Sure, everyone ought to do what they can to better themselves. That's for another comment, because the question was, what is it about America that has literacy skills at such a shameful level.
It's not Brad's fault that he can't read good. It's not Chad's fault that he hasn't picked up a book. These hypothetical kids are 6, 7, 8 years old.
That's on us, and our willingness to allow their home lives to be miserable rather than pay for mental health supports and education as a society.
How does Finland do it? Copy them as much as possible, since it's clearly working. Gaps in Finlands system? Pay experts to figure it out. I don't claim to be an expert - you don't need to be, to see how bad the current system is.
If we can afford $20 trillion on interest payments for illegal wars on the other side of the planet, we can figure out how to fund schools.
Not sure what you mean by "specific blaming and accusations" - there are real forces fighting back against educating children in a safe and happy environment.
They're not even that sneaky about it. Pretending that extremely well funded and organised and power groups are not, for example, banning books, abortion, cutting school funds, cancelling school lunch programs, giving millions in TANF funds to dried out quarterbacks, etc, etc, is like ignoring the termites eating away at the foundations of your house while spending all your money on grenades to protect from home invaders.
I was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best guess:
13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too good.
Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. People who feel unsafe don't learn too good.
Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn too good.
School boards refuse to integrate modern understanding of best practices - homework is useless, school starts too early, multi-modal learning works way better, spaced repetition works great, bullying isn't a fact of life to be accepted and ignored. Bullied, tired kids don't learn too good.
Publishing monopolies charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks, altering 1984 and children's stories to be "safer", and holding back anything that might upset their comfortable position.
Hundreds of years of the world's most sophisticated anti-intellectual propaganda has allowed America to be world leaders in producing people that think education is scary.
Blaming poor people for their own problems is a national sport.
These attitudes have been with America for hundreds of years, and no amount of fight from Mark Twain, or Thoreau, or Einstein, or Bernie has changed those fundamentals of American culture.
There's no political motive to change any of this. As George Carlin put it so well: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." America are undisputed world leaders in this (except in America, where this is seen as socialist talk and therefore safe to ignore).
Media, corporations and government conspire to prevent any third party or group from changing the social situation - look at what happened to OWS, or MLK, or Fred Hampton.
Any progression toward helping people get safe and educated is labeled communism, and the DNC conspires with media to mess up anyone too "radical" that runs as a Democrat.
Nobody on TV talks about how many teachers we could have trained with the 20 trillion dollars spent bombing Middle Eastern families - it's a lot.
So, a lot is going on in America. I didn't even mention the drugs, the housing situation, the bank crises, the environmental poisoning, the disconnection from nature, the lack of exercise, the poor quality food or God knows how much else.
Some will say I must hate America to write this stuff - people who say things like this get accused of being Putin's puppets, or worse, socialists. But I love America, which is why I hate to see what is happening to it and refuse to pretend these problems will be solved without even acknowledging them.
The state used preliminary results from railroad-funded sampling to declare that East Palestine's drinking water was safe in the wake of the toxic spill.
"Come on guy" is "rude and personal"? A "swipe"? Shit. I bumped that down about three levels of rudeness before posting. That's my max.
And people were pointing out tptacek's errors in understanding. How is that rude or personal to state?
Tptacek wouldn't take any of it in, or respond to any of the points made. Instead he threw around actually rude and personal attacks.
> The active ingredient there is "I see".
I'm not "passionate" about tptacek, or HN, or yourself.
However, in your "years of moderation", you've seen plenty of people take issue with tptacek's habit of twisting of people's comments. I know you have. It's a regular sight.
The complaints are generally about issues quite a few steps above "Come on guy." Twisting people's words, personal attacks, wilful ignorance, etc.
So I'm left with the same question as before - what's your relationship exactly? Because it's pretty off-putting to see such bias. It makes me wonder.