r/MurderedByWords • u/Bitter-Gur-4613 • Jan 02 '25

#1 Murder of Week Brutal ratio holy shit

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u/shawnisboring Jan 02 '25

I wish you weren't basically right...

  • 21% of the country is illiterate
  • 54% of adult Americans read at or below a 6 grade reading level
  • 20% read at such a low level they can't perform jobs that require reading...

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u/la_noeskis Jan 02 '25

In Germany at least 50% of the population (of age < 40) have at least an english level of B2.

You are cooked.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '25

Eh, it's mostly due to the heavy influx of immigrants America gets. A lot of first gen don't bother learning the language and rely on second gen who are going to school to do a lot of the translation for them, or community resources. There are entire communities in this country that simply won't speak English and get by just fine in their native languages. Quite a few in fact. So while those numbers do indeed seem super crazy, the reality is not so much a failure with the school system and more a failure with integrating into our country.

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u/Hellblazer49 Jan 03 '25

And even then not that much of a failure to integrate if their kids are literate. It's not rare for older people to struggle mightily to learn a new language, but only one generation of a family having that issue means they're integrating pretty well as a community.