【Asmongold翻譯】美國40%的人不會閱讀，我覺得一定比這個還高!大學生說莎士比亞的哈姆雷特太長了無法閱讀!我不喜歡閱讀，但我也知道這很荒謬!

40% of Americans can't read. What?

Everywhere you look, you will see the

headlines, "Kids these days don't know

how to read. Literacy is on the decline.

Kids don't read for pleasure anymore."

And some want to say that we are living

through a literacy crisis. You'll even

see some claim that 40% of American kids

can't read. That's not true, by the way,

and we're going to talk about that later

in this video. Are we living through a

literacy crisis, or is this just a

long-standing failure dressed up as

something new?

Okay.

If you want to understand the American

literacy crisis, you need to know three

numbers. First up, 40%. That's the

percentage of American fourth graders

who cannot read at what's called a basic

level. Every few

9 years old, students around the country

take a test. It's called the National

Assessment of Educational Progress or

the NA.

Uhhuh.

This is also sometimes called the

nation's report card. And it allows us

to track educational progress throughout

the country.

Nice. Reading scores have remained

relatively stable since 1992 until 2019

when they started to decline. Sometimes

that's reported as saying that 40% of

students can't read, but that's not what

those statistics mean. So now 40% of

fourth graders can't read at what's

considered a basic level and only 31%

can read at what's considered a

proficient level. The NAP also defines

those terms. And just because a kid

can't read at a basic level doesn't mean

that they can't read. That sounds like

they can't read, bro. Man, that's making

me think that they can't read. Yeah, I I

I'm getting worried about this. Like, we

used to have a kid uh he like 10 or 11.

He couldn't read. And we'd be driving

around and he'd be asking his little

sister to read the signs for him. And we

called this kid [ __ ] so much that he

learned how to read.

But the literacy crisis doesn't stop at

elementary schools. And that brings us

to our second number, 28%. We bullied

them into

That's the share of US adults that are

at the lowest level of literacy.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold up, hold. Let me

listen to this

number 28%. That's the share of US

adults that are at the lowest level of

literacy. 28% of adults. So, the top

performers are going down and the bottom

performers are going up. That sounds

pretty bad.

In the last decade, that number has

increased by nine points.

Well, wait a minute. Nine points. That's

50% almost because the scale was at 20

to begin with. So 9 points sounds like

it's not a lot, but when you start at 20

and you go up by 9, that is insane.

Can't read, but it does mean that they

are what's called functionally

illiterate. This means that they lack

literacy skills, which would allow them

to navigate the world and go about their

day-to-day tasks. Oh my god. And our

final number is 21. That's Mississippi's

ranking in fourth grade literacy as of

2022. In 2013, Mississippi was ranked

49th. They were basically at the bottom

of the country's rankings and now they

are well above the middle.

Wow. They tried they taught the kids how

to read.

They saw the problem and they actually

tried to solve it. So, at the end of

this video, we're going to talk about

what Mississippi has done right. But

first, we're going to take a slightly

closer look at the NAP data. Literacy

scores have been declining since 2019.

This might not be that surprising

because something

everybody knows this

happened in 2020 which caused a lot of

school closures and we've generally seen

learning loss across the board.

Learning loss is not have you guys ever

seen like you ever been to a local

restaurant or something like that and

you had the restaurant had to write a

write something out like with like

handwriting and like all the words are

spelled wrong.

Also up postco which does complicate

actually teaching kids how to read. One

group of student hasn't seen a decline

in their test scores though. These are

students who are already in the 90th

percentile. So what we're seeing is a

widening gap between those students who

are reading quite well and those

students who are struggling to read at a

basic level.

So they're they're dumb and they're

getting dumber.

This tells us something important. If to

improve American literacy, the biggest

impact we can have is by focusing on

those students who are struggling to

read the most. And that's going to be

important when we talk about Mississippi

in a few minutes. But even those top

performing students like the students

who would go on to study at really great

colleges and universities are also

struggling. At the University of Texas

here in Austin, some professors told

their school newspaper that they would

be shortening reading assignments and

transitioning to assigning things like

YouTube videos and audiobooks instead of

phys.

This is UT. Like I I have friends that

graduate from UT. Does this mean that I

have a degree from University of Texas

because I'm a React streamer? Like, am I

am I am I do I get course credit at UT

right now? I should, right?

Because students simply didn't have the

patience for the reading assignments

anymore. One professor was told by his

students that Shakespeare's Hamlet was

too long to read. Now, Hamlet is the

longrd

for Hamlet. I love this. This is

amazing. Oh my god.

