Endemic Illiteracy

Here is a little snapshot of the bizarre times in which we find ourselves: 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate. That means 43 million people. In the UK, 16% of adults are functionally illiterate. In Germany it's 14%.
This video explains what that means and why that might be, with me: some guy.
Resources:
www.proliteracy.org/Resources...
www.nld.org/
www.barbarabush.org/
worldliteracyfoundation.org/
Further Reading:
www.libraryjournal.com/?detai...
www.literacycooperative.org/l...
files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED...
www.lb7.uscourts.gov/documents...
www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/nca...
www.education.vic.gov.au/docu...
www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why...
news.stanford.edu/news/2013/s...
online.regiscollege.edu/blog/...

[@KN-ck2kd]

"Education is a long game; politics is not." An excellent summary. Thank you for making this video!

[@Ducken2g]

It is! I think I learned it from reading about education when I was in school.

[@westzed23]

Love this statement. I am going to quote it eveytime I can.

[@smokedbeefandcheese4144]

I feel like it’s more accurate to just say rich people are playing games with our society to make us stupid. I feel like the way you are putting it denies responsibility to the parties that need to be held accountable.

[@fateunreal]

Dennis: Charlie can't read! Frank: he'll adapt. Dennis: he'll adapt to reading?

[@emmettbattle5728]

love this comment

[@thebigdawgj]

You're clearly quoting something I don't recognize, but...yes? How do you think people learn in the first place?

[@Sasha11601]

@@thebigdawgj ah yes that's why we have no illiterate adults

[@thebigdawgj]

@@Sasha11601 They just aren't trying hard enough. Anyone can learn how to read.

[@cuntagi0us]

@@thebigdawgj always sunny in philadelphia, s8e7 - frank's back in business

[@CarrotConsumer]

I was surrounded by books as a kid and am perfectly literate today. Unfortunately my legs never fully healed from my dad beating me with volume 7 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

[@Dad_Lyon]

Nice

[@Vin-sv9fm]

Didn't see that coming

[@josephde-haan1074]

What's an 'encyclopaedia britannica'?

[@DingbatToast]

Indeed, "Educational Psychology" can leave lasting scars

[@rwentfordable]

'am perfectly literate', is that part of the joke?

[@Andrea-rw9tf]

I didn’t read well until I found something I liked to read, Stephen King, after that I was off to the races. I started my son on books that he liked from an early age. I got him comic books, Star Wars, and usually bought him books that were ahead of his age range, but only slightly. He absolutely loves reading now…so find something you enjoy reading.

[@nerychristian]

Great comment. It's important to introduce children to reading at a young age. Reading helps to develop thinking and reasoning skills.

[@livelarge2452]

Stephen King sucks.

[@reallylionbastard]

Reading stuff you find interesting is vital otherwise reading is a chore and you never get into it! Sounds like a lucky kid

[@dirus3142]

Learning to read was a very difficult and mentally painful process for me. Frustrating, angry, seeing myself as just stupid. Then some thing broke and I found myself being able to read. My writing lags behind. I do not remember when every thing just clicked into place. I think it was before middle school. I still have similar trouble with things requiring similar conditioning, and understanding. I have a disconnect between the book learning comprehension, and the physical application.

[@jackfenwick6182]

Exactly how my Mum did it with me, I apparently have dyslexia but because she allowed to read what I wanted despite it being “above my level”.. but I read books like lord of the rings by 7 with no issues and reading is still one of my biggest passions

[@ConcensusAgreer]

As a person with a reading disability I am extremely happy that you made this video. The fact that people are bringing attention to reading, as it is a fundamental building block of education, is a great thing. I am privileged to say that I live in a country where the additional help and schooling that I needed, was free and seen as a necessity. My father, uncles, and grandfather can not read. When I graduated I saw my father tearing up and my mum said he was crying earlier. As someone who reads at a 7th grade level I can say with out over exaggeration that reading is fundamentally need for all and should be focused on. Thank you so much for bringing attention to the issue of reading not only in America but all around the world.

[@ConcensusAgreer]

Also that last part of trouble reading and writing, and that you have put help links, kinda made me tear up no joke :)

[@oldpondfrog788]

Very relevant to today in UK where 12 year olds are to make there own decision about the new experimental medical treatment being pushed worldwide. Of course they will have difficulty understanding; and have almost no information about their own genetic or hereditary risk factors.

[@misterjib]

@@oldpondfrog788 Education aka social engineering will ensure their decision is the 'right' one

[@justdoit.86yearsago]

Your writing and spelling are very good.

[@VargVikernes1488]

@@justdoit.86yearsago No, they are not. You don't have to be patronizing to show appreciation, you know?

[@ssvis2]

Another thing to consider is that having a functionally illiterate base means politicians can use double speak, circular logic, and straight up lies. Their core won't have developed the critical thinking or analytical skills to discern fact from fiction. Keeping the population ignorant allows the use of polarizing tactics to distract from what's really happening.

[@josephstclair5937]

Exactly.

[@DMWayne-ke7fl]

Man that is awfully racist considering the large majority of functionally illiterate population is non-white.

[@TheHammerofDissidence]

Close. The U.S. school system is based off the Prussian model invented by Bismark. The goal isn't education. The goal is to create obedient citizens who are just capable enough to function in society, but not smart enough to intelligently question authority.

[@letsburn00]

True, but I have found (especially this past 2 yrs) that even with high education levels, often that education is almost entirely focussed on a profession. A lawyer, doctor or Engineer has 97% of their education focussed on that professions specific knowledge. They often are completely lacking in analysis outside of that area. This past yr has proven to me that even the highly educated are often very stupid. That said, some places have utterly bizarre educational funding patterns like local governments being the primary funders of education. Which is the reason many view the US are having such a bad system.

[@ssvis2]

@@DMWayne-ke7fl Panzram's Fist above stated a very similar thing to what I was saying. It's about control. It's a multi-faceted topic that cannot be adequately discussed in a few short comments. The US education system was gutted in the 70's post-Vietnam in response to a better educated population questioning authority. It was done intentionally to suppress the ability of the majority of the population to think freely, hence my initial comment. Even many of those who are above functionally illiterate are still largely unable to think critically enough to question authority. You also have to be careful about tagging someone as racist just based on a single comment. I stated nothing about race, religion, background, or anything else. Beware projection.

[@czechmeoutbabe1997]

The fact that we all think that illiteracy is a thing of the past whilst clearly failing across most countries, *this badly* is actually really worrying. People shouldn’t be ashamed, this is a societal, not an individual fuckup

[@Taladar2003]

Going a step further it is not just illiteracy and innumeracy, it is also lack of basic logic, logical fallacies, interpretation of graphs and statistics and taking sources into account (e.g. who benefits from portraying something in a certain way, what are the biases of this source,...) that would be absolutely essential to teach for a true in-depth understanding of anything found in the media, both traditional and social today. Unfortunately politicians have an incentive to avoid teaching those things because they themselves are often untrustworthy sources that want to appear trustworthy.

[@radical026]

It's the overall myth of the 21st century. No fundamental, already proven problems could possibly exist here, only all of these shiny new ones! Focus on these! And the proles listen and believe as though their standard of living isn't collapsing.

[@mojavefry2617]

Our boy Georg here making a stand for what’s right. I love how you have slowly but surely transitioned into being a channel about society, culture and politics over the last couple of years.

[@vovin8132]

He saying exactly what we need to hear

[@kirklandday]

I like his spin on things. Very self aware

[@MrTink71]

That'll be the Hiptang

[@SkarrGaming]

Yeah, I do miss the videos about films and TV shows though. They are what brought me here in the first place.

[@KnuckleHunkybuck]

@@SkarrGaming Agreed. I love the new videos, but I wouldn't mind the occasional throwback movie review mixed in every now and again.

[@teravega]

I’m 34 and I read my first book 4 years ago. It was the most meaningful moment in my life and now I’m continuing my pursuit to reading more books

[@tdwwxyz]

“Education is a long game, politics is not” explains so many of the problems in our world. If it doesn’t happen in their own lifetime or their own term, then it won’t matter to the average politician. Kudos to you for your priorities George

[@floridaman318]

Democracy, the form of government where nothing is ever anybody's fault except politicians.

