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Progress vs Regress (lemmygrad.ml)
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[-] purahna@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I hate to rain on y'all's parade, but the US measure of literacy is much more stringent than China's. America is counting literacy as the ability to use print materials like brochures and manuals fluently, the rest of the world just bases literacy on the ability to read a handful of test sentences in a controlled testing context. That's the reason that America appears to have gone down as well, they switched literacy measures. The 79% measure is people who are "at or below level 1 literacy", meaning it counts people who met level 1, people who didn't meet level 1, and people who couldn't even take the test at all because of a language barrier or disability. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf

I'm all for dunking on America but the apples to apples here would be comparing America's 96% (just excluding those below level 1) to China's 97%. Historical materialism requires a true material basis to work.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 years ago

yeah, fair points

[-] CARCOSA@hexbear.net 14 points 2 years ago

Now do homeownership, maternal mortality, hospital satisfaction, murder rates, suicide rates, reforestation efforts, wind/solar/water energy generation, and green technology development!

[-] GarfieldYaoi@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

frothingfash: Yeah but....this system allows some "unworthy" people to not die, so it's clearly an authoritarian failure.

[-] dinklesplein@hexbear.net 11 points 2 years ago

well the stats come from the chinese government, are you just going to trust their stats? they're probably lying about the numbers, don't be so gullible!1!!11

[-] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 12 points 2 years ago

This is the final refuge of the person that uses Chinese stat's to prove Uigher genocide through some sort of numerology

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

final refuge

Very often the first and only one.

[-] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 years ago

It's the ultimate response. "Everyone who disagrees with me is lying" is a perfect way to always be right about everything, after all, if someone else disagrees, that's just because they're pretending to.

[-] AmerikaLosesWW3@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 years ago

west good east bad. you can see that i'm very intelligent.

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[-] ApexHunter@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago

There is no way US literacy in the 1950s was anywhere near 90% unless you excluded marginalized and minority populations.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 2 years ago

Excellent point, and that's likely exactly how they counted it.

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[-] Sickos@hexbear.net 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
[-] Fuckass@hexbear.net 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Fun fact: the world bank prevented Cuba’s literacy program from being widely adopted because they feared it would be a gateway for people to start reading socialist literature and start revolutions

The US attempted their own program, but it was plagued with inefficiency because it was run by a bunch of NGOs with little collaboration with each other or the people they were supposed to teach (compared to Cuba which made students and workers of all financial and literacy backgrounds teach each other).

Later on the capitalist program was examined and the people in charge of it admitted that had they just gone with Cuba’s model, most of the inefficiencies wouldn’t have existed and their goals would’ve been met much faster.

The program still exists today and it’s being used by indigenous or generally poor communities in South America, Africa, and some parts of the west (Canada and Italy, I believe). No one talks about this even though tens of millions of people are taught by Cuba’s program which they seem to charge at very reasonable prices.

They obviously need the diplomatic support, but it’s insane to think they’re some cynical evil gommies when they really do care about people just because that’s what good people do. Not to mention, they have most of the world’s support including from the west even though they haven’t provided anything to them. They get support for simply existing and struggling against the fascistic giant north of them while also giving so much to the people who need it with little in return. It’s why my eye twitches when I see Ukraine abstaining or voting against ending sanctions against them despite their aid for the Chernobyl victims.

[-] rjs001@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Do you have any books published on Cuba’s systems that you would recommend (English or Spanish)?

[-] Kaputnik@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

Not a book but here's some sources I used when writing about it previously:

Seara Rey, Kian. “Rosa Hernández Acosta on the Cuban Literacy Campaign.” JSTOR Daily, (2021). https://daily.jstor.org/rosa-hernandez-acosta-on-the-cuban-literacy-campaign/

(This first one is especially interesting as it's an interview with someone who taught during the literacy campaign)

Leiner M. (1987) The 1961 National Cuban Literacy Campaign. In: Arnove R.F., Graff H.J. (eds) National Literacy Campaigns. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0505-5_8

Boughton, Bob, & Durnan, Deborah. “Cuba’s Yo, Sí Puedo. A Global Literacy Movement?.” Postcolonial Directions in Education 3, no. 2 (2014): 325-359. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289310152_Cuba%27s_Yo_Si_Puedo_A_global_literacy_movement

Boughton, Bob. “Back to the Future?: Timor-Leste, Cuba and the Return of the Mass Literacy Campaign.” Literacy & Numeracy Studies 18, no. 2 (2010): 58-74. https://doi.org/10.5130/lns.v18i2.1898