But it is about 30,000 words. It's much

shorter than the vast majority of

That's nothing. I've read twit longers

that are longer than that.

These professors cited things like the

rise of video content, but also phone

usage as leading to a decline in their

students reading abilities, but they've

decided that they have to give in and

change with the times so that they can

meet their students where they are.

They don't need to meet the students

where they are. The students need to

meet the school where it is. This is

embarrassing because this school is

going to be churning out retards.

Like like whenever you are working at

like an engineering factory or an

engineering plant, you're going to get a

sheet of paper and it's going to have

instructions and there isn't going to be

a Tik Tok video that's going to explain

it to you. So, no, this is it's out this

is outrageous

and I'm not a reader. I'm not I don't

like reading, but even I know this is

ridiculous.

10 plays per semester. He's now teaching

six in his classes. So, even college

students at good schools are struggling

to read. And many of them are going to

become adults who hardly read at all.

Many Americans simply don't read books.

And I think about 10% of college

graduates haven't read a book in the

last year.

I don't read books. I don't They're a

waste of time. Like I I just I I don't

read for pleasure. The only thing that I

read for is information. I spend hours

every day reading, but I don't read

books.

Maybe that's because they haven't been

taught how to be a good reader. All

right, let's pause for a second and ask

ourselves what it means to be a good

reader. The psychologist Daniel

Willingham has this book called The

Reading Mind. And in this book, he

points out that reading is actually a

fairly demanding task. First, you have

to be able to understand the words on

the page. And that's usually what we

mean when we say that we're teaching

kids to read. But actually reading

involves three additional levels of

representation. You need to be able to

extract ideas from sentences. You need

to be

That's hard.

Able to then connect the idea across

those sentences.

You're out. That's it. No, I can see I I

can see why we're having problems. Yep.

I get it immediately. Yep. This totally

makes sense.

And then you integrate this within a

model in your mind.

Okay.

Settle down. All right. All right, this

is

out, bro. Like, people misunderstand

tweets. You think they're going to be

able to read a book? No. That answers

the question of what the text is about.

And Willingham notes that many readers

fail at the second level. They're not

able to point out obvious contradictions

in a paragraph that they read. If you're

not reading at a level where you could

even catch obvious contradictions, then

you're going to struggle when you're

reading sets of instructions or

complicated forms. And really that

contributes to what we called functional

illiteracy before.

It's like you can read but you can't

ever read when it matters. You can only

read when it doesn't matter. You can

read the sto the sports stats. You can

read uh you know a romance novel about

how a woman falls in love with a lizard.

And uh you know and the lizard's also a

billionaire by the way. Um but uh you

know but you you can't read instructions

on how to put together a vacuum cleaner.

You can't figure that out. it difficult

for you to navigate your day-to-day

life. Being able to connect ideas is

actually a skill that you have to

develop. And I found that when I was

teaching philosophy at some

universities, that skill was something

that my college students still needed to

develop. I found that the worst question

I could possibly ask when I started, you

know, a discussion of some text in the

classroom was what is this text about?

Because most students could tell you

what some of the sentences said, but

they weren't able to form a picture of

the cohesive hole.

You know what? I don't know if he's

going to put this together. Think about

how many people on Twitter say, "Grock,

summarize this for me." Uhoh. That's a

lot, isn't it? Wow. Yep. Good ex. Yeah,

that's right there in front of you.

That meant that I had to guide them

through interpreting a text. I would

have to ask them questions like, "What

is the thesis of this article or this

book or whatever it was that we were

reading? Where are the arguments and the

evidence for that thesis? And then, is

there any irrelevant or unnecessary

information?"

You're getting increasingly depressed.

You don't have to be depressed. In the

future, these people will be turned into

human batteries and uh some of them will

be turned into food and this problem

will work itself out. You don't have to

worry about this. Everything's going to

be okay. This was a process that I would

guide my students through so that they

could learn how to read better. But

there was another barrier that my

students face, which is that they lacked

a lot of background knowledge, which

helped them make sense of a text. Let's

say you want to read a really big book

like War in Peace. Well, War and Peace

is a historical novel. It is set in a

particular time and place. You don't

need to know all of the historical

details in order to make sense of War

and Peace, but having some idea of

European history and maybe France's

connection to Russia, knowing who people

like Napoleon or Louis the 16th are

things that would be useful for you as

you're reading. It would make reading

War and Peace a less demanding. And I

found that a lot of my students lacked

historical knowledge or just general

world knowledge, which would make

reading books easier.

