> Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.
By the way, I Googled for the equivalent stat about Canada: "48-49% having skills below a high school level". I'm not here to bad mouth the Canadian education system, but I think you will find fairly similar stats in most highly developed nations.
You can also see it in race voting, where people will say a certain race is voting against their interest just to vote for someone with the same skin color.
It's actually a talking point that actively pushes people away from their cause.
Does this type of voting happen? Sure, but not enough to push elections. IMO it's people who are confused on why others don't think the same way as they do and try to justify why anyway they can, usually through derogatory remarks.
Bad thinkers make bad decisions, and are vulnerable to being manipulated in ways that good thinkers aren't. Try getting a mortgage or a car loan when you can't read complete paragraphs. Try investing your retirement properly. Try doing just about anything that modern adults are required to do. You're definitely going to pay a "stupid tax" throughout your entire adult life if you lack the ability to read critically.
People bemoan the death of journalism, but it's not the journalists fault. Did you know that USA Today was intentionally invented to be an alternative news source for people who couldn't read well? At the time it was bemoaned as the end of western civilization. Now it requires more of it's reader than the places people actually get their news from (Tik-Tok and Bathroom wall graffiti presumably).
FWIW - One side is objectively worse than the other, but it's not by a wide margin (a few basis points if I remember correctly) and it's probably just because one side lives in states that love to take the education budget and blow it on "more important" things.
It is always funny to me that the people making this argument are usually also the people who would view a voting literacy test as abhorrent (not you, necessarily). To me, if we're assuming a large amount of people are too stupid to understand information or know what is good, then it follows that we oughtn't let them decide the direction of the country.
I am genuinely in favor of a brief standardized test in the voting booth, but I think most aren't, especially those who are the most vocal about voter illiteracy/ignorance/stupidity. Follow through with your beliefs, readers. Pick one: are they too stupid to vote, or aren't they? If they are, support a literacy test. If they aren't, stop the ugly rhetoric.
I DO know exactly what sixth grade level is. It means they can read simple paragraphs, but not critically. These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.
You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.
* To clarify - Reading levels in the United States have been declining at an alarming rate for a long time. They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since. You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato. Imagine applying those standards to a modern politician.
It would be interesting comparison, actually. As interesting as French, Germany or whatever.
> It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it. [...] They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since.
I checked out tests and it is not true. Reading scores in 2022 were still higher then those in 1992. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38
So, yeah, this would be an interesting historical comparison. It was worst most of the time.
> These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.
You are confusing two different things here. First off, highly educated people are in fact vulnerable to scammers ... frequently because of their own confidence.
> You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.
But issue in modern world are not people just dont make good decisions. It is people who make immoral decisions. Vance have good reading skills, but he is still a fascist.
> You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato.
This is not an example of mass of people using critical thinking and acting rationally. This is an example of blown up reaction ala Twitter mob latching on something trivial and making a big deal out of it. This is example of what happen when soundbite wins over substance.