Is it true literacy has been plummeting? What has been your experience with zoomers and alphas?
I don't honestly think I've ever interacted with a zoomer in earnest in my entire life
i tts at 4x and get gpt to tts its summary
>>25247221I work as a tutor. I have every reason to believe that literacy has been plummeting. The students I deal with have never read outside of what is assigned to them in school and they're completely uninterested in reading for pleasure because to them, they've always associated reading with chores. They cannot write for the life of them, either. I assigned a student a free-write essay and they just sit there, unable to choose a topic that actually interests them. This new generation is in for a rude awakening. When I was their age, at least I had hobbies and interests that were mildly academic or intellectual in nature, and that helped supplement my education, but that's totally gone for a lot of students. It's no wonder AI dominates.
>>25247221>on a literature board where no one reads>asks if literacy is fallingAnd you are part of the problem.
>>25247236>>The students I deal with have never read outside of what is assigned to them in school and they're completely uninterested in reading for pleasure because to them, they've always associated reading with chores.This tale is older than this generation.
>>25247221I think it's because the system is becoming more lenient with students of color, who don't value education, and that segment is slowly becoming, if not already, the majority.
>>25247221I don't know the studies but I can say with utmost confidence that I have NEVER met a younger zoom/alpha that reads-- never mind whether for pleasure or for school. My gf's brother barely reads for school (though, to his credit he is bilingual) in the sense that it sometimes seems like he CAN'T. I don't know how else to explain it.Reading among my generation of zoomers (late zoomers) is incredibly rare and is almost exclusively dominated by women reading smut. I genuinely don't think I've met a dude my age who reads as a hobby. Even just nonfiction or fiction or whatever. A lot of the common complaints among my male peers is that they cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time to read.As for gen alpha, they're literally all ipad kids unless the parent deliberately avoids this. This isn't some boomer rant either: ipads and social media are literally poison to children. And lastly, my mom does some private teaching and she has said for years that the reading comprehension has gone considerably down and grown ass kids can barely read a paragraph out loud. Another friend of mine teaches school and she says her classes are almost borderline retarded in terms of free association and writing, let alone reading. Basically, we're fucked.
>>25247246they could at least read, though
>>25247271Why? Are YOU reading right now? I myself am a voracious reader in fact and even I can see where they're coming from.It's fucking boring. Especially when you're still young and every waking second feels like an eternity.
>>25247221bruh fr fr ong no cap we're cooked
>>25247275>Are YOU reading right now? Yes. I just read your post.
>>25247244Do pop history books count as reading?>>25247246Well I did ask mostly for anecdotes but we have the data. I guess it's to be expected that the decline has been long term and not immediate but maybe it has accelerated.
>>25247286Doesn't count.
>>25247275OP here. You're reading the wrong books if you think it's boring to read. Why are you voraciously boring yourself? Is it just to finish what you've started?
>>25247310I have ADHD. If it's past 400-500 pages and not especially well written or at the very least sporadically engaging its pretty much inevitable.
>>25247303Why not?
>>25247314>I have ADHDADHD isn't real, you just weren't beaten enough as a child.
>>25247324LMAO, you are BROWN.
>>25247314Just read shorter books. They're are plenty of, in my opinion, well written and engaging works that are much shorter than a traditional novel. As for nonfiction, I'm not entirely sure the same principle applies on the latter account. I recommend pic rel.
>>25247328No, I'm Irish, and thusly, much, much whiter than you.
>>25247347I'm German sooo... lol
>>25247221>As more low IQ non western stock enters our schools literacy rates go downShocking!
>>25247289>pop historyJust realized, /lit/ is pop/pol/.
>>25247431Think more old tech nerd rather than ehtnoracial grievances or 20th century politics.
>>25247236>This new generation is in for a rude awakening.This is actually good for older workers because there's less chance the younger generation will take the jobs; most of them are too stupid to function and are better suited for retail, fast food, factories, and the mines.
>>25247460>tech nerd is plotfagNot a surprise. More about the use of literature to validate ideology. Most of the Dostoevsky fans here have the same relation to Dostoevsky as readers of pop<field> books do to their books; it is not about literature or reading or learning, it is about getting ammunition for autistic arguments. Take a look at the catalog and ask yourself how it represents reading and literature to a curious non-reader. Nothing about it suggests reading or literacy has any benefit to life. The board is 99% functionally literate retards who are complacent with being functionally literate and think because they read <book> they are smart and literate. You will never move beyond being functionally literate if think things like "You're reading the wrong books if you think it's boring to read." learning and improving require sacrifice and enduring things which are not fun, practice and study. Yes, there is some truth to such statements but as a blanket statement as you made it (while ignoring context) it is advocating for functional literacy and nothing better.