[@pityparty9955]

My Aspie grandson wouldn’t read until we gave him illustrated books like Calvin and Hobbes” and “Captain Underpants”. Now he reads everything and explains quantum physics and such to us.

[@thejudgmentalcat]

The video ended abruptly just as I was getting ready to enjoy the POME ...It's a depressing fact, I'm around people who are uneducated, uninformed, and proud of it (Yank here). When someone says something completely idiotic in the news (influencer, man on the street, congressman) I don't necessarily blame them but our education system. But there is a growing trend toward pride in ignorance.

[@RabidChild82]

They’re proud of their ignorance but want us to take what they say as fact.

[@Lifesizemortal]

@@RabidChild82 people want respect for merely existing but respect is something that is earned.

[@ozymandiasramesses1773]

I noticed the use of conjunctions at the beginning of sentences a lot. (And, but, because). ...sorry

[@josephde-haan1074]

This is a problem amongst all people including the educated and informed (A problematic word in itself with the internet.). I would say this is in a big part due to the lack of education in critical thinking skills, which now with the rapid changes in information, communication technology is more important than ever. One of the most important sentences in the English language is really out of fashion. 'I don't know'.

[@KnuckleHunkybuck]

@@ozymandiasramesses1773 I know that it's considered "a rule" not to use conjunctions at the beginnings of sentences, but I disregard that rule. I view language as a set of tools and words as being functions that are almost mathematical, and the idea that you can't conjoin two sentences in a similar manner to how you can conjoin two clauses strikes me as asinine, arbitrary, and pedantic. If you can start a sentence with "also", you can certainly do it with "and" just as effectively. Also, I was taught that certain sentences beginning with "because" are still grammatically correct (even to the highest of standards), e.g. "Because there is still food on the plate, it is not clean." I try to use language as logically as possible while following all rules of diction and grammar that have good reason (Oxford commas), but disregarding those that don't. I'm kind of on the fence regarding ending sentences with prepositions, but I don't have a single fuck to half-heartedly give about split infinitives.

[@Hedonistic0Frog]

This makes me really appreciate my parents forcing me to read for two hours every day in the summer. It makes life so much easier, and now I enjoy parsing dense clinical psychology books.

[@umblapag]

As I see it, the problem of education is that in order to understand the benefits of education, you need to already have it.

[@vovin8132]

Succinctly put. I would also add that more education leads to understanding the bigger picture, and our roles within.

[@jliller]

Learning for its own sake is undervalued.

[@1pcfred]

There are tangible benefits to having an ignorant populace too.

[@krunkle5136]

@@jliller it seems that is stereotyped in culture as being disconnected from the world outside of books, and worse stereotyped as being closely associated with overt ideology that oversimplifies.

[@The_Crimson_Fucker]

I would like to add a small thing to this - it matters a lot whether people are coming into your country which have already been undereducated, or educated in another system incompatible with your language and culture. "We need more education" is easy to say, but even if you maximize the quality of education available to those born in the country that's not suddenly going to make the 14-40 year olds migrating into your country suddenly able to read - even less so if their own familial and social structures are an obstacle. Proper migration criteria and assimilation processes are absolutely necessary to improve literacy rates, poverty and the rights of the self same migrants.

[@bluedotdinosaur]

I suspect the problem with reading comprehension is even larger. "Comprehension" is tricky, because a given person might display vastly different levels of it depending on the subject in front of them. Some people can achieve high levels of comprehension when tackling a topic they're familiar with in a holistic sense - so they intuit what is being written with good deal of accuracy. But it may not indicate they have more general skills at understanding texts.

[@DumbledoreMcCracken]

Comprehension is the process of converting words into a meaningful concept within the reader's brain. It takes effort, but the effort is relieved by practice.

[@DR3ADER1]

It's also exacerbated by the steadily increasing standard of literacy. Being able to understand basic sentences isn't enough these days, you have to be able to decipher the meaning of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or Schopenhauer's The Wisdom of Life.

[@MultiSmartass1]

You make a salient point about reading comprehension . I see that as a glaring issue on social media . People have often made obvious errors of understanding when reading something I or others wrote. At first I thought it was misinterpreration but I now I think about it may be comprehension issues...

[@MultiSmartass1]

@@lanceash What's odd is there is strangely enough a bit of bias against reading for pleasure or in general reading period. I was in a noodle restaurant and reading of all things a book on the TV show LOST . A couple of guys got up to leave . One said to the other "Look at this professor over her reading" or something to that effect. I was baffled. Never had any similiar incidents since but it did make me wonder.

[@Jaigarful]

@@MultiSmartass1 I think there's two things at play here. Comprehension is surely one, but people often rely on what they know. For example, my last name ends in "oenig", its a German last name and I live in the US. However my name is misspelled "oeing" or oening" all the time because people just don't see nig at the end of names very often and just immediately jump to what they know. But whenever I was overseas or someone who didn't natively speak English spelled my name, it was almost never wrong. The same thing goes for opinions particularly online. Nuance is often lost as people default to what they have seen before.

[@Fuxxx1995xD]

Interesting point especially towards the definition of literacy. It really puts stuff like this into perspective: today Germany has 14% functional illiteracy. Around 1800 in my home town the ability to write was around 85%. But how do we get those numbers? People married and the new french government under Napoleon required a signature. You were basically considered literate for that early statistic if you could sign something with your name...

[@K4g4m1]

Reading has given me so much. I highly recommend it. Even if you are literate, if you aren't reading tons of books, you are missing out.

[@K4g4m1]

@@1767hfdh It is simply the book the would interest you most. There is no universal answer to that question.

[@gabbar51ngh]

@@1767hfdh look up books by Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Mencius Moldbug & hans Herman Hoppe

[@nunyabidnis3815]

@@gabbar51ngh Hard pass.

[@ileanamuntean7338]

@@gabbar51ngh ....and the daddy of them all Adam Smith.

[@gabbar51ngh]

@@ileanamuntean7338 Smith is okay but classical economics doesn't translate to current times. Unless you are reading it for historical perspective there's really no need to read that. You will understand how current economy works more by reading Keynes or Friedman than Smith.

[@jacobturnerart]

Spent the last few years arguing that primary and secondary school lending libraries need to be made statutory. Having been in council financial meetings recently, I fear that even public libraries will have their statutory status removed in the near future. Without free access to books (and no, the internet doesn't qualify), literacy will only drop further.

[@duMaurier15]

Schools have libraries... Literacy starts in pre-school/elementary. If you cant read by the time you are done elementary then you have no determination to want to read. But yes I definitely agree that municipalities should continue to fund and keep easy access to Public Libraries.

[@jacobturnerart]

@@duMaurier15 I work as a schools library services librarian in the UK(over 15 years experience). Trust me, most schools here don't have a library. Most manage a room with some books in it. If the kids are lucky some of them will be new. School librarians are a rarity in many areas, especially primary.

[@realtalkdopenwoke8526]

We're most likely going away from the written word. That's the prevailing thought.

[@kravenalpha4207]

I know Ronnie Barker spent years in prison, worked in a corner shop, and was reduced to walking up that hill everyday for that loaf of bread in his later years! But he read the news every week with Ronnie Corbett, so I do think an apology is in order there.

[@tommyodonovan3883]

Is that England or Ireland

[@tommyodonovan3883]

Is that England or Ireland

[@mroctober3657]

England. I think Ridley Scott made the original ad for Hovis bread on which that comedy sketch was based.

[@lovecraftcat]

Endemic illiteracy? That'll be the hiptang

[@cd2844]

It's not

[@will_the_warlord8913]

Lol

[@Kittysuit]

This is exactly why libraries are so important!!! In the town where i grew up a library card was free for everyone under the age of 18. Even tho i lived in a small town the collection of books was vast; there were also tons of comic books and music books. It is sad knowing that libraries are dying.

[@topsuperseven7910]

No, that doesn't make any sense. There are libraries everywhere across the USA and have been for 100 years. Everyone can join libraries and they are even mandated to be on bus routes, within certain population densities. So what are you talking about? If anything you're making an argument for libraries being failures.

[@Illlium]

@@topsuperseven7910 No, it's just not "cool" to be smart.

