[LudwigNagasena]

> But most kids do learn to read, write, perform basic maths and handle social situations well

Kids learn to read nowadays at 5 or 6 (so some of them enter school already being able to read), learning to write and perform basic maths is not that hard either. The fact that you use these measures as a baseline shows that the education system is a train wreck.

[msg3]

Kids enter school at 5 or 6 with a range of reading abilities - some can recognise simple words, but very few are fully literate. The UK currently has a literacy rate of 99% -- something is going right.

Learning to write and perform basic maths doesn't seem that hard to us, but for most of human history was the reserve of a select few. Perhaps the fact that it seems so easy is actually because school can be quite effective at times?

[LudwigNagasena]

No fundamental changes to learning are required when you push literacy rates from 10% to 99%, it is simply a matter of including more people into the learning process of a few years that existed for several millenia. If kids had a retention rate of at least 10% after 11 years of schooling and “are you smarter than a 5th grader” couldn’t be a thing, now that would be impressive.