(May 16, 2026 06:56 AM)Mercury Wrote:  I read this article the other day about how American school district test scores are lower almost everywhere compared to where they were 10 years ago and it really made me think about things. If the education system is failing, it will continue to fail. If the people currently pursuing higher education are going to school to become the next generation of teachers and they are currently performing poorly, won't they perform poorly at teaching the next generation of students? Sorry I know that a was messy way to describe it, but it's crazy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.html

(May 16, 2026 07:02 AM)Mastercarder Wrote:  Yeah I get what you mean. I live in Australia and honestly it doesn’t seem as bad over here yet compared to the US, but I’ve definitely noticed a difference from when I was younger to now. Attention spans feel destroyed compared to back then. Even in school years ago, people could sit through longer explanations, discussions, documentaries, etc. Now everything has to be ultra-fast stimulation or people lose interest instantly.

I also think phones and algorithms are training people to react emotionally instead of critically thinking. A lot of younger people are growing up consuming endless short-form content before they even build proper focus or reasoning skills.

Makes you wonder what another 10-15 years of this does to society honestly.

(May 16, 2026 06:09 AM)Hackers Wrote:  https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics

On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.

54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

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I think we should give this more attention. It's like a coin flip on whether a grown adult even has the ability to comprehend a basic sentence, let alone a paragraph or nuanced thought.

This is most likely responsible for a number of incorrect thoughts that are manipulated as "opinions", in an effort to hide the person's incompetence.

(May 16, 2026 10:53 AM)Miles Morales Wrote:  French here.

Kids working in factories in the 50's are more well spoken than most of managers in big companies in the country.

Trust me, I'm not lying here. There are videos.

(May 18, 2026 11:56 PM)Mastercarder Wrote:  I don't have a hard time believing that at all.
It's a shame it's only going to get worse and worse down the line.

(May 19, 2026 12:10 AM)Rust-0l3um Wrote:  Another thread where Nodes let us know we are all retards and can’t touch him on his ivory tower. That’s 2 in less than a week.

(May 19, 2026 05:30 AM)Hackers Wrote:  100%, I would say AT LEAST 50% of the users here are demonstrably incompetent.

The statistics appear to support this finding, so not sure why you are taking personal offense to it. If you are unable to see the point of this thread, as a reference to the impact on society as a whole, then that's on you.

I'm sure if we correlate intelligence & comprehension with people who attack the messenger (like you have here), we will find that there is a strong correlation.

Let me simplify this for you:

> People who are incapable of engaging in intellectual discussions such as this one will commonly avoid the discussion altogether by attempting to diminish the importance of the topic with tactics such as whataboutism, straw man arguments, attacking the poster, or other bad faith strategies.


Let me over simplify this for you:

> You are either choosing to ignore the topic at hand, or are incapable of comprehending the topic. Which one is it?