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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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what's the concrete advantage of the average person reading at a high level is, past some sort of weird elitism?
they clearly haven't needed the skill in their lives, or their reading level wouldn't have "atrophied" over time, so what's the point?
i also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised
High reading level shouldn't be elitist, we should strive to have a well educated population
It's really weird to call a 7th grade reading level or better elitism in the first place, and calling it "weird elitism" is even worse.
should be pretty easy to provide a tangible benefit, then
Sure: being able to tell the author of the text is lying to you.
This point should be front and center when countering the STEM circlejerk of "humanities are useless".
The humanities are objectively useful. Grade school reading level as a metric is not.
What would you suggest instead?
No idea, but me not offering up an alternative doesn't make it a less useless metric for supporting the conclusions everybody seems to be drawing
You started this thread by saying
and now you're trying to point out that grade level isn't a good metric. So is it that reading level doesn't matter at all, or that the metrics we use are flawed? Reductio ad absurdum, is it ok for an entire populace, or at least the vast majority of it, to be illiterate?
a useful skill, and one that's not tested in grade school reading level
The fact that the irony of your answer is lost on you is fucking tragic.
Sorry to say but society works by hierarchies, some people deserve more than others.
No they don't.
And why is that?
Because most people are little more than animals, by choice and aren't worth the effort of trying to help.
I'm all for providing for their basic needs, often against their own voting habits and thus their own desires, but expecting some poor redneck to suddenly be valuable as a person is just insane.
this is also elitism
That’s… why I agree with it.
You don't want a well-educated population for the sake of having a well-educated population. You want it so that you can have a productive population. And clearly, a high reading level isn't required to be a productive member of society since otherwise reading level wouldn't drop over time like this figure is implying.