Half of Americans can’t read

[Balalabab]

So the title is slightly clickbaity I feel.

But this is what is being said in a podcast I am listening to called ‘Sold a story’.

Ironic if the title is wrong considering the name of the podcast 😂

Anyway.. story goes that in Covid a bunch of adults all over the US realised their children couldn’t actually read.

What they had been taught to do was learn a bunch of words by sight, and then as reading became more complex they would look at the first few letters and guess from the context.

One of the example given was instead of ‘Poland was invaded by Germany.’ Someone who used this method read ‘Poland was invited by Germany.’

This reminded me of a story my in-law told me (he is mid 60s) of how he couldn’t actually read. And it was only when he went to his grammar school interview and asked to read a text did they recognised he couldn’t actually read. He knew he couldn’t read. That made absolutely no sense to me until I heard this podcast about people who are effectively half reading. Going through the motions and faking it. But who actually cannot read.

My mind is blown. And I am gripped by this rabbit hole.

In America; this ‘whole word’ method of reading has been a political war for the past 60 years. Politicised to be a left vs right issue and has now been called by some ‘The reading wars’. I have asked tried to ask on Reddit about this 3 times and every time it has been deleted. I don’t know if that’s denial of the issue, embarrassment, or just Reddit being Reddit.

Anyway this has really captured me. Has America fixed this? Do we have this problem in UK as we were using this teaching method many years ago too? How many British people can’t actually read? Whats going to happen to the Gen Z’s who can’t read!

And finally a down the rabbit hole fact for you - that image of Bush sitting in a classroom when 9/11 happened. The most famous image of Bush seen by nearly everyone in the developed world. He was in that school because he was trying to ban ‘whole word’ learning and push phonics first learning. This has really has been an invisible elephant in the room.

That "random Google search" led to a report on the U.S. Government's National Center for Education Statistics website, which is what I posted.

https://nces.ed.gov

So a bit more reliable than two people chatting on a podcast.

Did you not bother to click on the link?

There’s a number of different reasonably ‘legit’ looking stats that posters have sourced so far. If you read the thread you will see them. They all have different numbers.

The podcast cites various sources when saying stats - also sounding legit. I am hardly going to do a comparative literature review and become an expert on language testing.

When I actually googled prior to posting this the first thing which came up was a global literary rate comparison. USA is 99% - same as U.K. That’s clearly not true from everything people are saying. So I am dubious about all these stats.

I did say in my opening post that the title is slightly clickbaity - because it cannot be true! But then no one would have thought that one of the most developed countries in the world would be encouraging their kids to guess words for the best part of half a century. Hence the discussion - which is about this - the podcast - what percentage of people can read, how well, the reading wars - the fall out, where US is now, whether UK has a similar issue.

I shouldn’t have bitten to PP but the only thing goady in this thread is someone posting one link and making snarky comments.

If you want to contribute in good faith please do. Review that US gov study by all means and share the findings. If you want to know what I am doing - it’s currently reading this thread and researching other conversations from teachers, parents and students about this on the internet.

It’s not that whole word “doesn’t work” it just doesn’t work for as many people as phonics. Also for many learners who don’t have the natural confidence or ability it is difficult to read a word they’ve never seen before by breaking it down into appropriate chunks (try “Echocardiogram”) if they’ve been not been encouraged in that skill, whereas “segmenting and blending” is the cornerstone of phonics teaching.

And I've explained multiple times (as have other posters!) - it is when using phonics. The word is segmented into the different phonemes contained within, the reader will sound out the phonemes and then blend them to say the word. Once they are fluent, they don't need to sound out and blend aloud.

You said earlier: The correct approach is to follow the entire word and sound the FULL WORD at once. So you move across the word and say "deeeeeeeeep." That is literally the blending step, blending the phonemes together, but the child needs to know the sound that the ee digraph (i.e. a 'long e') in the middle of the word makes. How would they decode 'meet' and 'met' otherwise?

And I've explained multiple times (as have other posters!) - it is correct when using phonics. The word is segmented into the different phonemes contained within, the reader will sound out the phonemes and then blend them to say the word. Once they are fluent, they don't need to sound out and blend aloud.

You said earlier: The correct approach is to follow the entire word and sound the FULL WORD at once. So you move across the word and say "deeeeeeeeep." That is literally the blending step, blending the phonemes together, but the child needs to know the sound that the ee digraph (i.e. a 'long e') in the middle of the word makes. How would they decode 'meet' and 'met' otherwise?

Do you understand what a digraph is? Two letters, one sound. So sh is the sound at the start of 'ship'. How could you possibly sound out ship any other way than sh-i-p, then blend it to say ship? How can you say that is incorrect?

[ETA to add quote]

This is such an interesting thread.

Phonics isn't sounded out letter by letter. It's segmented phoneme-by-phoneme, before blending, and the phonemes are voiced as they are going to be said, not with a shwa sound. So "M" is said as "mm" not "muh".
My DC recognises the tetragraph "eigh" and knows it is usually pronounced "ay" but sometimes pronounced "ee". So they would read an unfamiliar word like "freight" by segmenting as "fff-rrr-ay-t" then quickly blend it to sound like "frayt".

