Anonymous #1 4w

I was reading at the same level in 6th in a red state and deep red county

11

Anonymous #1 4w

Part of the issue is in-group thinking makes people believe “well that’s just an issue for the other side”, especially when they themselves didn’t struggle. It exists unilaterally. Like 2 said, I was an extremely advanced reader despite being in a deeply red state, county, school district, etc. Underfunded inner city school districts are in deeply blue areas yet tend to be well below average (5th grade reading level there iirc)

9

Anonymous og_beer 4w

I think it’s bound to be more difficult to learn as a kid in a red state nowadays when they’ve quite literally banning high grade level literature like of mice and men, adventures of huckleberry Finn, to kill a mocking bird, and many other valuable pieces of literature from English classes and from school libraries altogether in many southern cities. They’re setting kids up to fail far more often in those states in my opinion

1

Anonymous #5 4w

Average is 7-8, majority is 6th (54%)

12

Anonymous #1 4w

You gotta also remember this is like one random school in hodunk town trying to ban these because one Mama Tammie got mad, it’s not everywhere below Maryland trying to eradicate them. (Media literacy skills of identifying bias and frequency effect coming in clutch here). Hell To Kill a Mockingbird is on most states required reading list (in mine it’s all 8th graders must read it). And while these literary works are vitally important, we can learn literacy and skills from other works.

6

Anonymous og_beer 4w

🙏🏼 we need to update our statistics for this, with increasing coverage of different areas, ages, race, etc… the ~50% at or below a 3rd grade or lower was from a study like 10 years ago I think

3

Anonymous og_beer 4w

Me

8

Anonymous #1 4w

I am reading at a 5 year old level 😎

4

Anonymous #2 4w

I was reading at the same level in kindergarten so

2

Anonymous #8 4w

Oh and totally not because the city bombed black homes, killing a few but making over 200 people homeless

4

Anonymous og_beer 4w

Adding to this that this isn’t just the South, and acting like it is is not productive. Look at places like Idaho and Montana. Shit they tried to ban Persepolis in a Long Island district recently. We gotta acknowledge there’s an attack on education and literacy at a national level, it’s not just conveniently limited to places we traditionally look down on. https://longislandadvocate.com/long-island-districts-in-the-thick-of-book-banning-crisis/

1

Anonymous #11 4w

It’s certainly not a “just the south” thing. TKAM was originally being called for bans from NAACP chapters for “promoting racism” all the way back in the 80s. It’s not a new thing, and very much not a polar thing. And let’s not forget the overall fiasco no child left behind policies left us in for overall educational success

1

Anonymous #2 4w

same here, reading at a college level in 7th grade, in a deep red and very rural area.

1

Anonymous #14 4w

My brother is a middle school teacher, he went from teaching SPED years ago to teaching gifted and regular students now, he says the regular students today are pretty much around the level of SPED students who only have learning disabilities (not those who are severely disabled), it’s pretty damn bad

5

Anonymous #14 4w

People born like 2007ish onwards are definitely fucked bc most schools stopped teaching phonics by the time they got there, so kids genuinely cannot read. They taught sight words and “use context clues”. So yes, highschool teachers are literally having to teach kids how to read. I was actually never taught long division in school, or long multiplication. My dad had to teach it to me. So by the time I got into pre calc (honors, mind you) my teacher had to teach the class how to multiply

1

Anonymous #14 4w

For like 6 years worth of math half the class had to ask teachers “can you show us how to solve this using lattice method too?” And ofc when you get into pre calc and learn to divide polynomials, or advanced calculus and you’re multiplying vectors, ya can’t fucking use lattice. This was AP Calculus, these were incredibly bright kids in my class with me. They were literally just never taught how to do basic math. I imagine it’s the same with reading rn

1