I think that's actually a really good

point. that he's bringing up is that

like uh people process information

inside of an apparatus of other

information. So like when you read

something and you think like oh okay the

year is 1943. Okay well what happened in

1943? Well there was like I think there

was like some kind of like biging war or

some [ __ ] right and so but if you don't

know that that's going to harm your

ability to process this in a

contextualized way. At some point we

started to emphasize critical thinking

over memorization of facts. You can find

this a lot in popular discussions of

pedagogy. The idea is that you should

teach students how to think rather than

what to think.

I think that we're at a position now

where we're at neither. I think that the

the increasingly more important need to

fit in with the group think and the

amount of people who get ostracized for

not fitting in with group think. Think

about what happened to people with

COVID. Think about people who have

different views on trans ideology. Think

about people who are pro or against

Donald Trump. And so all of these types

of thinking, I think that critical

thinking has been systematically removed

from our society. And it's by design.

And the reason why I think so, and even

if it's not by design, it is a natural

entropy of human thought and collective

thinking. Because what's happened now is

that you have so many people that

constantly think about the same stuff.

And if anybody has like how many of you

guys have seen somebody on Twitter, for

example, how many times does somebody

get called a racist without also being

called sexist, homophobic, transphobic,

and uh like I don't know what's the

abbleist, right? Usually this is like an

array of insults that are just thrown

out at somebody, right? like, yeah, you

you never pull one card, you always get

the full Exodia. And so what happens is

that people are taught not to critically

think because critical thinking will

lead them to conclusions that bring them

against the established dogma of their

worldview. So I think that really

believing science and believing the

outcomes of science is a great example

of this. If you believe science, you

would think that there are two sexes and

that you can't change your sex.

But if you believe science, then you

could also believe that certain types of

man-made climate change would be a uh

negative uh impact on the world. Both of

these opinions will get you ostracized

from each of their respective political

parties. This is the way that people

have been taught systematically not to

critically think because they're afraid

to. Because when you critically think

and you go against the grain and he

knows this, I'm sure there are studies

with this um where like for example,

it's like measuring a line and a guy

goes into a uh he goes into an

experiment like area and he thinks that

he's doing the experiment, but he's

actually the only one being experimented

on and the guy's like, "Okay, which line

is the longest?" And he keeps picking

the longest one, but everybody else in

the room picks the second or the third

longest one. He eventually starts

waiting for the group before he gives

his answer and the the study was done in

order to uh basically explain how strong

the human desire is to fit into group

think. So I think that critical thinking

is like it's not that kids are learning

critical thinking and not facts

nowadays. It's that cr kids are learn

kids aren't learning critical thinking.

And now they don't even have the facts

to to to they don't have anything. Yeah.

They don't have [ __ ] anything. Yeah.

When you critically think, you can go

against yourself. I think that, and this

is this is a big I'm going to have a big

Reddit moment here, but I think that

religion and a lot of people's adherence

to religion and extreme political dogma

is because they're afraid of their concl

of the conclusions of their own critical

thinking. I think human beings in

general, our cognition has evolved

faster than our ability to cope with our

cognition. That's what I think

about the world and learning facts about

the world goes handinhand with learning

how to think critically because it

allows you to build a mental model of

the world and you can see where new

facts might fit in or where they

actually contradict things that you

should already know. Critical thinking

and memorization might actually go

handin hand. Now some experts do not

want to call this a crisis. One

researcher from Harvard University

described American reading education as

a very stable level of mediocre

for a minute there.

We've never done a great job and things

have been getting a little bit worse,

but this isn't new and it's certainly

not unprecedented.

Fearongering about this.

Yes.

Let me tell you about the National

Literacy Institute. If you've seen those

headlines I mentioned about American

literacy, there's a chance that you've

seen statistics from this website. For

instance, you might have heard that 21%

of American adults are illiterate.

It's more than that. Anybody who has

seen people read knows it's way more

than that.

Actually, look at the website, and I'll

put a link down below as well. There's

no explanation for that number about 21%

of American adults being illiterate. No

definition is also given of what they

mean by illiterate. And the numbers you

find on this website are painting a much

worse picture than numbers that you find

elsewhere. I actually emailed the

National Literacy Institute to ask them

where they got these numbers and if they

could explain some of them,

but I did not hear back.

Oh, what a surprise.

