Today I Learned

I've wrote user instructions and setup guides for my last job to copy paste in for common issues. A ton of people struggle to follow the instructions even with screenshots and big red arrows for each step. I've run a few though analyzers and find targeting a 3rd grade reading level is the max you can do before you get questions about the instructions.
Best bet is screenshot for each tiny step(cropped with the big red arrows) with nothing more complicated than "click here" as text. Just assume the end user can't or won't read.

Everything published at or below 6th grade reading level

Americans consume this content almost exclusively

The median reader consumes at or below the 6th grade level

That was the goal of the Republicans. When US was in the middle of the cold war, schools were pushing STEM because military and industry needed STEM graduates, but the side effect of education is left leaning voters. So since the 60s, the US education system has degraded to the point that college sports scholarship grads can be illiterate.

So the gap in tech was filled in with H1b Visa people trained at proper universities.

in 2025, Harvard students don't even attend lectures. They still get As because they paid for As.

They also think below 6th grade levels. People in this country are dumb as shit.

I remember reaching high school and MANY students reading out loud at the level I'd expect an early grade schooler to. Struggling with uncomplicated words. It was honestly pretty cringy.

Can't say I didn't see this coming.

Suddenly a felon rapist pedophile insurrectionist being our leader makes a lot of sense.

That's a lot of numbers without any citations. I mean, it feels right. But please take the minute to add your sources.

Not to rain on the anti-US sentiment here, but this isn't far off from most other western/developed/colonial/whatever (aka members of OECD) countries. I don't know what study they're talking about in the article, since they never cite their source, but here's the results from a similar survey from 2013 (PIAAC study).

In terms of literacy, only 6/24 countries are reading at Level 3 (roughly equivalent to what other studies describe as "above a 6th grade level", it does not track 1:1 since again I don't know which study they're using initially) and the remainder are reading at Level 2 (I feel comfortable describing it as "at or below a 6th grade reading level" based off the criteria used in other studies).

The US for sure has an education problem, but it's not as dire as this article makes it sound. In the above PIAAC study, the difference in literacy is only ~20% between the top score of 296.2 (Japan) and the bottom of 250.5 (Italy), and at 269.8 (USA) is only ~10% behind Japan in terms of mean score. We should absolutely be doing better, we're among the worst for non-starters and < Level 1 (illiterate and partially illiterate respectively), but when looking at the values in context we're not really doing all that egregiously compared to other OECD countries.

(edit: spelling)

I'm surprised that 46% can read above it.

And vote at a 5 yr old level.

This is all a cultural issue. Little kids are read to less often by their parents and they're left with an iPad or iPhone to shut them up when they're upset. The moment they get hooked on the dopamine of colorful YouTube videos like Cocomelon and pay to win games their brains simply seek out those cheap hypnotic thrills like a geriatric in front of a slot machine. Of course a plain static book won't give them the stimulation they seek, especially when they're not fully literate yet to appreciate it.

This problem compounds itself later on in school when they either refuse to pay attention at all in class or throw tantrums because for the first time in their lives they're forced to go without their drug of choice for longer than a few hours. A lot of this damage is could've been prevented by their parents had they the discipline to not use an addictive digital pacifier at a critical age.