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: Yeah but…this system allows some “unworthy” people to not die, so it’s clearly an authoritarian failure.
Clearly this means the evil see see pee is stealing our literacy.
It’s worse, they’re forcing people to be literate. This is cultural genocide on an industrial scale with see see pee wiping out the culture of illiteracy!
I hate to rain on y’all’s parade, but the US measure of literacy is much more stringent than China’s. America is counting literacy as the ability to use print materials like brochures and manuals fluently, the rest of the world just bases literacy on the ability to read a handful of test sentences in a controlled testing context. That’s the reason that America appears to have gone down as well, they switched literacy measures. The 79% measure is people who are “at or below level 1 literacy”, meaning it counts people who met level 1, people who didn’t meet level 1, and people who couldn’t even take the test at all because of a language barrier or disability. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf
I’m all for dunking on America but the apples to apples here would be comparing America’s 96% (just excluding those below level 1) to China’s 97%. Historical materialism requires a true material basis to work.
yeah, fair points
There is no way US literacy in the 1950s was anywhere near 90% unless you excluded marginalized and minority populations.
Excellent point, and that’s likely exactly how they counted it.
Think about it. In the 1950’s, a lot of people couldn’t afford a radio. Reading was the only way to entertain yourself at home. There were plenty of dime novels and pulps. Schools might not have had things like microscopes, but even the worst places could buy books the other schools were getting rid of.
By the 50’s it was extremely customary for most homes to have a TV and at the VERY LEAST a radio if they weren’t very well off. Radios were dirt cheap.
You’re making the 50’s sound like the 1920’s.
Radios were dirt cheap.
By my understanding, the materials were (and are) so inexpensive that building radios was actually a fairly popular hobby back then. An AM radio with decent reception is pretty simple to make.
You can build your own AM radio in less then an hour with a large metallic object (car, bike, large piece of scrap metal, basketball pole), some aluminum foil, a small piece of copper, a battery, and any sort of speaker.
It’s a pretty common childhood science experiment where I am to build functional jerryrigged radio.
But you are right, building functional AM radios was and is pretty common for how cheap the components are. Plus I’m pretty sure I can still go to a store and buy a small working radio for less then 20 bucks.
Ok i thought for sure this is bullshit, but apparently not:
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills
I didn’t believe it until I started working. Now if you asked me what the literacy rate is I’d say sub-50%. I’ve met so many people who literally cannot read. As in, they’ve clearly been taught what the letters are and how to sound them out, but following a list of instructions based on those letters is completely impossible for them.
Your assessment is probably closer to the truth. 54% of American adults have a literacy below sixth grade level link and some of the people you’ve met probably are considered barely literate yet counts towards the 79%.
A curious statistic I’ve found while reading up on this is that 77% of African Americans have moderate or high reading proficiency while only 65% of white Americans qualify as such. A statistic that you’ll never see racists mention (and libs for those that somehow fit outside the venn diagram)
I haven’t done any research on this, but my gut says it’s because black people are more likely to live in urban areas with at least the basics of public education. Whereas white people comprise more rural areas. Not saying living in a rural area makes you illiterate, like I grew up in a small town in the woods, but it does mean there’s just less of everything, including education. More homeschooling too among white people.
Could also be that white people take education less seriously because they don’t feel threatened by a hostile job market. Did your readings say why there’s a disparity between demographics?
It was just a cute factoid that I noted, so I didn’t look further into the claims.
Your theory could be correct. Another reason I suspect is that due to racial biases and different job market situation arising from the urban/rural divide, black Americans are forced to be more literate in order to survive compared to the average white American.
By linear extrapolation, one may conclude that China will reach its goal in 2025, while the US will only reach its goal in 2539
What goal is America striving for, 0% literacy? Lmao
Fewer then 97% of China are fluent in English.
I rate this 5 Pinocchios.
😄
Do Cuba too!
Fun fact: the world bank prevented Cuba’s literacy program from being widely adopted because they feared it would be a gateway for people to start reading socialist literature and start revolutions
The US attempted their own program, but it was plagued with inefficiency because it was run by a bunch of NGOs with little collaboration with each other or the people they were supposed to teach (compared to Cuba which made students and workers of all financial and literacy backgrounds teach each other).
Later on the capitalist program was examined and the people in charge of it admitted that had they just gone with Cuba’s model, most of the inefficiencies wouldn’t have existed and their goals would’ve been met much faster.
The program still exists today and it’s being used by indigenous or generally poor communities in South America, Africa, and some parts of the west (Canada and Italy, I believe). No one talks about this even though tens of millions of people are taught by Cuba’s program which they seem to charge at very reasonable prices.
They obviously need the diplomatic support, but it’s insane to think they’re some cynical evil gommies when they really do care about people just because that’s what good people do. Not to mention, they have most of the world’s support including from the west even though they haven’t provided anything to them. They get support for simply existing and struggling against the fascistic giant north of them while also giving so much to the people who need it with little in return. It’s why my eye twitches when I see Ukraine abstaining or voting against ending sanctions against them despite their aid for the Chernobyl victims.
Also, Chinese script, even simplified Chinese, is significantly harder to master than English. I for example can speak Mandarin fluently (as a Chinese person in Canada) but can barely read or write it, and no you don’t just “pick it up” if you can speak it because there is zero correlation between the spoken language and written script, it’s all memorization of every single character. I would have to actually take classes or something to learn to read and write Chinese, which I am definitely considering doing.
Actually, English is technically my second language since I was born in China (long story, left as a young child so wasn’t my choice), and after having learned English and become fluent in both reading and writing it, I keep asking myself “how the hell can you be fluent in speaking English and not be fluent in writing it? If you know how to say a word you know 90% of how to write it unlike Chinese.”