[@NullHand]

@@topsuperseven7910 Have you been in a library recently? It is not that they are closing, they have all caught some strange contagious disease that causes them to hemorrhage actual books and mutate into oversize coffee shops with conference rooms!

[@topsuperseven7910]

@@NullHand yes, I have seen that going on. One of them I saw appeared to be some sort of strange internet cafe but yes like a 'conference room' atmosphere. there were 7 staff members and I was told one librarian had a 'Doctorate' in Library Sciences whatever the hell that would accomplish for anyone I don't know.

[@djeieakekseki2058]

The libraries haven't disappeared, they are in your pocket.

[@honeycomb97]

at my elementary school i was one of only a few kids who spoke only english, most kids were learning as a second or third language. You could really tell who had help with their reading and assignments, and whose family members couldn't help them. It's also fascinating to see by like grades 5-7, when the kids have either become multilingual, or not, and how that helps them improve. There were so few free options so reading help, no matter if you spoke one language or not, if you were poor you basically had to hope you'd either work it out on your own or you had a dedicated teacher or family member who had the extra time to take with you, otherwise you're screwed.

[@fall190]

honestly i think learning from parents is way more important than school. i learned to read/write in 2 languages and basic math before i got to school from my mom but after that my education was left to the system and i turned up pretty poorly educated.

[@theallseeingeye9388]

@@somercet1 classic example of the baby flew out with the bath water.

[@DumbledoreMcCracken]

@@somercet1 I think education has become enamored with expensive distractions that lead children down the path of superficial knowledge and low ability to do anything.

[@AngryVet44]

@@somercet1 education is a business like every other American commodity. If you are wealthy you get a good education if you are poor, tough luck, slave, for the capitalist class.

[@pisceanbeauty2503]

@@somercet1 that is unequivocally false.

[@moniquelemaire5333]

I grew up in a home where my parents were school teachers. They both grew up speaking French and English... so I was taught both French and English. I have not kept up my French, but if I practice I could gain it back. Also, I took piano lessons, which taught me the "language" of music. It amazes me that parents today don't work with their own children to educate them with the basics. It's the parents responsibility to educate their children...if the parents are illiterate.... then our entire civilization is bound to heck. Thanks for the video!!! Miss Monique 🙂🌷🙏💗

[@mezzanoon]

Being a geopolitical nerd and a follower of yours for a minute, I think this is your best video thus far.

[@mathewhex7045]

Its definitely one the more enlightening ones, but nothing this man makes fails to entertain and ilicit a hearty laugh. Like his poem at the end there was a bit of brilliance

[@vdotme]

Still doesn't beat "How the Rambo movies changed" for me. Personal highlight @ 16:09 - "He was going to die by falling.......then he broke his neck......then he exploded."😂😂😂😂😂

[@PRESSPLAYRADIO]

Welcome to the sub-cult

[@kubluu]

Despite being completely wrong?

[@mezzanoon]

@@kubluu usually gotta elaborate those kinda statements. there are sources in his description if you'd like to do some actual reading

[@axelprino]

Thinking back I don't believe that school made me literate but rather my grandma who was a retired teacher and forced me to read competently at the age of 6, it's surprising how many people never learn to read whole phrases as a unit of meaning and instead get caught up in individual words. I should probably also be grateful to the internet for teaching me a second language by drowning me in content in English.

[@1pcfred]

Six? What took you so long? I could read when I was two and a half years old. When they started teaching us the alphabet in school I thought it was a joke. I had no idea the other children in class didn't know what all of the letters were. I was reading thousand page books by then. Consequently I could not take the education system too seriously.

[@lq4322]

@@1pcfred and all it did was to make you a condescending douche on the internet.

[@krunkle5136]

Sounds like the school system could've been better. Imagine all the kids without grandma's that could read to them.

[@axelprino]

@@krunkle5136 well yeah, that's the point.

[@Vieweracc99]

That's the crux of reading science - what works for one person may not work well for another. Your grandmother probably used the 'whole word' approach, which works for some people far better than phonics - but at the moment, the phonics approach is very prevalent because it works for most. Also, English is a language which can be successfully taught by phonics - Mandarin is one which cannot, and the same for Japanese.

[@TheBasementChannel]

My definition of literacy is someone who knows the difference between “you’re” and “your”. It’s a high bar.

[@cl8804]

Definitely, for native English-speakers. No wonder they also cannot conjugate the most basic tenses of the most basic verbs...

[@lucacolombo7603]

I can't understand what's so difficult about it. That and the whole "should of/ would of" nonsense

[@M2Mil7er]

'Then' when they mean 'than' really boils my piss.

[@leeboy26]

Sorry but your wrong.

[@matthewd759]

@@lucacolombo7603 You mean as opposed to “should have” / “would have”?

[@toppersundquist]

I grew up in a kinda-poor household, but one where literacy and reading and grades was pushed as ABSOLUTE PRIORITY #1. Kinda didn't help my social skills, always wondering why no-one else my age read books, or had trouble reading things off the blackboard, or couldn't spell my name, or got simple words wrong on spelling tests because they learned that word from the graphics on their t-shirts. It always seemed so EASY to me, I couldn't figure it out. Took me a couple decades to really understand not everyone had that constant push for grades at the expense of everything else. Excellent video.

[@chrispychicken9614]

This is one of the best channels on YT. The discussions you’re having are some of the most important sociological dialogues and they aren’t being had enough.

[@novelezra]

I worked with multiple charities that dealt with people in poverty and one contributing factor to illiteracy that I noticed was; what I will refer to as: communal illiteracy. Many smaller and tight knit communities (predominantly Travellers and some religious groups) use illiteracy as a method of control. If you are in a polygamous marriage and yet all of your partners are unable to read or write, but you can, well it's obvious who would hold the power in that relationship. Especially if you want information or advice regarding such things as domestic abuse, or your rights to housing/asylum. Many traveler communities are purposefully illiterate due to a traditional upbringing and also a fear from the elders of the community who worry that access to such things; such as the internet will morally corrupt or worse. Cause that individual to make a personal decision to leave such a community. It's not what I would always call malicious, its more a fear of losing the people close to you and feeling left behind, as Georg suggested. I've however seen many situations where one person who can read/write will use that power to control every aspect of another persons life. They will control their finances, their car insurance, their home office application. How are you meant to free yourself if you worry that if you leave, you will be sent back to a country that is dangerous to return to? All because you don't have the ability to read a document that would tell you that you have right of asylum. Everyone deserves the right to read and control their own destiny.

[@PerfectTangent]

What is a Traveler?

[@SlapstickGenius23]

@@PerfectTangent Irish Travellers are very (genetically) closely related to the Irish. They’re also culturally similar to the Kalderasha and their fellow ethnic relatives, but their language, though an Indo European one, is only very distantly related to the Romani languages spoken by the Kalderasha and fellow ethnic Romas.

[@PerfectTangent]

@@SlapstickGenius23 Thanks

[@DarkAngelEU]

I remember my brother doing voices for the comics we would read together because I couldn't read yet, and my father telling stories before nighttime from a book. I learned how to read early because I wanted to read the subtitles from The Simpsons and it was amazing to actually get the joke instead of just laughing because they were being silly, and I always had the highest grades in English, sometimes even outperforming my first teacher's skills. My second English teacher noticed I was ahead of class and actually started challenging me with the typical oddities that distinguish the language. He was very harsh on my spelling, he encouraged me to start writing short stories, and from then on I started writing poetry. I'm a much better poet in English than Dutch, which is my mother tongue, simply because I was never stimulated to pick up the language as a craft instead of a bare necessity. I'm still amazed by how people are able to turn such a dry and grounded language into some of the most swerving and quicksilver phrases I ever heard. I will always remain, at least partly, a foreigner to my fellow countrymen because of it.

[@floridaman318]

Or maybe you are just fetishizing something "foreign?"

[@LD-oq9lx]

1st : Pin the blame for the civil service's complacency on political apathy. 2nd : Issue becomes important enough for politicians to pay attention to the education system for political gain 3rd : Politicans implement [insert program meant to fix everything that will do jack shit but increase the budget atributed to education] 4th : repeat step 1 to 3 after a waiting period of one presidential term/shift of party in power.

