The Glade 4.0

The main characters you play in Final Fantasy are notorious for rarely saying anything meaningful. Instead, "conversations" with them usually involve other characters talking to your main character, who sits there mutely listening, or refusing to answer questions.

"..." often appears to indicate pauses where the other characters thought the main character was going to say something, but, of course, the main character doesn't.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

(which really only happens in VII and VIII, where the protagonists are both emotionally deficient)

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Did you seriously just blame illiteracy on unions?

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It took you this long to notice?

I figured that even Detroit probably doesn't have a full 47% unemployment rate. It's also full of heavily unionized industries. So I made a semi-logical conclusion about what kind of jobs might be enabling functional illiterates.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oh ok, thanks for the explanation, Kaffis. That makes sense.
And as far as the unions and illiteracy thing, I kind of made that correlation myself. I mean, it does kind of make sense. If you are hiring functionally illiterate people, aren't you kind of promoting a lack of education? If you don't even need to be able to read to be able to make $30/hr, then why not drop out of school before you grow hair on your chest?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that Unions like to hire functionally illiterate people, either, because that means their employees are less likely to find quality work elsewhere, ensuring their dues for years and years to come.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Part of the problem that some of you are having wrapping your brains around how this article could be true stems from a misunderstanding of "functionally illiterate."

We tend to interpret the word illiterate as its dictionary definition, meaning a person can not read at all. There exists a very large portion of the population who can recognize printed words, but can not comprehend what they're reading. Since they are able to look at writing and pronounce the words, we don't associate them with illiteracy. That is where the term functionally illiterate comes in.

These people can look at a sign that says "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and read it to you. They could page through Green Eggs and Ham and tell you what all the words are. What they can not do is parse a sentence. What they are doing is looking at writing and sounding out a few words. That isn't the same as reading. The ability to read requires more than just looking at words and pronouncing them. You have to understand what you are reading. You have to understand how the order in which those words appear changes their meaning. A good way to spot someone who's functionally illiterate is by whether they have to read aloud. (It's not perfect, but it's a start).

To get a feeling for what the article is saying, consider a piece of writing from prior to the industrial revolution:

Modern readers find that phrasing and sentence structure to be strange. It is not incomprehensible, but neither is its meaning readily apparent the first time your eyes roll over the words. People don't talk that way today. Inability to parse Newton's definition of mass doesn't make a person illiterate. It's meant to show how a person can be able to recognize words and not understand what they mean. Imagine everything you tried to read was like that. The words don't make sense together.

Now, as to how adults who've been at least through the sixth grade can get like that...

Does anyone remember grade school? Does anybody remember the whole class, or parts of the class, taking turns reading aloud from the book? Maybe you did it in third grade, or maybe it continued all the way to seventh if you were going to school in an area that had literacy problems. Do you remember certain kids stumbling over words they were reading?

Children are fascinating. There are quite a number of them who encounter something hard, and then want to give up and have an adult do it for them. I have a niece who's like that. Reading is hard when you're first learning it. She's doing well, but when she runs into trouble she gets very frustrated and wants to sit there and stare at the book until someone tells her what the word is. Luckily for my niece, her daddy reads a lot, and he does it very fast. He's going to make her read herself. What if he couldn't read, though? If that were the case, my niece would only get practice reading in school. A parent who can't read isn't likely to force their child to read. That's very rare.

The problem perpetuates itself. Not being able to do something that you're trying to learn makes you feel dumb, especially when it's very basic. I run into this a lot. Most of my students "aren't any good at math." They are "not math people." They "don't get math." We aren't studying calculus together. They're taking 9th or 11th grade algebra. They want to quit. They want to be as far away from what makes them feel dumb as they possibly can, and I have to figure out a way to stop them from giving up. I don't have this problem with my physics and calculus students. They are willing to accept that advanced math makes them feel dumb, and don't try to retreat into their shells. It's the elementary and college algebra students that want to quit. I don't doubt that English teachers and reading teachers encounter the same hurdle. Teaching people basic fundamentals of reading requires overcoming their tendency to give up when their frustration makes them feel dumb.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I have the suspicion that almost anyone can become good at math if they had the devotion to study it over a solid length of time, instead of just trying to get by. I always found it interesting and so I mostly paid attention in school.