So, sorry anglophones, even if China had the same literacy rate as the US, it would still be more impressive (not of the intellect of Chinese people or any racial bullshit like that, but the effectiveness of their education system and socialist ideology, which English speakers are fully capable of implementing as well with no excuse not to.)
Chinese literacy isn’t only characters. First, all children learn to read Pinyin. THEN they get taught classical characters.
Chinese also has probably the most number of idioms and double meanings out of any language, most of which date back hundreds to thousands of years and are formatted for the time, basically the equivalent of if little snippets of Shakespearean were still in common use mixed in with modern English.
Remember that Western claim that Xi Jinping had banned idioms as a way to control Chinese people, a la Newspeak? Anyone who knows Chinese should know just how ridiculous that claim is, you’d have to ban Chinese language in its entirety to do that.
Literally no native speaker of chinese considers Pinyin a real writing system. The latin alphabet barely works for Latin and its modern descendents, let alone a tonal analytical language in another language family. You’re just another illiterate expat who’s bitter at your inability to learn Chinese. Fuck off back to reddit.
Even I the anglophone am jealous of Cyrillic-script languages. Phonetic languages, where you say what you see, sound so convenient. Even worlds like anglophone have dumb gimmicks like ‘ph’ = ‘f’. The grass is always greener on the other side.
But even then, illiteracy often also means they can’t read basic English, so it’s not even them misspelling weird words like… ‘misspelling’ and ‘weird.’, a large proportion of the USA would seriously struggle to understand our conversation [see replies to this]. And when our alphabet is 26 symbols (52 including capitals) with 10 digits and a handful of necessary punctuation symbols, Chinese script is off by magnitudes.
And having seen some documentaries interviewing people in my country overcoming adult illiteracy, you realize this includes clearly intelligent people who within weeks could begin reciting their own small written speeches, who were often just neglected by the education system and then too embarrassed to seek help or reveal their inability.
I’ve been learning Mandarin for the past year and a half or so, it’s definitely challenging. Learning to write in particular is incredibly challenging since learning to recognize the characters is an easier task than remembering all the strokes you have to make. My plan is to just use pinyin as input and just skip learning to write. English doesn’t even begin to compare in terms of complexity.
Does anyone think of the poor old GOP? The GOP needs stupid, illiterate people! Who else is going to vote for them if people got smarter and better educated?
The Dems sure weren’t thinking of the poor old GOP in the 42 years they simultaneously held both reps and senate in that era (58% of 72 years). The system needs stupid, illiterate people to tolerate it.
Can someone fill me on the terms “homeless” vs. “unhoused”? Why is the latter being used more now?
iirc the term “homeless” imply being a complete social outcast, while those people are in fact part of society often with jobs, families, friends etc. The only thing they lack is the physical house, therefore unhoused.
But as other posters noticed, the shift is also a liberal platitutide instead of action.
The shift wasn’t initiated by liberals though, they are quick to adapt to new phrasing though if it means not having to take action that cost money as austerity rules supreme.
Yeah idk where it originated exactly, but the term itself suggest it was coined by someone actually having some empathy and brains, while liberals are famously lacking on both departments. Ultimately Engels is as always correct about the libs “These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves.”
Is the 79% literacy of who can read English or read period? 79% seems insanely low
It’s probably a measure of functional literacy, like the ability to read through a page of information and understand it fluently. Someone who is able to sound words out one by one wouldn’t be considered functionally literate, for instance. They’d lack the ability to reasonably get through a text using reading as a tool. Instead reading would be an obstacle.
They might know a few words they need to know, like writing their own name, or reading some road signs, but they’d be unable to get through a novel or textbook. They might even know how to recite the alphabet or do math.
I used to teach adult literacy in the US and I’ve met hundreds of illiterate adults. Most of our studies showed 87% literacy but I could believe 79% too depending on the methodology and definition of literate.
It’s probably a measure of functional literacy
it’s too high for a functional literacy. Even in well educated country like Poland with 99% formal literacy the functional literacy reach around 60%, so in USA it bound to be even less.
well the stats come from the chinese government, are you just going to trust their stats? they’re probably lying about the numbers, don’t be so gullible!1!!11
west good east bad. you can see that i’m very intelligent.
This is the final refuge of the person that uses Chinese stat’s to prove Uigher genocide through some sort of numerology
It’s the ultimate response. “Everyone who disagrees with me is lying” is a perfect way to always be right about everything, after all, if someone else disagrees, that’s just because they’re pretending to.
final refuge
Very often the first and only one.
Those Chinese students are probably only studying so hard because soldiers are pointing machine guns at them at all times.
I’m not sure if I get that correctly but are you making fun of people protesting against homelessness? Besides: I’m not a native speak but the sign seems totally fine to me and the message totally valid.
Answer is no, you dont get this at all
Thanks for this insight which adds nothing to the conversation since OP already answered me and I agreed with them
That particular user is on some grumpy bullshit today, sorry about that
I think the pictures were chosen to contrast the conditions the kids are in. Kids in China are in classrooms getting education while children in US are protesting homelessness.
Ok, that makes sense. Thanks!
Is the ministry of education in China a reliable source?
Is the US Census Bureau a reliable source?
true that 90% in 1950 was probably padded
Why wouldn’t be a reliable source on education in China?
Pls only cite sources vetted by the cia
Even the CIA world fact book says 97% lmao
Really?
Really
I’m going to go with yes. 97% isn’t an unreasonable literacy rate for a country, being similar to those of Greece, the Philippines, Turkey, and Chile. It would also make sense given the emphasis that has been put on education
Forgive me for being sceptical. I’ve worked with a lot of Chinese researchers who have said outright that I should never cite a paper from China unless it’s published in nature or I know the authors personally (because it’s so often falsified).
Fwiw the same stats (or similar ones) are corroborated by other sources