>>25247571>learning and improving require sacrifice and enduring things which are not fun, practice and studyHoly fuck, pull your head out of your ass, it's not that deep. You're not telling us anything that we didn't already know. And also, statements like "you're reading the wrong books if you think it's boring to read" are nevertheless true: if reading foundational texts in your field feels like torture, you are reading the wrong books and you're in the wrong field. You're missing a critical component to your argument and that's a sense of a driving curiosity that makes the "slog" worthwhile. To me, it's that curiosity which really should and has always complemented the learning experience.
>>25247571I'm not sure which blanket statement you're referring to, or rather, this guy isn't me >>25247310. I'm not sure why he said he's OP, doesn't seem like trolling.Well, popshit is mostly fun for its own sake. It's the psychology and politics types that get very autistic about it. And although I might be an actual tech nerd, I'll clarify I did literally mean the history of various technologies and science itself.
Zoomer here, I'm the only faggot in my entire town that's reading outside in the park (it's not performative I swear, I just like fresh air and this is another reason to leave my basement).I know people who might read manga but I have never seen a dude of my age reading a book outside of work/studies.As an early zoomer I'm just glad that I wasn't born straight with an iphone/ipad in my hands, some parents should be jailed for the irrepairable damage they are doing to their kids. We are deadass cooked no cap. I'm pretty sure there are more people consuming BookTok content than actual readers.
I have younger family. They're simply too entertained. Even if they have some interest in books, the idea of them ever stopping to read a whole book is laughable, when they have infinite content on their tablets and netflix.
>>25247221I think there's more ESLs due to immigration.Illegal immigrants are arriving faster than ICE is deporting them, even after Trump turned up the notch, and legal immigrants are more common than illegal immigrants. English literacy is dropping because of this in America dess.Lol.
>>25248045>Illegal immigrants are arriving faster than ICE is deporting themthat's just statistically incorrect, and not at all reflective of reality
>>25247221They are perfectly literate just painfully boring.
>not a single good answer in this threadCome on /lit/, you guys should be much better than this.The actual answer is social media and dopamine farms from them. The newer generations move way too fast and don't actually have the patience to take their time and read something. Not too mention buzzwords have been going around, even to the older generations.tl;dr Blame smartphones.
>>25248057Europe is similar too. People puzzled why average test scores are dropping, while it's obviously the effect of introducing a bunch of disruptive browns to every classroom. They're so numerous in some ereas. you have white kids speaking with foreign accents and behaving just as badly as the imported ones. >>25247708performative is such a cancerous term. I'd rather have 10/10 giga chads holding a book, pretending to read to look cool, than a million spergs self-consciously pulling out a book in the park. >>25248070Definitely a big piece of the puzzle, but saying it also makes you sound like an insipid turbo boomer.
>>25247221The world is a violent arena where only the fittest survive. Reading is a complete waste of time. That opportunity cost could be spent getting rich and powerful instead.
>>25248070Additionally, complete lack of standards in public education (and increasingly in college as well). In America, No Child Left Behind tied funding to graduation rates, so administration would rather move failing students along than see budgets cut. Teachers try to push back and get overruled because the kids recognize the lack of consequences and would likely all fail otherwise. You'll also see deluded parents and virtue signaling social workers try to move extremely disruptive students into general education to be "fair to every child" (in reality, motivated not have to pay for one-on-one support) which pulls down the performance of every other average student. Smart kids are still doing extremely well in school but the middle of the curve has all shifted to the dumbass range of the distribution. I try to be sympathetic because I have adult-diagnosed ADHD and I understand the difficulty of not enjoying reading. I was an English major even and spent over a decade in adulthood forcing myself to read but until I got medicated I never found the act itself pleasurable. When I took the weakest dose of Ritalin and first tried reading, that shit was like a full body mental massage.But whereas I worked really hard just to force myself to read 4-8 books a year, younger gens don't seem fazed by their device-acquired stupidity and have no actual desire to read. So my sympathy for them is pretty limited.