[@antraxxslingshots]

Doing stuff for the environment is also a "long game" yet politics get on board because it brings you votes in the short-run. As would better education. So my bet is, that they want a certain amount of dumb people, to conserve power. If people get too smart...too many will see what is wrong in the country instead of stfu and consume....like they should. If a solid 50% of people are too lazy/uneducated/uninterrested to vote, partys can preserve power easy with the few percent of hardcore fans they have, no matter what they do.

[@1pcfred]

Apathy.

[@blackbaron0]

​@@antraxxslingshots Indeed, we are for the People, but think and do for them. If we didn't, they might have ideas then, even good ones - and that will simply not be tolerated.

[@Illlium]

How do you get in power? By doing the bare minimum. How do you keep in power? By doing the same thing that worked before.

[@NullHand]

@@antraxxslingshots I think you are giving politicians way too much credit in the "Strategury" department, at least elected ones. 1. School kids can't vote.... Ignore. 2. Parents of school kids can vote, but seldom do compared to older generations....Blame on Incumbent. 3. Older voters do vote, but mostly on issues that affect their fixed income directly.... Cut taxes, maintain spending on AARP third rails. Promise that the problem can be fixed by returning classrooms to the past. Ignore that pesky Flynn effect. Following the above steps is the safest way to navigate an election. The 1% that actually finance your campaign? They are sending their grandkids through private school, so they don't give 2 schitz about public education.

[@Jesse__H]

That must be the most depressing opening factoid of any Georg video (and that is a seriously high bar).

[@EbonyPope]

15.7 percent of the population score below average intelligence and 6.4 are cognitively impaired. For these people it is safe to assume that they will never really be competent at reading and understanding the written contents. Although I agree that you surely could lower the numbers for illiteracy it's utopistic to assume that you can reach and almost negligible amount of illiteracy in the population. People are born with different abilities and the limits for some are just much lower than for others.

[@Jesse__H]

@@EbonyPope Where are you getting these stats from? Not that I don't believe you, but my initial reaction is to say ... shouldn't exactly 50% of the population score below average on intelligence? Unless you're talking about some sort of global intelligence metric which would, I think, be a very difficult - or just impossible - thing to measure...

[@Drowninginantimatter]

As someone who’s worked with multiple sides of the US education system, I can say that politics aren’t the largest barrier to better education here. There’s a cultural shift that needs to happen. Parents need more time to support their children’s learning and the societal push to do so. The system is assumed to be broken and worthless even as the educators inside of it are desperately trying to keep the ship afloat. More money and better education infrastructure is important but until people stop giving up on the US education system before giving their kids a chance the problems won’t budge.

[@UltimateDarknezz999]

Thank you for saying the truth!

[@maybemablemaples2144]

Facts.

[@miglek9613]

politics is why parents can't spend more time to support their children's learning though. For example, if a parent didn't have the funds to get a degree due to college and is stuck having to choose between working two full time jobs in order to feed the child and keep them housed or work one job and be homeless but spend more time with their child they will probably choose the two jobs because that is necessarry if they want to keep the child out of the foster care system. I don't know how you expect poor people to give their kids a chance like that (as rich people don't really have this issue, not to the same degree at least)

[@1pcfred]

If the little blighters want to they'll learn. You can lead a human to knowledge but you can't make them think!

[@topsuperseven7910]

Offff course, more money. Gimme more money, give the commie teachers educocracy more money, more admins, more buildings, more retirement perks. Here's what real working people would face: You insist that it's still failing and not good enough: Fired, gone. all of you are fired and replaced.

[@zuglymonster]

I've always felt so proud of my reading and writing levels. Even in kindergarten I was taken to the 1st grade class to read with them, and always tested well above my "grade level" and did great in writing classes. But I've been HORRIBLE with math. Hate it and still do. I've never heard of "numeracy" prior to this video, but I'm almost sure I'd probably be very low level on the scale for numeracy. 😢

[@1pcfred]

They gave us a test when I was in sixth grade and determined I was reading on a post graduate level then. But I had a bit of a head start when it came to reading. My mother taught me how to read when I was an infant. She told me it was something she had read in a magazine. Apparently it worked too. Later it became embarrassing when they taught us the alphabet in school.

[@katfujioka212]

Same! I've always been embarrassingly terrible at all kinds of math! I blame the fact I had a lot of gaps in my education/schooling and also that I never really understood the basic theory; math is one of those things that you need to fully understand the basic building blocks in order to progress.

[@dc4457]

Same with me. I can read and comprehend basically anything written in English and at least grasp the important points of a newspaper article in four or five other languages. I can add, subtract, multiply and divide faster in my head than some of my youthful coworkers can bring up their calculator app. Any math beyond simple algebra eludes me though, my brain just looks at the problem and says "these aren't numbers, I can't do anything with this gibberish".

[@zuglymonster]

@@1pcfred I was very similar. A story that stands out in my mind is when my mom was teaching me to read when I was really young and my grandma thought I was just memorizing stuff so they'd just put a new "watch for pedestrians" sign up where there used to just be a sign with a picture of a guy walking, so she asked "ok what does that say" and I read it perfectly, didn't know what "pedestrian" meant but I could read it.

[@Illlium]

IMO numeracy is redundant in any developed nation, you could calculate an integral on your phone if you really wanted to.

[@tttm99]

As a certain US President might have said... "I did not have illiteracy with that woman..." Let's all lower the bar for literacy and stamp out illiteracy! 🙄 😭 But seriously, great video - as always. Yet another reason this channel is among my favourites. And somehow Georg still manages to value his integrity over hocking gold bullion or mobile games. 🙏 Many thanks and much respect.

[@Anthingll]

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” ― Anonymous Greek Proverb If all politicians kept this proverb in mind the wold would be a better place.

[@floridaman318]

Not everybody, just politicians.

[@BlackMetalGods]

In Oregon they passed a bill that you don't need any proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic before graduating high school. I know some places are removing advance placement classes plus removing standardized testing at the end of the year.

[@amiaswolfgang]

Removal of standardized testing is great but everything else... yikes. It is never the fault of the student for failing to learn, there is something about the instructor, learning environment, treatment by peers, mental health, or living situation that can correctly identify why someone isn't doing well. Remove the blocks and any person will blossom, or at the least they'll become competent in reading, writing, and everyday math so they can function in soceity. Schools and legislature are just lowering the standards as a pseudo-workaround so they don't have to competently deal with issues like child abuse and neglect, bad teachers, overcrowded schools, poor learning environments (ie prison architecture, schools in need of new buildings, need for safety features that don't compromise students' privacy and bodily autonomy), bullying, bigotry, neurodivergency, disability, poverty, and more. They'd rather shut down teachers' unions and pay them in scraps than give even one disadvantaged child an equitable and competent education.

[@SuperDarknut]

Now why on earth would they do that.

[@R.Lennartz]

Then why even go to high school? To socialize?

[@PerfectTangent]

@@R.Lennartz State-sponsored daycare and indoctrination. I mean, if the parents aren't going to raise their kids anymore, than the State sure as hell will.

[@privateemail9755]

@@PerfectTangent after the daughters of the confederacy and Texas instruments started pushing out propaganda with the help of the education system solely buying their textbooks...... Yeah, it's been bad for a very long time. But what do you expect when corporations are considered people and humans are essentially assets of the corporations.

[@jacksonmcdaniel3250]

When I was little I listened to books on tape and followed along in a print book it is a good way to begin to learn.

[@AG-iu9lv]

Thank you for this video. These things need to be talked about. It's easy to fall victim to thinking one's own experiences are the norm; I would hound any adult in arms reach to read to me when I was a toddler, and grew into that kid who stayed up past bedtime reading by flashlight under the covers. I'd love to get involved in some adult literacy workshops & share that ability to grow and imagine and escape

[@kellykerr5225]

I was never a high income parent but I spent the money I did have on books for my child and she is now highly successful. I was always a good reader too. My parents didn’t have much money, but I was an only child. Books were my friends.

[@VikingTeddy]

Books are *so* important. You can often tell online if a person hasn't read by how often they make spelling errors and use sloppy language. It doesn't help that young people have so much instant entertainment available today that reading has lost much of its appeal.

