"Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of “serious adult novel.” Furthermore, I’ve read them all and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or Harry Potter either.

I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read,2 and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success.

Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided."

https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/the-average-college-student-today

#USA #Universities #HigherEd #Literacy #Illiteracy

Friend's meme coping strategy isn't pulling any punches today. 😳

#politics #USPoli #CdnPoli #tariffs #literacy

Steeds meer jonge Europese mannen hebben vrouwonvriendelijke ideeën: "Mediageletterdheid belangrijk om dit tegen te gaan". #Gender #Equality #GenderEquality #Literacy #Media #MediaLiteracy #SocialMedia

https://vrtnws.be/p.PqR014eyR

An Uneasy Propaganda Alliance — https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/uneasy-propaganda-alliance
#HackerNews #UneasyPropaganda #Alliance #History #Today #Media #Literacy #PoliticalHistory

I wrote a Google doc and invited editing on social media literacies for high school.

It needs updating, but it's still there, more than a decade later.

#attention #media #literacy #education #socialmedia

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UH8VDvVBJWj14PdWG_ENoTLa0sKhghLlHwFeRsCgdJQ/mobilebasic?pli=1

I taught Social Media Literacies at Stanford 2012-2015. Does anyone know of courses about attention and/or other contemporary media literacies?

#attention #media #literacy #education #socialmedia

https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/06/rheingold/

I wrote about attention and other social media literacies 15 years ago. Clearly, edu institutions have failed toeven try to teach attention control, crap detection, etc. The online commons might be a very different place if a larger population had learned to use it without damaging/deceiving themselves and others.

#attention #media #literacy #education #socialmedia

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2010/10/attention-and-other-21stcentury-social-media-literacies

Finland in the world press https://www.byteseu.com/641136/ #articles #Energy #financial #Finland #geothermal #HelsinkiArena #international #Literacy #News #press #World

I started noticing this over 20 years ago, but found myself personally attacked whenever I tried to discuss it. I've had many people weirdly racialize this with whites suggesting it's atypical of a Black person to be engaged in reading non-fiction science and engineering and attacked by other Black people for reading science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and history that isn't explicitly Afrocentric.

54% of Americans read a book this year | YouGov
#Culture #Literacy #Reading #Books
https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/48239-54-percent-of-americans-read-a-book-this-year

"Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022

54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level

45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level

44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year

The Top 3 states for highest child literacy rates were Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Hampshire, in that order (highest to lowest).

The Bottom 3 states for child literacy rates were Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico, (highest to lowest)."

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2022-2023

#USA #Literacy #Illiteracy

If the medium is the message, and constant outrage fuels the media in order to sell advertising, then how can we make the situation better? The medium is not just the message, it is our environment and we collectively need new media literacy. But this is not the kind of literacy most educators and politicians are talking about.

https://jarche.com/2019/03/constant-outrage/

#democracy #media #literacy