If you've witnessed children attempting a word like that by saying "fuh - ruh - a - i -ger- her - tuh" then they aren't using phonics.

Ever feel like you're banging your head off a brick wall? 😆

I shouldn’t have bitten to PP but the only thing goady in this thread is someone posting one link and making snarky comments.

So it's not goady to say that half of Americans can't read when that clearly isn't the case?

It’s not clear. And that’s the point of the thread. Last I will say on this specific point.

reading is a lot more than knowing the word, sounding it out etc is also comprehension. So many people in school just did not know what they were reading. They couldn’t think critically. I was the only one in top set English that knew what Animal Farm was about and I got laughed at when I said it wasn’t just about “talking animals”. This is in England and I left in 2012. It’s not just Americans, we don’t value education here and neither kids nor parents give a shit.

You haven't cited any reliable evidence that half of Americans can't read, and there is abundant evidence that it's not true. So if it's not clear to you, your critical thinking skills are deficient.

Or you just wanted to rubbish another nationality to attract attention to your post.

Have a DS with SEN who was classed as non verbal and now at 6 is more non conversational. Despite not being able to speak he could always read fluently but definitely learnt whole words rather than phonics first. He’s in the top reading group and passed the phonics screening with full marks last year. He struggled with the concept of alien words for a while and kept trying to make them into similar real words.

We didn’t do phonics at school and I learnt to read at 3 with whole words. I’m an American lit lecturer now so doing ok.

It’s a bit like the many , many people who can’t actually do their job but manage to fool people!

I think it’s a bit of cheek suggesting others are not commenting in good faith when you are comparing two podcasters chatting to an evidence based source.

Isn't this just a debate over precisely what "can't read" means, in terms of levels of comprehension?

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

I remember we had to read through sheets of words to determine our reading age - early '80s.

Having been brought up on Radio 4 and LPs of Gilbert & Sullivan, I was the only one who could pronounce adamant, unlike my peers, who grew up in households with TVs, so all saw Top of the Pops and so all knew of Adam Ant.

(I did not always fit in well at school.)

Isn't this just a debate over precisely what "can't read" means, in terms of levels of comprehension?

That's a huge part of it - but also like with any reasearch who's being assesed - as article covers it varies across state and income levels and whether they have english as second or third lanaguage - and how and sadly who funded the research and what bias and agenda they have that may have influenced study structure or conclusions.

There are many issues with US state education more generally but like everything there it's caught up in poltics.

Until recent Mississippi reading improvements there was also a belief that poor and ethnic minority communities would just be poorer readers or have more of them and that was just how it was.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/kids-reading-scores-have-soared-in-mississippi-miracle

This argues it's more than just phonics needed
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/mississippi-education-miracle/686731/

It's not like US educators are unaware reading issues in schools and are working to improve the situation.

I've no seen any research suggesting funcational literacy ie problems in daily life but can read to a low level around reading age 11 - is anywhere near as high as 50% most have it high teens to mid 20s in US.

I also imagine if you measured other countries' literacy against an equivalent to the "level 3 or above" metric, the US wouldn't be some huge outlier compared to other developed nations.

The science of how we learn to read is interesting, as is how succesfully we can mask poor literacy, but I don't think I'd make much of the "half of" claim, absent further context.

I also imagine if you measured other countries' literacy against an equivalent to the "level 3 or above" metric, the US wouldn't be some huge outlier compared to other developed nations.

We have the PISA results which test 15 year olds for reading and maths internationally - but how representive those are is debateable - china tends to be more coastal cities rather than whole country but it does rank reading levels between countries at age 15.

USA is above average internationally in PISA scores for reading - it ranks 13th - which is not bad at all.

UK ranks 10th - which is England driving them up Wales has dropped yet again- but UK is also bucking global downward trend by holding our reading performace steady.

USA scores have been dropping. American 15-year-olds dropped 14 points compared to the previous assessment cycle, landing near their lowest reading point in 25 years and widening the achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students

https://abc3340.com/news/crisis-in-the-classroom/new-international-test-finds-reading-scores-for-us-teens-near-historic-lows

https://voz.us/en/society/260908/38946/the-u-s-slows-the-global-decline-in-pisa-but-the-setback-in-reading-sounds-the-alarm.html
This article suggest it's part of a world wide trend.

Honestly they could do better in many aspects of their state education - reading wise they have a good model to follow in Mississippi and several southern poor states are already trying to do that.

The 50% stuff is just click bait though.

Same. I did Latin o level in 1979.

Da me un osculum
Caecilius est in horto

Reading could lead to sharing knowledge for free.

Socialism at it's worst.

Oh me suspiriem, da mihi suavium

Segmenting it phenome by phenome again, is a useless approach.

Why not just sound the entire word slowly? Or do it syllable by syllable?

@MargotLovesTom but the child needs to know the sound that the ee digraph (i.e. a 'long e') in the middle of the word makes. How would they decode 'meet' and 'met' otherwise?

Children know what sound "ee" makes because they will have been introduced to it in one word, then they will reasonably assume that when they see it in other words it's pronounced the same way.

A child doesn't need to sound out different parts of the word when they already know what sounds they are associated with.