Herman, Rebecca. “An Army of Educators: Gender, Revolution and the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961.” Gender & History 24, no. 1 (2012): 93-111. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2011.01670.x

Griffiths, Tom G. & Williams, Jo. “Mass Schooling for Socialist Transformation in Cuba and Venezuela.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 7, no. 2 (2009): 30-50. http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/07-2-02.pdf

Kempf, Arlo. “The Cuban Literacy Campaign at 50: Formal and Tacit Learning in Revolutionary Education.” Critical Education 5, no. 4 (2014): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v5i4.183269

Artaraz, Kepa. “Cuba's Internationalism Revisited: Exporting Literacy, ALBA, and a New Paradigm for South–South Collaboration.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 31, no.1 (2012): 22-37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-9856.2011.00645.x

Lorenzetto, Anna, & Neys, Karel. “Report on the Method and Means Utilized in Cuba to Eliminate Illiteracy.” UNESCO. 1965. http://www.maestrathefilm.org/activos/educators/Lorenzetto%20UNESCO%20Study.pdf

McLaren, Peter. “Guided by a Red Star: The Cuban Literacy Campaign and the Challenge of History.” Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies 7, no. 2 (2009):52-65. http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/07-2-03.pdf

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[-] plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 years ago

Ok i thought for sure this is bullshit, but apparently not:

Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills

Source: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

[-] booty@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

I didn't believe it until I started working. Now if you asked me what the literacy rate is I'd say sub-50%. I've met so many people who literally cannot read. As in, they've clearly been taught what the letters are and how to sound them out, but following a list of instructions based on those letters is completely impossible for them.

[-] Trudge@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Your assessment is probably closer to the truth. 54% of American adults have a literacy below sixth grade level link and some of the people you've met probably are considered barely literate yet counts towards the 79%.

A curious statistic I've found while reading up on this is that 77% of African Americans have moderate or high reading proficiency while only 65% of white Americans qualify as such. A statistic that you'll never see racists mention (and libs for those that somehow fit outside the venn diagram)

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[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Also, Chinese script, even simplified Chinese, is significantly harder to master than English. I for example can speak Mandarin fluently (as a Chinese person in Canada) but can barely read or write it, and no you don't just "pick it up" if you can speak it because there is zero correlation between the spoken language and written script, it's all memorization of every single character. I would have to actually take classes or something to learn to read and write Chinese, which I am definitely considering doing.

Actually, English is technically my second language since I was born in China (long story, left as a young child so wasn't my choice), and after having learned English and become fluent in both reading and writing it, I keep asking myself "how the hell can you be fluent in speaking English and not be fluent in writing it? If you know how to say a word you know 90% of how to write it unlike Chinese."

So, sorry anglophones, even if China had the same literacy rate as the US, it would still be more impressive (not of the intellect of Chinese people or any racial bullshit like that, but the effectiveness of their education system and socialist ideology, which English speakers are fully capable of implementing as well with no excuse not to.)

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 years ago

I've been learning Mandarin for the past year and a half or so, it's definitely challenging. Learning to write in particular is incredibly challenging since learning to recognize the characters is an easier task than remembering all the strokes you have to make. My plan is to just use pinyin as input and just skip learning to write. English doesn't even begin to compare in terms of complexity.

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[-] absolutefuckinidiot@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 years ago

For a couple of years now I have been working at a shop in a very, very impoverished and rough part of my city that is predominately occupied by low income minorities. I hope this doesn’t come off condescending but it took me a while to realize that a not insignificant number of our customers struggled to read the menu and price, info ect about products we had. I feel bad even for being a bit frustrated in the past by this, and we do our best to accommodate everyone and make them feel welcomed now I like to think anyway. But this is certainly a widespread issue that is rarely discussed or understood especially by those who reside only in wealthier areas or what not.

[-] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 years ago

Clearly this means the evil see see pee is stealing our literacy.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 years ago

It's worse, they're forcing people to be literate. This is cultural genocide on an industrial scale with see see pee wiping out the culture of illiteracy!

[-] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

they just keep genociding slow trains and poverty and illiteracy, when will their evil regime stop

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[-] Llituro@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

xigma-male literacy rates in socialist countries be like

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

But at what cost?

[-] HaSch@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 years ago

By linear extrapolation, one may conclude that China will reach its goal in 2025, while the US will only reach its goal in 2539

[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

What goal is America striving for, 0% literacy? Lmao

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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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