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I wholeheartadly believe that new generations can't be forever better in everything than the previous ones. There will come a time of stagnation or even decline.

So there is absolutely nothing wrong in decline. It's mathematically necessary. (Well, stagnation, or slow increase is also possible.)

I also don't think that the only function of the education system is to score higher and higher on tests, it has so many other functions: keep kids happy, turn kids into happy adults, lower the tensions is society, create a better world for everyone, etc.

There wouldn't be much point of scoring better in tests if it resulted in unhappy kids, unhappy adults, broken society, broken world, now would it?

by autoexec1 hours ago|

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I'm inclined to believe that the decline of our education system is intentional. Certain people don't want the masses to be capable of critical thinking.

by breezybottom3 hours ago|

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Decline since when? A few hundred years ago most people were illiterate farmers.

by nozzlegear3 hours ago|

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Within the last 30 years? Last 20? We had a high point, and we're not there any longer – certainly not in my state (Iowa).

by bluGill3 hours ago|

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Were they though? Or were they only illiterate because literacy was measured in Latin not their native language? We know that historically that did happen, and it is hard to figure out what was done.

Even today, most talking about literacy rates are using a very high level read skills to make things look bad, when most people can read just fine for the normal level things are written in. I'm near illiterate if you only test me on medical papers.

by breezybottom3 hours ago|

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Literacy doesn't mean your ability to speak, it means your ability to read/write. Formal schooling for the masses is a very recent invention.

by bluGill2 hours ago|

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It isn't hard to learn how to read at a basic level.

by breezybottom2 hours ago|

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Sure, if you have books in your house and parents who are also literate and encouraging of it.

by logicchains2 hours ago|

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Even in the 1800s the literacy rate in the US was over 50% (the highest in the world), because it was founded by "sola scriptura" Protestants for whom Bible reading was a religious duty.

by breezybottom39 minutes ago|

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That's pretty recent. I'd consider it part of the "age of reading". And even then the US was an outlier, as you said.

by wing-_-nuts3 hours ago|

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That merely shows that a very basic education is more widespread. One thing that's always struck me, listening to letters read aloud in history shows, is the eloquence and mastery of the language they possessed.

TLDR: fewer people may have been literate, but the ones who were, were damned good writers.