Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.
This can’t be true.
I’m not American but does 6th grade mean about 11?
That’s correct (11 years old) - I do believe this, though (or at least that it’s mostly accurate). I don’t think we get a really clear picture of this group online - they’re probably not going to be posting a lot on the major text-focused social media networks (including facebook, for example).
To me it seems like it’s not so much about city vs. rural but about rich vs. poor. One thing that’s really fucked up to me is how school funding in the US is generally heavily based on the property taxes from the immediate area - so areas that are already rich get the best schools, and poorer areas have worse. I don’t believe the situation will change anytime soon, unfortunately.
This. We used a friend’s address in a different city and area (very upper class) with top rated schools, to send our children. As the Schools in our area were quite bad. We lived in a middle class neighborhood too. The difference was night and day…
I think these numbers are inflated, but the problem is still pretty bad.
Part of the problem is we have some politicians here that thrive on uneducated voters. Uneducated voters also tend to be more racist, and racists are a really reliable voting block if you speak their language. Also, they tend to believe “news” that corresponds with what they already believe, so social media and telemarketing works really well on them. Abortion and contraception bans increase the number of children born into poverty, who won’t get a decent education and will rely on what they learn from their parents or TV.
So education funding rarely gets increased.
Kids in America usually enter a grade at age (grade + 5). Depends on when their birthday lands in some areas. For example, my kid was born in early September and the cutoff is Sept 1. His Kindergarten (grade 0) didn’t actually start until his birthday, so he entered at age 6.