[@1pcfred]

I'm a good reader and it never did anything for me.

[@VikingTeddy]

@@1pcfred I think it did, you just don't notice it. If you hadn't read, you'd have a smaller vocabulary, narrower thinking and atrocious grammar.

[@oldreprobate2748]

There's the public library, and most librarians will answer the questions of their patrons. Pass it on please it's an often overlooked resource when funds are short. Thank you.

[@1pcfred]

@@VikingTeddy none of those things have translated into tangible gain for me. e.g. that and three bucks will get me a cup of coffee.

[@Jimsybob]

I work as a Speech and Language Therapist in the UK and one of my roles involves working in a Youth Offending Team in a town with high levels of deprivation. It is incredible how high the prevalence is of young people involved in crime with speech, language and communication difficulties and reading difficulties. It is also shocking how many of these young people go through their whole education with none of their needs being identified or supported if they even stay in education at all. This is even before you take into account the complex family backgrounds these children and young people tend to come from and the significant adverse childhood experiences they have had. I dread to think how many prisoners in youth and adult prisons have undiagnosed language difficulties, learning difficulties or even learning disabilities.

[@letsburn00]

This is quite common. There is also a tendancy for people to have personality disorders. Largely because the destructive thought processes are not dealt with at a younger age.

[@krunkle5136]

If prisons were more like universities that forced literacy (not with force but with short periods of isolation as punishment), things would be miles better.

[@NullHand]

@@krunkle5136 How about a "Penal Escape Room" system. Instead of having a never ending Lawyer feeding frenzy of Appeals, twice a year each prisoner gets the chance to enter the "Escape Room", with written clues to practical puzzles they have the chance to study up on. Something like: Here lies the Repair Manual and Wiring Schema for the fully disassembled elevator motor you see before you in this basement. Exit is 4 floors up the shaft blocked by the elevator. You have 16 hours, begin.

[@x--.]

I'll never forget talking to an 8th grade LA Unified English teacher as she explained to me why she gave students a passing grade in reading and illicitly helped students on standardized testing. The reasoning was simple- "If all the teachers before me passed this kid and then I don't, I take all the blame. The administration wouldn't blame those other teachers, just me. I lose my job." I was floored. The shame these kids must feel and the horror of knowing that you are so unvalued by the adults that they'd rather help you lie than help you learn the thing. A true poverty trap. The scariest video by Georg yet? Idk but it is up there.

[@Moeller750]

Scariest comment I've read in ages! Poor child - and poor teachers, who can't do their job for fear of losing it :(

[@DMWayne-ke7fl]

Nope. That is a product of race politics. You can't address IQ and achievement without being called a racist.

[@definitelynotofficial7350]

Ι don't think that's the core of the problem at all though. Testing can only determine if you learned it, whether or not you pass undeservingly doesn't change the fact that there was a major failing somewhere, and it doesn't fix it either.

[@x--.]

@@definitelynotofficial7350 yes, a major failing. Finding it and fixing it would be vital to improving things.

[@definitelynotofficial7350]

@@x--. What you're saying though presupposes that if they found it then they would fix it. But the issue is that this often doesn't happen.

[@dans.8334]

love the range of topics you have been covering as of late, always look forward to your new videos!

[@BlazePiffington]

It may go back to that one cartoon. Every animals test was to climb a tree. Fish snake gorilla lion Montessori method is making wonders in the educational field but not enough of an impact. I for one have pizza and loneliness to thank for my diverse and rich lexicon. The book-it program allowed for one personal pan pizza for every book read. If I’m not mistaken, it was done monthly. Wrote a 15-page manifesto to Pizza Hut back in the day.

[@seeker8097]

😂 Yeah, Book-It was the best. I’m pretty sure you had to read five books for the personal pan pizza. (I remember a list/log with stars on it?) Your memory is better than mine if you remember we did it in monthly cycles. That’s such a blast from the past 😅 I wonder what I did with all those old buttons they gave us.

[@BlazePiffington]

@@seeker8097 Yes you were right, there was a log and we had to give little summaries and synopsis of what was read. Like extra credit for school but the prize was pizza… That’s all I had in my mind, the fluffiness of the pizza and those traditional Pizza Hut red cups… Still though, my appetite for pizza was equally met with a voracious one for literature.

[@nickjohnson410]

It's more like 50 percent in America. The majority of my graduating class in high school should have failed due to their lack of writing skills alone...

[@elias_xp95]

If you can write, and if the words you write can be understood, then the writing has fulfilled its purpose. It might not be pretty and artistic, but it is functionally sound. Grammar is also subjective.

[@nickjohnson410]

They were writing at a third grade level... I don't think most of them would have understood the meaning of "functionally sound".

[@christiananderson4909]

@@elias_xp95 What does "grammar is subjective" mean? As an English teacher, that sentence scares me a tad.

[@andrasfogarasi5014]

@@elias_xp95 Of course. Grammar is completely subjective until someone uses a compound sentence and you parse it incorrectly. Language needs to be standardised between two people in order for them to be able to communicate. The most efficient way of accomplishing this is to standardise language between all speakers of that language. Ergo, strictly prescribed grammar.

[@christiananderson4909]

@dragonsder I see your point, and of course you're right, but calling it pointless is a bit much. I don't think there's anything fussy about basic grammatical comprehension, especially when it's in such a deficiency in public education.

[@photokanellos]

It has recently come to my attention that there is approximately 15% of the U.S. population, and probably elsewhere in the west, with an I.Q. below 83 (many I.Q. tests do not require literacy). The overall I.Q. has risen due to better healthcare and diet but according to recent science it is not possible to raise general intelligence in the individual. The U.S. military does not accept applicants with very low intelligence, the cutoff corresponds roughly to an I.Q. of 83. Therefor assuming Intelligence is required in order to read; 1 Biological as well as socio-economic factors may play a part in literacy 2 Bringing people out of "poverty" may be important for literacy and not only access to "free" education. 3 We need to address the survival, health and social inclusion of people who may be biologically incapable of taking part in our ever complexifying societies. P.S. Thanks for your lovely videos!

[@gingeroverseer9302]

I never know what your next video will be about but I always enjoy your content. Thank you George

[@Colorcrayons]

I love this channel with the core of my being. Thanks for sharing, Georg.

[@ShootMeMovieReviews]

It ends up being rather like how they define 'impoverished', where the cutoff is fairly arbitrary and adjusts with whatever is most common. So they set the level at whatever percentage fairly arbitrarily simply by saying, 15% of the population is functionally illiterate, because we define functional illiteracy as the reading level of the bottom 15% of the population. If they were to measure simply who has adequate literacy to function (as the name implies), i.e. the ability to read signs, sign documents, read the newspaper etc. the percentage would probably be much lower.

[@DingbatToast]

Do you actually equate "read a sign" with "read a newspaper" ?

[@allthenewsordeath5772]

@@DingbatToast Depends on the newspaper.

[@allthenewsordeath5772]

Well I Heard to be considered a modern major general, you must have information vegetable animal and mineral. Also know the kings of England and quote the fight historical, from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical.

[@DingbatToast]

@@allthenewsordeath5772 or the sign, presumably?

[@ShootMeMovieReviews]

@@DingbatToast Of course not. I'm suggesting a category of literacy that includes being capable of doing both. Basic literacy that may not be considered 'functional literacy' but which is adequate for most people to get by with.

[@tropezando]

My dad might have been part of this group, at least in his early adulthood. I believe US schools are required to have ESL/ELL/ESOL classes now, but my dad's family immigrated here when he was a young child in the 70s and programs were less widespread and not mandatory. He became a fluent speaker just from observation and practice, but the combo of being poor, being barely able to read in his native language, playing catch up with the more advanced English speakers, and not being overseen by school nor his parents (they both worked and his family was large) meant he fell through the cracks. He got frustrated and dropped out in high school, though he eventually got his GED in the 90s. He enjoyed reading articles, but always struggled to understand the stiff writing of things like instruction manuals, and made a lot of spelling errors and malapropisms. As for an English speaker's experience... I graduated high school in 2004 and I was in the advanced track since first grade, for context. My school stopped doing (as a class) sentence diagramming and grammar in middle school, and never enforced it with much testing. Spelling tests stopped around grade 6, the only real stakes being a retest if you got more than half of the 20 words wrong. Most of the focus grade 7+ was on reading and interpreting literature and writing essays/papers. Because of family issues and mental illness in my teens, my attendance plummeted and my homework completion was trash so my grades dropped despite my still good test scores. Because of this, one of my AP teachers wouldn't let me in her class and I was put into the standard lit class for senior year. It was very different from the curriculum I was used to. We weren't required to read full books, all the tests were multiple choice, and the teacher let us cheat on the test with study packets they'd printed for us. I'd say 25% of class time was watching movies. I'm not surprised if some people graduate functionally illiterate if so little teaching/reading and testing of comprehension is going on at the highest grade of compulsory education.