It's similar to projects at work. I used to look at the codebase and feel completely lost... but now I can page through sections I've never seen before and very quickly understand the algorithms and intent.

edit:

Didn't Newton write his laws in Latin? There could be translation issues as well.

What you're describing, Coro, is basic human drive to succeed. Very few people truly enjoy a challenge. Most people who say they do, are referring mainly to things that are mildly challenging at best.

It's the same reason why so many people cannot stick with an exercise program: it's hard, and it sucks if you want to see real benefit, especially at the beginning, just like learning to read or learning math.

The problem in the case of the children you are describing is that they are not being expected to succeed. They most likely have at least one parent who is "not a math person". My wife is like that; any math questions from my teenager are "go ask dad" questions. Fortunately my kid has always been one of those who was mortified to disappoint her teachers either in behavior or performzne, but a kid who is not so mortified can easily look to that adult example and say "well, I'm just not a math person, like mom isn't. I'll just sit here and stare at the book, not understand it, and then when I fail I'll just point out that I 'tried' and claim I'm 'Not a math person'". Just like Coro described, there is a lot of sitting there staring going on.

Kids (and adults) that are expected to succeed, tend to succeed. Generally, any program that says "If you don't like it, you can walk out any time. We'll help you if you try, but if you don't try you will be gone" will get a very high success rate from people that start it in the first place. Not only are they there of their own accord, they do not want to admit they couldn't do it.

With kids, you have to do it a little bit differently, because drive tends to come with maturity. In fact, in many adult programs that are both physically and mentally challenging, older students do better than younger ones because they have seen more adversity in the past. Kids need to experience that adversity in order to build that, so you can't rely on self-motivation, especially since they don't have things like bills to pay and families to feed to push them.

Like Coro said, many kids want to quit and have an adult do it. This is because they are kids, and up to that point in life, they haven't been able or allowed to do much that would challenge them. Small children aren't able to do everything for themselves, so early on, they learn that mommy or daddy needs to do most things for them. Once they get to school though, it needs to be a conscious effort to make them do their own work even (especially) when it is difficult and frusterating. That is how they learn to do things. Children most often fail when the parents allow failure to become an option.

Obviously some kids are impaired or can't learn as much or as fast. In that case, expectations need to be adjusted. The fact remains, however, that there should still be expectations.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have my doubts about this. Most people seem to hit a brick wall when math reaches a certain complexity that they can never surpass. My mother always wanted to get her degree, and started with an associate's degree at a community college. She got a perfect 4.0 with the exception of college algebra. She can't do it. She took the class four times, failing once, and dropping the other three times. She can't get the degree without it, but she can't do it. For myself, I remember Calc I really well. I also took Calc II, and somehow did well enough to get a B in the class, but I remember literally nothing about it. When I look at integrals with more than one variable, my brain just shuts down. I mean, I can easily memorize things like integration by parts, but the meaning is totally lost. Eventually memorization will fail when you have to build on what you learned before.

So to be clear Teemay (Timmy) can't read because of someone else, it's NOT the individual's fault right?

This correlation you've created also explains why farmer's kids can't read correct? I mean after all, since corn doesn't send you love letters there's no need to read?

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How Foulcaultian do you want be about this?

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Maybe not your corn...

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Your "brick wall" was probably looking at something for 30 minutes and then giving up for good and not even thinking about it again. It would be like playing Portal 2 and giving up a couple hours in because you can't figure something out soon enough.

Everyone has an upper limit of difficulty, but most people of even somewhat-below-average intelligence will not hit it anywhere in high school or before if they are truly trying.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

*sigh* Off to google...

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Google will fail you

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And heaven forbid Khross actually explain what he's driving at...

About sum it up?

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You missed the pun

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I saw the pun but was hoping there was content behind it too

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Further thoughts on functional illiteracy:

In a society where everyone is supposed to graduate high school, why are newspapers written at a 6th grade reading level?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

They're written at the same level as Wikipedia. I prefer it in my opinion because you can quickly skim them for information and absorb it quickly.

Since when are newspapers written at a 6th grade reading level?

But assuming they are, the reason is because they think they can sell more newspapers that way.

When I worked for the paper it was written to a 4th grade level... There was some program/filter that stories were passed through that returned the grade-level.

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