[simonw]

> Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8

A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text.

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp for 2023:

> Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased from 19 to 28 percent and in numeracy from 29 to 34 percent.

The literacy proficiency levels section on https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp describes what Level 1 means:

> Adults at level 1 are able to locate information on a text page, find a relevant link from a website, and identify relevant text among multiple options when the relevant information is explicitly cued. They can understand the meaning of short texts, as well as the organization of lists or multiple sections within a single page.

28% of US adults are just at or below that level.

[froh]

in the intermediate oecd [piaacs report] pages 64ff (PDF page 66ff) there are bar charts indicating the percentiles of each level for each participating nation.

the report also visualizes not only inter country but also intra country outcomes correlating socio economic influences (age, parents, family migration history, ...) and level of education (school, high school, college and higher) with test outcome (literacy, numerics problem solving)

it also has 10y ago/now comparison.

a trove for the Q "how are we doing, capability wise?"

thanks for pointing to the study!!

[piaacs report] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

[joe_mamba]

>A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text.

Yes and AI isn't to blame for that as adults predate AI. It's the governments, schools, teachers, parents, teacher's unios, who taught them(or more accurately didn't teach them) and graduated them out of school anyway regardless just so they don't look bad in statistics. Sorry but if you graduate people out of high school who can't read you should be trialed for fraud. Simple as.

People blaming AI for adults unable to read puts us back to the 90s when Doom was to blame for school shootings or back to 60s when rock music was to blame for juvenile delinquency, all of them being wrong, and they're wrong here too. People always want to blame a third party external scapegoat that isn't' the parents and isn't the government, for the problems of their kids.

[JumpCrisscross]

Nobody is blaming AI. The point is we don’t have the luxury of throwing nonsense at our kids when they’re illiterate. Particularly not nonsense where all the evidence shows it harms on average more than it helps.

[embedding-shape]

Just wanna start off by saying that with young unformed minds, it does probably harm more on average than it helps. But particularly for spelling and reading, it might maybe actually help?

To be efficient with AI and LLMs you need to be good at least two things, reading and writing. One easy way of getting better is by reading a lot, and writing a lot. Maybe if we coax the kids into understanding (believing?) that better reading and writing helps them use AI better, they'd pay more attention to it?

[wccrawford]

No, you can talk to them, and have them talk back. And it's really easy. You don't need to be good at reading or writing to use it.

[simonw]

AI hasn't had a chance to demonstrate if it helps or hurts education yet.

That's the big problem with education in general. If you introduce a new factor to children's education you can't realistically measure the effect it has had for about five years, because you need to wait for a cohort of kids to go through that system and then see how they did.

This means that if you introduce something with clear negative effects it will be five years before you spot them!

That's pretty catastrophic given that ChatGPT only emerged in late 2022 and only got good around early 2024.

[simonw]

Right, AI isn't to blame for that, but cell phones might be? The bad number increased from 19 to 28 percent between 2017 and 2023.

[rootusrootus]

Someone always finds a way to shit on the US. Every single time.

[kubb]

When quoting a factual statistic is "shitting on the US", you're losing the ability to address issues.

[Planktonne]

The US is a context that is generally relevant to HN, and for which we have lots of data.

Literacy is a worldwide problem.

[simonw]

In this case it's the US that's shitting on the US. These numbers don't compare the US with other countries, they compare the US in 2023 with the US in 2017. And the numbers are from the US government National Center for Education Statistics.

[vinyl7]

Yeah well unfortunately the US is pretty shitty in this day and age

[greggoB]

Price of ruling the world I guess

[llbbdd]

It's lonely at the top

[throw4847285]

No one likes us, I don't know why We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try...

(Just mixing my Randy Newman metaphors for fun. I could have also thrown in a few words in defense of our country)

[platevoltage]

imagine still thinking we are at the top. The empire is crumbling.

[darlachaps]

You poor, pathetic, piece of shit.

Maybe it’s because the US is a statistically a shithole? Just maybe we should do something to fix that?

But no, let’s dismantle science, health, education, etc instead.

Fucking magot idiots.