[@alexbasedfam4998]

Great stuff as always you shine a light on some of the world’s problems with a sort of charm I love thanks for making this keep up the great content

[@nagualdesign]

Georg, I genuinely think you could be the next Adam Curtis. I recommend that you start looking for sources of stock footage, or even approach the BBC for access to their archives.

[@josephde-haan1074]

Nah. He is more coherent than Adam Curtis.

[@matt_cummins28]

@@josephde-haan1074 👏👏 true dat.

[@1pcfred]

I think he lives in Mexico?

[@jrodom2411]

As a child I was in the remedial reading program due to having a speech impediment and mild dyslexia(b's and d's, and replacing words when reading aloud) I saw many other kids in the program with more severe learning or behavioral disabilities, but also saw many kids that were first generation immigrants who also had very poor reading and language skills one in particular boarding on never speaking at all. I wonder how the children of immigrants are impacting American literary rates, and given Japan is number one in literary and extremely anti immigration I can see a correlation.

[@krunkle5136]

It's definitely an advantage to have a very cohesive populace that wasn't founded on colonization. (At least in recorded history.)

[@fenimore-2854]

Your charm and wit are truly unlike anyone i watch on youtube, love you and your videos.

[@chelscara]

Thanks for talking about this, such a pervasive problem right now, I feel extremely lucky with my family and elementary school. Two high school math teacher parents, day care abuela, and elementary school aunt definitely knew what they were doing. But on top of that, my hippy elementary school went above and beyond. They had a buddy reading program where the older and younger kids would read to each other every other week, outdoor time was as important as indoor time, hell I did my first research project at 4 about Jupiter where I had to learn facts and present to the class. When I hit public school in fifth grade, the atmosphere was just so different. No one liked it there, no one wanted to do work, everyone hated books, they didn’t even want to read Coraline as a class book. Like wtf, who didn’t want to read Coraline?

[@54tisfaction]

Maybe it sounds counterintuitive, but I think there are economic reasons for this problem. It is simply economically beneficial for someone with the power to influence how educational policy is formed. So the interests of the few is prioritized over the interests of the many. Finland is a good example of a country where schools have not been privatized, so their problems with illiteracy is the lowest in the world.

[@boblargecock7724]

Yeah nice marxist nonesense. It's about IQ, 15% of society has an IQ sub 80, 5% sub 65. No level of education will solve this.

[@FozzyBBear]

Finland does better at the tails of the distribution than other OECD countries, having half the number of functional illiterates (10% level 1), and double the number of fully literates (20% level 4/5). The 70% who are functionally literate (level 2/3) is the same rough proportion as all the other countries. Whatever the cause, only 10% more Finns are fully literate so perhaps in Finland the needs of the few intellectuals are prioritized at the expense of the many taxpayers?

[@marcusmoonstein242]

On the other hand, I live in South Africa where everybody with the financial means sends their kids to private schools because the government schools are so terrible. It wasn't always this way. When I was a kid (in the previous century) I got a good education in South African government schools, and even went on to complete two university degrees. Only posers sent their kids to private schools since their was no real need for it. In my own high school I was the son of a struggling single mother wearing second-hand school clothes bought at the thrift shop, but I had classmates who were the children of business executives. I shared classrooms with the daughter of a truck driver as well as the daughter of a wealthy farmer, and we all got the same good education. Nobody thought this was strange, and even the well-off parents were satisfied with the education their kids were getting. Today things are so bad that we have something called "low fee private schools" which specifically to cater to lower middle class families who can't afford the swanky private schools, but don't want their kids to go to a crappy government school either. My point is that the reason Finland performs well is NOT because schools haven't been privatized. The reason Finland performs well is because they have a culture that values education and voters who insist that their politicians actions reflect those values.

[@54tisfaction]

@@marcusmoonstein242 Did you go to school in the Apartheid era? Did the whole population have good schools and the ability to go to University?

[@marcusmoonstein242]

@@54tisfaction I definitely went to school in the Apartheid era. That means I attended whites-only schools, which were far superior to the schools that other races attended. Nevertheless, my point still stands. The current South African public schools are so bad that parents of all races choose to send their kids to private schools if at all possible.

[@mrsniffles5417]

I have Dyslexia and was behind in my language skills throughout primary and secondary school. I have always felt that I've had to work much harder to do the same amount of work as other kids around me. Because of my 'middle-class' privileges in the quality of public school I went to, highly literate parents invested in my success and so on, I was able to gradually overcome my literacy problems. Now I'm finishing an Undergraduate History degree at a good university with plans for further study. Despite having a literacy-focused learning difficulty my class privilege meant I was able to become highly literate. People I knew at school who had a passion for reading in primary school are now much worse off education-wise because of their class. Like with life expectancy, it is a systemic class issue - not down to individual aptitude!

[@profdc9501]

For many politicians, ignorant constituents are an exploitable resource. A literate population tends to have their own ideas and demands and an ignorant one is easily controlled.

[@SakowskiStudios]

This is low key Adam Curtis style of documentation. Nice, keep at it.

[@Dirkinsang]

Huge sums of money, time, and attention go into dealing with illiteracy and other education shortfalls. Education theory and practice is a constant churning of novel approaches. George can handwave the issue as 'politicians' but he can't identify the real problem.

[@ileanamuntean7338]

Yes, big money is being spent with no tangible results. Other countries achieve more with one teacher, one blackboard and classes of 50. "All Must Have Prizes" by Melanie Phillips gives you the answer.

[@melelconquistador]

My grandpa was literate, at a third grade level. He taught young children to read and write.

[@MartialLoreNZ]

When I was training to tutor reading for an adult literacy program, one of our teachers shared an anecdote to impress upon us the importance of sensitivity to adults' potential feelings of inadequacy if they were illiterate in any way: she had been beaten up by a man when she laughed at something during a tutor session because he thought she was laughing at him. Needless to say, it was a point of instruction that left a strong impression upon the class.

[@LordZordid]

Knowledge... the greatest treasure. A priceless gift when shared... Too often hoarded for a price, but here, freely given.

[@mysticwizard1943]

It's interesting to me that ability to understand and follow instructions is thought to be tied to literacy level. As someone with ADD who often has difficulty remembering and following verbal instructions, which has ultimately led to a lot of difficulty in my adult life specifically pertaining to how I am perceived by coworkers who don't understand that I'm neither stupid nor lazy, just that I'm nuerodivergent and often need written instructions that I can refer to, I'd say this isn't a rule by any means. Growing up I always read at a level much higher than my age bracket (my mom is a teacher and my dad is a former teacher so I picked it up quickly), I consistently overachieved in my English/Literature classes, and even a few years ago when I decided to go to college again as part of a career change and needed to test out of some courses -- I blew the English/reading comprehension tests out of the water despite being out of school for about 7 years. This is totally anecdotal but I think there's probably more going on there than literacy level.

[@beetooex]

Is the verbal instruction thing typical of ADD? I genuinely had an 'oh shit' moment reading your comment.

