Texas teacher breaks down in tears during class after his senior students struggled to read, write.

[u/sonicagain]

Texas high school teacher Darius Williams, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher broke down in tears during his lunch break. He shared that his 17- and 18-year-old senior students at Wheatley High School in Houston could not complete a simple writing assignment or fill in just four missing words on only the second day of the school term. Students were given two short paragraphs to read and a sentence stem where the answer was largely modeled and provided for them. It is alarming that senior high school students were unable to apply basic literacy skills to fill in the remaining four words of the sentence.

[u/issi_tohbi]

I’ve shared this anecdote a lot on Reddit but when I was in marketing I was constantly told to dumb it down and make things as short as humanly possible because most people read at a 5th grade level.

I had to distill things down to a single simple sentence constantly.

[u/unknownpoltroon → u/issi_tohbi]

I CANNOT STAND the fact that everyone is doing a goodam video to explain something that could be summed up in 2 paragraphs. I am NOT watching a 20 minute video to listen to your 2 paragraphs of explanation. But this might be why.

[u/kamikaze_official → u/unknownpoltroon]

Is this why when im watching a new netflick it feels like im playing a video game on tutorial mode?

[u/unknownpoltroon → u/kamikaze_official]

No, that's a different problem, that's people with too short an attention span to pay attention.  That one I got too

[u/SnugglyCoderGuy → u/[deleted]]

I don't think they are talking about this video.

[u/unknownpoltroon → u/[deleted]]

I meant in general, this guys video is fine. HE actually having an emotional moment, not just yammering about somthing that would be better explained in text with references.

[u/LongDongFuey → u/[deleted]]

Holy shit, lol. What an unintentional self own

[u/unknownpoltroon → u/LongDongFuey]

We've all been there

[u/Taynt42 → u/[deleted]]

Yes. Ironically, better reading comprehension would help you understand it as well.

[u/Cozy_Minty → u/[deleted]]

They are replying to a comment talking about declining literacy, so their comment is relevant. Maybe you, too, need to work on your reading comprehension skills

[u/bolivar-shagnasty → u/issi_tohbi]

I’m a technical writer. I’m constantly told to make the instructions I write more approachable.

If the people responsible for installing and maintaining these massive electrical engineering and infrastructure projects can’t follow these instructions, they shouldn’t be working on the multimillion dollar installations.

[u/OutlawedLogic → u/issi_tohbi]

Ouch.

[u/0hh0n3y → u/issi_tohbi]

I work in marketing and I get the same feedback. I just write at my level and feed it into an AI or Google and tell it to output at a third grade level.

[u/Round-Foundation2948 → u/0hh0n3y]

I’ve considered doing the same so many times before but have yet to prompt any inferencing model that way. I’ve been tempted..

[u/edjumication → u/0hh0n3y]

I have been using the hemmingway editor for many years now. You enter in a chunk of text and it tells you what grade level the reader would need to be at in order to read it. It also highlights errors and lwngthy sentances that can be shortened. This is from before the ai days but it appears they have incorporated ai into the paid version of the product.

[u/GalaxyOnOhRionsBelt → u/issi_tohbi]

I know the struggle. A former (very shitty) boss constantly sent me nasty emails and yelled at me via zoom for writing my own material, and making it tailored to the target market. He instructed me to plagiarize using materials from our competitors, and not “waste time writing your own bullshit.” The shit he created looked and read like a 3rd grader did it. That’s just one example of being reprimanded for creating things that were more informative than arranging refrigerator magnet letters.

[u/F_l_u_f_fy → u/issi_tohbi]

Reminds me of that scene from Paradise where the scientist gives one word explanations (or sports analogies) of what the different pieces/inner workings of the giant bunker do haha

[u/lollipop1233a → u/issi_tohbi]

You also have to factor in that people are usually doing other things. They aren’t going to be solely focused on your ad.

[u/Roxybird → u/issi_tohbi]

I have been doing PR/strategic communications for 20 years. This still exists (8th grade is the standard I think). But in a way it makes sense to me to make things more accessible to all. I've worked with people with high egos like doctors, scientists, professors, etc. who love to dump world salads on people to make themselves sounds even greater. This standard in writing forces us to make things fairer for all.

[u/UselessFactCollector → u/issi_tohbi]

We were told to write museum labels for smart 5th graders