Like, like the reason, by the way, my

source is that I made it the up. That's

what that's where I'm coming from. I

just made it the [ __ ] up. I think it's

like 40%. I think 40% of people are

[ __ ] [ __ ] and they can't read. I

think it could be 50.

And if that changes between the time of

recording and the time of posting, I

will issue a correction. Be happy to do

it.

Buts fact checkers reached out to the

NLI in 2024 and they also never heard

back. Those fact checkers concluded that

the NLI was using an overly expansive

definition of illiterate. They were also

misdescribing the data that they were

citing and they were misleadingly

describing their data as new when in

fact this data does not come out on an

annual basis. National Literacy

Institute is just another name for the

National Literacy Professional.

Oh well, here we go. Of course they're

No, they're creating a problem and then

selling the solution. Yeah, of course.

Right. And so I think they're probably

bad actors. They're identifying, they're

saying, "Oh, wow. There's this huge

problem. Here's four links that you can

give us money or somehow interact with

us in a way that's financially

beneficial for us that you can solve

that problem." Wow. How Yeah. Okay.

Okay. He's He's right about this, but

again, I think it's higher than 21%. And

I'm not even selling a course. That's a

private company that sells professional

development courses for teachers.

There's nothing wrong with that. I mean,

teachers often need more professional

development as they further their

careers, but the fact that they call

themselves the National Literacy

Institute.

He's right. He's right that they're full

of [ __ ] I think this is beside the

point of like the real issue here, but

him looking at this at this organization

like this is one way that I always look

at things. If somebody beneficial, if if

somebody benefits from a certain

narrative,

I take their pushing of that narrative

with more grains of salt.

Makes it seem like they're a research

center and it gives a lot of authority

to the things that they put on their

website. And I've noticed that people

will cite this website uncritically.

I've even seen other YouTubers site this

when they talk about American literacy.

I would never cite it. I would never

because it's way higher. They're wrong.

I don't think those YouTubers were

trying to mislead you. I think that they

had the best intentions,

but I think they got fooled. But

seriously, look at the website again.

There's no sources. There's no research

methods. There's nothing like that. It's

just bullet points up

and numbers.

Yeah.

Where did the numbers come from? Well,

the website doesn't tell you. I think

anyone honestly looking at this data

would say that there is a real problem

with literacy in America.

Absolutely.

But we have to be able to say that

there's a problem without engaging in

fear-mongering or simply lying about it.

Yes,

fearongering might even give you the

impression that this is a problem that

can't be solved, and that's not true.

I think you can teach a lot of kids how

to read. I don't think you can teach

everybody how to read. I think you can

you can get to about 90 95% though. 99

95 99 somewhere around there. Like I

think you can teach them how to how to

use their reading. Like I mentioned

before, some states have started

evolutions like Mississippi. Between

2013 and 2022, Mississippi students

dramatically improved their reading

scores. This was a period where most

states saw a decline. This was such a

dramatic improvement that some

commentators started calling this the

Mississippi miracle. But it's not a

miracle. It's just good policy. Because

one researcher from the University of

Toronto found that this improvement was

linked to the Literacy Based Promotion

Act or the LBPA. The Mississippi

legislator passed the LBPA in 2013. And

that bill did a couple of things. It

expanded access to fullday prek

programs. It focused education on

phonics and the science of reading. So,

it actually changed how we were teaching

students how to read. It invested in

professional development for teachers

because

this is what I said before. See, I was

talking about how teachers are stupid.

This is exactly what I was saying. You

get what you pay for. You pay teachers

$40,000 a year, that's what you get.

They would need more training. It

identified struggling readers and then

targeted them for specific

interventions. So, if a student was

falling behind, they got additional help

when it came to reading. And finally,

some struggling third graders were held

back for a year. so that they would have

more time to build.

Sometimes you got to do it. I mean,

like, I understand that it's really

embarrassing to be held back because you

can't pass third grade, but I can

guarantee you that it's even more

embarrassing to not be able to read the

instructions for your Roomba. I could

promise you that.

The simple description, though, is that

the LBPA took literacy seriously. It

gave teachers the training they needed.

It focused on struggling readers, and it

gave kids time to learn how to read

properly. very strong impact on those

students at the bottom. It helped bring

a lot of students from that below basic

category to basic and also students from

basic to proficient. There it is. It had

almost no impact on students who were

already proficient, maybe moving them to

the advanced category. But that's to be

expected given the kind of interventions

that were in the bill. What Mississippi

demonstrated is that the decline in

American literacy isn't inevitable. We

can solve this problem and it actually

only cost Mississippi $15 million.