[@mysticwizard1943]

@@beetooex Yes it is. It could be other neurological conditions that cause it but it is a typical sign of ADD. One of the biggest misconceptions about it is that people (doctors included) think it's that you can't focus and just blanket prescribe Adderall. The real problem is that CAN focus, but since your brain works differently it tends not to focus on the right things, no matter how hard you try or how much you're being pressured (both of which often have the opposite effect, over time your brain will see things you try really hard to focus on as stressors and do everything it's power to avoid them). Instead you'll tend to get hyperfocused on things you enjoy, or simply things that your brain just finds to be stimulating. Adderall can work for some people, but I've found that getting jacked up on amphetamines only makes the problem worse. It stresses me out, makes me irritable, and ultimately when taking it to help with things like school or work it only made my productivity go down. Like WAY down. I'd spend several minutes just staring into space or out the window, or spend way too much time working on a single task only to find that the reason I couldn't figure out the problem is because I was hyperfocused on the wrong parts of the problem, or it caused me to forget finer details in whatever I was working on and have to completely restart. So yeah, if you've experienced any of that stuff I've mentioned then I'd highly suggest talking to a doctor or psychologist. In my case I didn't end up finding a medication that helped, but having a diagnosis and learning techniques for dealing with it that I could explain to my employer and coworkers was huge. I still deal with the occasional "dude, how could you have forgotten this?", but most people back down when I ask, "Well was it in the instructions that I specifically asked for?"

[@katfujioka212]

It's all about your exposure to education and knowledge *outside* school, as well as your personal feelings about it. My (boomer) dad came from a working-class family where reading wasn't a core aspect of life at home, and consequently struggled with English and getting into books later in life. On the other hand, I had a lot of help and support as a kid from both parents, and now absolutely love reading and got great grades in English. If it wasn't for my mum's love of books and the constant opportunities I got to read at home, I doubt I would've ended up with my current knowledge tbqh.

[@mysticwizard1943]

@@katfujioka212 Did you mean to comment on a different post? I was talking about how I dont think that being able to understand and remember verbal instructions should be thought of as tied to literacy, at least not as much as it seems to be in this video. If it wasn't clear, I'm an avid reader, and have been since I was very young, but there are other neurological reasons that make it extremely difficult for someone like myself to understand and remember verbal instructions.

[@beetooex]

@@mysticwizard1943 Thank you. That's really useful. Always cautious of self diagnosis but it could explain some things...

[@darkchild130]

I love you Georg

[@Treklosopher]

Love your work Georg. Excellent video.

[@erikgenerik9070]

bless you for attaching reading resources in the description

[@DeltaDemon1]

My brother was functionally illiterate. After graduating high school, he could barely read. After two years with access to the internet (and a computer), he had vastly improved.

[@xBINARYGODx]

The video ends at the perfect moment.

[@paulcooper8818]

Thanks making this video. I have a vision disorder, which is not remedied by glasses, that made reading very difficult and left me near the bottom of grade school classes. Reading gave me headaches and reading in front of the class was very stressful, but thankfully that was not often required. My report card would have "Paul needs to try harder" type statements. In high school I eventually found reading material that interested me and developed coping skills to lessen the difficulties. Had I not found that material I could have been left behind as happens to some percentage of children today.

[@2spooky]

The title of your poem gave me chills! More plz 🙂

[@theosphilusthistler712]

Your pome has inspired me to briefly aspire to become functionally functional.

[@thatsnodildo1974]

I always found things I enjoyed reading but I also feel like schools break your desire to read outside the classroom by forcing you to read certain stories or poems that can be a bit dry. Sure I like Inferno but what about the kid next to me? If schools allowed children to read what they enjoyed I feel it would help cut down on illiteracy rates. Sure they have to learn first to read and advance that skill but they should be allowed stories that keep them entertained. Engagement is one of the keys to this

[@adampeters7947]

Top man. One of the best channels on KZbin.

[@RobSchofield]

Another excellent, perceptive video with a strong message. Brilliant.

[@joebleasdale5557]

“A farmer in a developing nation…” *Shows Yorkshire* 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@rgoodwyn]

The visuals aren't meant to be exact references to what he says. I don't think Nicolas Cage was teaching his secretary to read in that scene either lol

[@joebleasdale5557]

I know but he must have known someone from Yorkshire would notice 😂

[@SlapstickGenius23]

That’s the olden days form of Yorkshire! Not the modern, heavily cashed and highly urbanised one!

[@hebercluff1665]

One of the best ways to get children to read is to read to them when they're young

[@jliller]

Worked for me. When my sister became a mother I told her I had only one piece of parenting advice: read to your kid.

[@1pcfred]

It is a bit more complicated than that. You need to read to them and point out what you are reading and then have the child read it back to you. But that's really as complicated as it is. The final piece is repetition. You have to read the same material until the subject can read it themselves. Stick to one or two books.

[@jamesw.weissii3795]

you always brighten my day, dude!

[@inverted_real_it_y]

I live in Uganda and the amount of people who can't write and read is incredible. Even the ones that had proper education (meaning many years of learning how to write and read English, the official language) it often amazes me how words are spelled. When you visit a primary or secondary school you realise why this problem is not likely to disappear; it's all about cramming. Just absorb and regurgitate on command and chances of being caned are little. No fun, no passion (I am generalising here) but just teachers making their money and children getting it over with. Definitely going to home-school if I ever become a father.

[@melelconquistador]

Japanese is more or less the same when it comes to cramming. Have you seen those video where they ask Japanese people in the street if they can write some characters from memory and some can't remember the correct strokes or order? In Japanese you have to memorize the characters as the character components lack consistent correlation to meaning and pronunciation.

[@inverted_real_it_y]

@@melelconquistador I can understand learning a language would be even more difficult that way.

[@ZombieRommel]

I'm from the Southern US. I think a lot of illiteracy is culturally promoted. Listen to any modern rap or R&B song. Some people take a pride in intentionally sounding stupid.

[@maybemablemaples2144]

Wow way to be racist and prejudiced 🤭

[@BobExcalibur]

Its not uncommon for the loudest, stupidest people to shout and ridicule the talented minority into feeling ashamed of their intelligence and desire to live an ethical lifestyle. We've all known the pressure to partake in drugs, stay quiet when we know someone else has done wrong and generally be cowed into silence by popular ignorance. When a child doesn't know who their father is, they're more likely to develop mental problems and inferiority complexes, compelling them to be prideful and boastful despite not having anyone read to them before bed. If you look at the demographics for what children are more likely to not know their fathers, the disparities in developmental outcomes start to make a lot more sense. Making the subject taboo, insisting that single mother house holds are empowering and desirable, encouraging hookup culture among demographics that seem to struggle with birth control, these factors all exacerbate the problem but worse yet prevent people from doing anything about it.

[@djangofett4879]

@@maybemablemaples2144 no he is right. not that country music is any better.

[@djangofett4879]

@@BobExcalibur you, on the other hand are obviously just racist.

[@ZombieRommel]

@@maybemablemaples2144 I don't think it's about race, it's about culture. When I was growing up in elementary school, most of my classmates were white and they shamed me for being intelligent and having a large vocabulary. If you "sound smart" you're looked at with suspicion and some measure of disdain and you serve as a mirror for some people's latent insecurity about their own intelligence. Regardless my point stands. Turn on any modern rap radio station and you're not exactly getting Milton and Chaucer. Of course you would try to make this about race to distract from the point.

[@TheColonelKlink]

Greatest poem ever.

[@newerstillimproved]

poem? what is that. I was waiting for porn.

[@clumsytriangle2436]

So grateful I was educated in a time when teaching and schooling were taken seriously and not something politicians used to get votes. My parents didn't read to me, but growing up in a time when TV programs only came on at 6pm and there was very little technology, I spent most of my time reading myself, doing word search puzzles and crosswords etc. It is no coincidence I ended up being a language teacher and now create and publish language education materials for schools. The great thing is that in my job I am still learning more new words and language aspects all the time.

[@chrisgreen2764]

Thank you, your last point about how education and politics work was especially good. I am a Secondary School Teacher and we are forever changing initiatives and funding meaning there is rarely consistency. Nothing is allowed to just run and carry on to achieve its end potential and goal. New political, new mark to be stamped! Throw it all out and start again!

