arguments against Žižek in an actual academic setting and have to result to grifting on X and youtube. FOH, you’re clearly mentally challenged and reactionary.
If you can produce official platform comments that the Democratic party was against critical thought like the Republicans are on record saying then I could believe you.
Otherwise I am going to chalk it up to your excessive devil's advocate nonsense.
Democratic party supports identity politics. that's the antithesis of critical thinking.... lol
one of the key reasons Harris' campaign was so terrible and was poorly supported was her active embrace of ID politics above common sense economics. to the point that many minorities didn't support her because they recognized how backwards Democratic were on immigration and other social issues.
and the Dems continue to support his nonsense despite how incredibly unpopular it makes them.
Yeah, that is what I thought.
So you think ID politics is critical thinking?
Or is critical thinking... not judging people by their race and sex, but evaluating them on their individual merits and circumstances, each with their own set of concerns?
No, that you were just playing devil's advocate with nothing to back you up.
You are confusing critical race theory with critical thinking. I had a heck of a time researching this because all that would pop up in a search was critical race theory. It was annoying.
No, the democrats are doing that.
The people of the democratic party are playing devil's advocate or they are confusing critical race theory for critical thinking on web searches?
The democratic platform, nationally, has mistaken pushing/promiting ID politics as policy, (of which CRT is one subset) for critical thinking or improving economic conditions for people regardless of their race, sex, or nationality.
It was a hallmark policy of Biden's administration to create discriminatory policies that did nothing to help working-class voters, and largely benefited well-off minorities and women from the upper 5-10% of the economic spectrum. Because that's who promotes ID politics... a small group of well-off people who are totally disconnected from the average non-college going American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Identity_Trap
This is definitely confusing critical race theory and critical thinking. Although, I will admit you can't get to critical race theory without critical thinking so that is perhaps where our conservations meet in a roundabout way.
ID politics is a common political accusation that conservatives groups like to cry about. Unfortunately for them, they are the worst about ID politics using a number of wedge issues like abortion and of course their rural religious obsession to define their voting platform. Conservatives are the literal definition of ID politics hence why they project onto others. Every accusation is a confession definitely holds true here.
As with most things the concept of identity politics itself came from academics to describe how people can effectively organize. Like the term woke it was stolen by people who are incapable of understanding it and then demonized like conservatives love to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics
No, it's active democratic policy. but you seem to be in denial that this is the case.
it's a political accusation, that is 100% true.
there is anti-intellectualism in universities now. it's rampant. one of the reasons i left my PhD was seeing how bad it was getting back in 2010.
because intellectual thought is dangerous to tribal allegiance, and people prioritize tribal allegiance above all else.
(interested in more!)
Sure, I'll give you another piece of the puzzle: reading (and language deficits in general) start young. Like, very young-- by age 2, you'll see a difference in working class families and upper class families by "6 months of development" or more, depending on the study. (I lost my Zotero citations, but you can search Google Scholar for "differences in vocabulary by socioeconomic status of toddlers" to find a few).
Experts try to offset that by promoting not just preschool, but early childhood education from birth onwards. Of course, widespread implementation stalled in Congress but you can still see some districts with at least free education at age 3, and you do have (or had?) language support for toddlers through disability services. It's very minor compared to the need, though.
That said, there's still a billion other factors. Free breakfast and lunch at school, for instance-- easy enough to pass in a sane state, makes a tremendous difference at all grades. Parent involvement programs that are sensitive to parental schedules (like night shifts) and home language and so on. It only makes a dent, though- a statistically significant dent, but until family life isn't as stressful and difficult for the working class, it's a bandaid over a gushing wound.
Thanks for the thoughtful, informative comments. It's people like you who make Lemmy what it is. Appreciate your contributions!