That's nothing. So, you're telling me it

would only cost maybe like a a billion

dollars across the whole country to just

have kids understand graphs? I mean,

that's it. Yes. So, they don't want

that. Yeah. I don't think they want

that.

This doesn't solve every problem. There

are still adults in the United States

who are functionally illiterate. There

are plenty of adults who can read but

simply choose not to. And we still need

to figure out what to do about college

students who can't keep up with assigned

reading anymore. But,

kick them out of college. If you're not

good enough, you get kicked out. The

fact is that we do not need that many

people with these degrees. There are

certain in- demand degrees that yeah,

maybe you have to you have to maybe make

up a little bit for it, but there's a

lot of people that go to college to get

a [ __ ] degree so they can go to a

job that's a [ __ ] job at a [ __ ]

company that makes a [ __ ] product

that doesn't do anything. They would be

better off if they were an electrician

or they were doing something else that

had a tangible beneficial effect on the

world. We don't need more gender studies

uh majors. We don't need more uh [ __ ]

I I don't We don't need more business

majors. I I used to be in business

school. You know what business school

is? A waste of time. A colossaling waste

of time. Let me tell you, any of you

guys that went to business school, they

made all of that [ __ ] up. They they

created vocabulary. They invented all

these terms. So wrong, bro. No. No. I'm

not talking about finance. I'm not

talking about accounting. I'm not

talking about anything else. I'm talking

about management. This is, bro, we could

have had a a a [ __ ] class in

astrology and I think it would have

given people better insight on how to

advertise a product than marketing. It's

a joke on management. Like, get the out

of here. It was such a waste of [ __ ]

time.

Mississippi's success shows that the

literacy crisis can be mitigated. We can

help more people learn to read if we're

smart about it. Before we go, let me ask

you one question. Are you looking for a

way to learn more and to stop mindlessly

scrolling? Or do you want to have a

healthier relationship with your phone

and to use your screen time wisely? If

that's the case, then

I got to say, I really respect this

guy's wet method of making videos.

There's no bullshits, no random stuff.

It's just him talking. It's just a guy

talking. That's it. I like that. and uh

teachers uh don't fail students anymore

because the teachers are afraid of the

parents. No, I don't think that's the

reason. I think that it's more

systematic. Schools don't fail students

because schools are afraid of being

defunded and if enough students fail,

the school will get evaluated, the

leadership might get uh changed and they

might get defunded. So, it's actually a

systematic problem that is passed down

to the teachers. But I think if the

teachers had the final and only say, you

would have a different thing going on.

That's my understanding of it. I'm sure

that there are instances of what you're

talking about too also being the case.

It's a huge problem. I mean, I I do

think that like his the criticism that

he has for like this agency or like this

institute is just full of Yeah, the

institute is full of [ __ ] They are. And

again, why why are they saying this? the

National Literacy Institute that just

coincidentally has a bunch of different

programs and initiatives that you can

pay them for to increase literacy. Wow,

how [ __ ] convenient for them. So,

yeah, obviously you shouldn't listen to

them. They're in on it. They're making

money off of it. [ __ ] duh. And uh I

think we're going to see a lot more of

this, too. And I think the problem with

literacy, here's another really big

reason why literacy is falling off.

reading requires direct immediate

uninterrupted

um conver like uh interaction. So like

for example, if you're a uh a teacher,

right, or something like that or sorry,

not teacher, uh if you're like on your

computer and you're reading something,

that has to be on your main monitor. You

can't listen to it while you're doing

something else. Reading is something

that you can't multitask in generally,

right? you you have to actually read the

words on the page and be thinking about

what the words mean because if you don't

do that, you're probably not going to

listen to it. So, the issue is that now

people are so used to overstimulation

with like two or three different input

systems at all times. Like, how many of

you guys are playing video games on a

Discord call listening to music? Well,

you can't do that while you're reading.

So because there's there's there's like

a stimulation [ __ ] uh like in

stimulation inflation. Nobody'sing

reading because reading just doesn't

reading doesn't get the dopamine going

in the same way that scrolling Tik Tok

does super fast or anything like that. I

think that there is a degree where

people are looking for dopamine so much

that they push themselves into sensory

overload. And you can see this with

little kids that do it all the time.

They'll have like a phone, a tablet, and

they'll be looking at TV all at the same

time. And you ask your kid like, or not

your kid, you ask the kid, "What are you

doing?" And I don't know, doesn't even

know what he's doing. He's just doing

it. That's it.

[Music]