[@subraxas]

"if you can't read, there's nothing to be ashamed of since it is not your fault." Well, I find this statement to be very definitive, not allowing any space for any variables. Firstly, I originate from a very poor family, I never had any problems with learning to read, write and calculate, and I always had access to a wide variety of books, because after all that stuff is definitely not as expensive as, let's say, a computer which we did not have when I was growing up. Plus, libraries have been free and *I used to go there on my own since my age was a one-digit number. No problemo! *Secondly, this is often also a matter of one's intelligence/potential or one's willingness to learn. I used to attend classes with kids, some of whom strove real hard to learn to read properly and such, but ultimately they failed, because they were simply out of their depth, so to speak. Some other brats on the other hand were just too lazy, too self-indulgent to learn like basically anything that was being taught at the school and I just do not have any sympathy for them. In these particular instances, it WAS primarily their fault above anything else!

[@Hakudohshi]

Saying that a child's lack of desire to learn is their own fault is ridiculous. The issue starts at home, if there is no value placed on learning in a child's home environment why would you expect them to value it at school? It's also cultural because there are large swathes of the U.S in specific that are hostile to education and actively celebrate being stupid and illiterate while scorning anyone who advocates education as "liberal elite". That's what needs to change, a huge cultural shift in how the value of education is measured in general and a purging away of the adulation of ignorance prevalent in the southern states.

[@jackeldridge1319]

I live in Tasmania in Australia, which has the lowest literacy rate of any state in the country at only 50% literacy. We're also the poorest state by no coincidence at all. The problem is instruction-based education, the mode is too rigid and benefits only those few who it works for. We have attempted in Australia to create a more open and less instruction-based education system built on providing educational assets based on individual needs rather than group attainment, this was called Gonski reform. The Rudd and Gillard Labor government attempted this in the early 2010s with trials in public schools which demonstrated amazing results, as schools trialed in this system showed dramatic improvement in student academic achievement. This system meant that, for the first time, wealth would no longer be a predictor of educational attainment in Australia. However, when the Abbott Liberal government came to power in 2013, they set about tearing apart this system to replace it with the prior "Socio-Economic System" of the Howard Liberal government. This system took money out of the pockets of publicly-owned schools and put them directly into elite and prestigious private schools. They stripped money from a system that humanely benefitted the public to please the wallets of elite private schools, effectively Education Inc. Intense illiteracy is a designed function of Australian society, it is about upholding the Bunyip Aristocracy that has reigned over these lands since Arthur Phillip lay his blood-stained boots on these soils. It places the right to higher employment within their hands, and with higher employment comes more land, money and power. They are willing to steal from the poor to protect this power they have at any cost. I myself attended Tasman District, which is academically a very very low-performing school that has only gotten dramatically worse in its academic function since Abbott due to mismanagement and underfunding. I did academically fine at that school, but that was most definitely not the case for in the ballpark of 85% of the students. My best mate attended Rose Bay, which was at one point the most violent school in Australia, and also among the poorest. He had to sling drugs starting with weed and xannies when he was only 14 just to survive in that school. It has since cleaned up dramatically due to a concentrated effort by the state government to improve the school, but that only resulted in it performing just as weak as any other school in the state. The education system is the centre of fault, and the elite and aristocratic of our societies are the perpetuators of it

[@melelconquistador]

Damn, you only had it good for three years. Do you consider leaving Australia? I would imagine the illiteracy would limit the immigration opportunities of your peers.

[@aurumproductions]

Probably the best video I've seen from you

[@KnuckleHunkybuck]

I've been absolutely loving these non-movie-related videos of his of late, but I honestly wouldn't mind a fresh movie recommendation or two every once in awhile. I loved Bad Day at Blackrock, which I would've never found if not for him, and that made me want to watch the original 3:10 to Yuma, which was way closer to the remake than I would've imagined. I guess I'm just trying to say, Georg, please keep making all these videos that you want to about whatever topic you want, and I'll continue to watch and enjoy, but every once in awhile, go back to your roots and throw us a movie review.

[@1pcfred]

If you like movies about rocks try Picnic at Hanging Rock. It's even freakier than Bad Day was. Which is what I initially thought Bad Day was. But I have seen both of them. Trouble is all the movies coming out today are garbage.

[@zeevdrifter2707]

"think of the economy! think of the health care!" The "experts" say while also pissing on it and wasting money by the trillions. also, nobody is addressing the correlation of IQ and literacy/life success which I feel might be a stronger underlying phenomenon going on.

[@globes179]

People are stupid - we don't use this word in an honest way because it sounds and seems insulting. But stupidity is a reality and we have to acknowledge it. When our societies finally confront the truth that many of us are stupid, maybe we can get around to actually creating a more egalitarian system. I think we need to talk about stupidity a little more openly and honestly.

[@ManDuderGuy]

You have to have a society where judgements and discernments can actually be made. In our brave new world, we're not supposed to say anything is better than anything else. We're told to be limp-wristed relativists. Fuck that lol, guaranteed trainwreck.

[@Tapetenmetzger]

The last 2 minutes of this video were an emotional rollercoaster of some sorts. Didn't expect that.

[@McSnezzly]

My parents were immigrants and I was born in America and learned a different first language than English. I clearly remember my first day in first grade, when our teacher asked what we hoped to learn in the year. I said the alphabet. She rolled her eyes, scoffed, and said I should have learned that last year. By third grade I won an award for my creative writing skills. I'll never forget the woman who automatically thought lower of me because I didn't know enough. I have a college degree now in a science field. I've never heard a criticism of my writing since, outside of the helpful kind. I like writing poetry and prose. I'm able to understand the jokes in Shakespeare plays without it being explained. I no longer am proficient in my first language. I know the pain of trying to communicate in a language you *should* be able to know, and it hurts. Thank you for bringing attention to this. There's many people who don't even have the luxury of having a first language. We know for a fact that language dictates thinking- some cultures have different words for colors or feelings. It's horrible to know many in poverty just don't have access to more words that can help better their own mental states and lives in general.

[@melelconquistador]

In effort to keep my proficiency in Spanish, most functions on my devices are defaulted to it. I often read, listen and speak in Spanish when I personally can. I am always stitching the similarities between languages. I probably know better now than when I was a child. However for a long time I didn't advance, I had to learn English by second grade and not look back until highschool when I enrolled in AP Spanish. For the longest part of a semester in that class, I did not speak English and my class didn't suspect that I could.

[@CybershamanX]

(10:30) "Ha...!" 😋 I want to hear Georg read "I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world." 😉

[@dazpatreg]

Hey, were all illiterate in some language. Actually, in most languages. Just grab some hip tang

[@three_seashells]

This video genuinely changed my life lmao. I think about it all the time.

[@kelownatechkid]

Amazing work, Georg.

[@thumper8684]

Politicians are not all self serving, even in the US.

[@josephde-haan1074]

It's how the political system is structured.

[@cd2844]

As a medical professional I always have to ask people "how is your reading?" when giving post operative advice and explaining options to them. I have many patients who cannot read or write who experience huge challenges in life. Unfortunately I live in Scotland which has seen a huge decline in the standard of education since a certain minority party took 'power'. Who wants an educated poplulus?

[@tropezando]

As some whose dad's reading was iffy due to a number of reasons, thanks for asking that question. I always felt like an ass for grabbing the clipboards from him or talking over people so I appreciated when medical professionals gave me an opportunity to explain his hearing and reading/comprehension issues. My dad always just said yes and agreed if he couldn't hear what someone said, which was dangerous at the doctor.

[@cd2844]

@@tropezando it is absolutely fundamental to medical care that patients have choice AND understanding of their options. Whether they can read or write should have no bearing. It is our duty to ensure that we do everything we can to make sure our patients understand their options fully.

[@nmavrantzas]

Excellent video. Thank you!

[@wenchen2553]

When that guy makes extremely important and thought provoking videos. You're THE guy Georg our guy ✊

[@bgrune1]

I live in terror of my countrymen. If I had the resources I would leave the US for good.

[@thejudgmentalcat]

You and me both

[@TheArtist808]

Same.

[@cl8804]

Good call. The problem is that most of the world is a shithole, though. There's only like ten countries you would want to go. One's enough, I suppose...

[@melelconquistador]

@@cl8804 too many eggs in few baskets, no? I know most of the world including the developed world is on par with our standards and values, however would you be open your horrizons? Even if it ment going to a country with a language with no correlation to your own?

[@1pcfred]

Start a gofundme. I'm sure in little time you'll have enough to go. Don't let the border hit you on the way out!