>>25247221My buddies and I either are at the executive level in someone else’s company or run/own our own and all of us, over countless interactions have found zoomers to be almost retarded and not even in a fun or endearing way. They’re angry, awkward, combative weirdos who as far as I can tell have daddy issues or something. We have tried to help them whenever we can, but they’re just so spiteful, you can’t help but eventually match that energy and tell them to fuck off. None of us have any interactions with Gen alpha outside of our kids, nieces/nephews, or their friends and they seem normal so no clue wtf happened with Gen Z.
>>25247221zoomers and alphas? i mount them all and bent them to my will.
>>25247221im a zoomer and literate. >>25247303yes it does>>25247347they used to hate the irish
There countries priding themselves on illiteracy and striving for it, e.g. you can't buy Dosto or any books in Russian in the Ukraine. I guess with jews you lose.
>>25248248You are impoverished and wield no power besides what flagrant imaginations you have conjured up in you weak, feeble little mind. Pic rel is most likely you.
>>25247221Literacy has been plummeting ever since the advent of tell-a-vision (which is for niggers). Video game consoles, phones, and smartphones were the death knell. Tablets are dancing on its grave. Don't get me started on LLMs. I was born in 1990 and I was considered a freak in school because I read for pleasure. I don't even want to know how bad it is right now.
Reading is for slow brains
Zoomer here. The only readers I know on my university course are women who mainly read YA fiction slop or exclusively female contemporary authors because 'le feminism'. Outside of uni, I know a couple of people who read but one is an English Lit graduate (zoomer) and an English teacher (millenial).
As a (European) zoomer, my opinion will be a bit biased. Anyway, literacy has indeed been plummeting. Most people my age have poor reading comprehension and have shifted their ability to think for themselves to absorbing microdoses of online opinion (ahem ahem, "memes"). While I think my generation has an outstanding group of well-lettered, highly literate people not found across other generations (except maybe millennials), this is a small minority.
>>25248657>daddy issuesFor sure. Those of them that didn't grow up with useless Gen X fathers, were still raised almost entirely by women in the school system, and terrible excuses for men in the media. They're pissed off about it, and they don't even understand what they're pissed off about. They're looking for literally anything masculine they can latch onto, in hopes that it will bring them all of the success, and all of the female attention that they aren't getting.
>>25247236This is indistinguishable from a reddit post without indicating the racial makeup of your students
I'm a late 90s zoomer and I read old fantasyslop and occasionally classics (inb4 pseud). I work in a bookstore and most of the gen alpha teenagers I see are buying manga if they're buying "books" at all. There's been a resurgence of interest in gothic horror and classic adventure due to tiktok, but the center mass of normies are just watching TV, if not shorts/reels.>>25247224>uses /lit/>hasn't interacted with zoomersNever visited a Dosto/Nietzsche/Camus thread huh
The royal William stone turkey baster crown with the zettler ortiz crew burned the new testament in Hebrew and in Aramaic ~b~
>>25247329based, but the blackpill is that a lot of young people are too fried to make it through a short story. These days if you can read a short book you can just as well read a long one. Lots of popular authors today write long books (Sarah Maas, Brando Sando).Man Who Was Thursday is superb though. I feel like if zoomers are picking up the Russians they'd enjoy Chesterton too.
>>25249680So you're saying there are fewer but more committed readers amongst Gen Z than previous generations? Don't know if I buy that
Imho I think that literacy plummeting is good, we don't need as a society an army of students and intellectual, we need cheap hand that can do basic work and be no more than cattle, good people of value will come out and stand out moreThe problem is that with our current system based on "democracy" and "welfare" they'll be allowed to vote and get stuff without getting their hands dirty so we'll need to do something about that eventually
>>25250041>we don't need as a society an army of students and intellectual, we need cheap hand that can do basic work and be no more than cattleEveryone imagines they'll be aristocrats when democracy falls, but it's overwhelmingly more likely you'll be the peasant that's no better than cattle. It's like hearing people fantasize about winning the lottery, but they genuinely, seriously think that if they bought a lottery ticket they'd win lmfao
>>25247221How do you cope with a future where mr beast becomes president connects AI to the nukes and blasts the planet for youtube revenue then we live in the road with 4chan/xitter vernacular using arachnid crawlers devolved humans from smartphone usage cannibalizing you for meat in the apocalypse?
>>25249770I meant in meat space. I don't think I've ever spoken face-to-face in any real or meaningful way to a broccoli head in my entire life.
>>25250103eh. it'd probably be an improvment
