Not Only That - Tumblr Posts

so im watching 21 jump street, the 1987 version, and lemme tell you

Johnny depp aged like fine wine how the hell

They literally turned tensoon into a marketable plushie

vent - functional literacy vs YA publication

this has been sitting in my head for years, really, but I'm so glad more people are starting to notice the effects.

YA novels have been slowly corrupting publishing strategy and overall, the literacy of readers.

DISCLAIMER

I am not saying people shouldn't read YA. Obviously, YA is a genre best suited for a certain age group (12-18). YA is fitted for the appropriate Lexile level of 12-18 year olds.

However.

More than half of YA readers are older than eighteen, most in their early to mid twenties.

Why is this a problem?

The accessibility, popularity, and easy reading level of YA novels is appealing to mass audiences. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it means that adults are not expanding their reading level. This is a troubling reality for advanced employment.

In a work environment, reading is content-appropriate and usually highly advanced. Employees need to analyze and maturely reason with product/client problems and find solutions. As you get older, the reading content is supposed to evolve to fit that mindset.

When adults are consistently reading below the expectation, it weakens their reasoning skills and makes them functionally illiterate.

About 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate.

What is functional literacy?

Literacy is the ability to read and write proficiently and at an age-appropriate level. Functional Literacy is the ability to reason and use reading/writing skills to connect topics to the world around you.

TLDR: literacy: I can read the paragraph. functional literacy: I can find the theme/deeper meaning of the paragraph and relate it to something contextually relevant.

Why is this bad?

An inability to reason and analyze means that employees and adults in general are less equipped to deal with age-appropriate problems. After a while, underperforming becomes a norm. In advanced fields of work like medicine and technology, this inhibits expansion and proactive care.

The YA industry has normalized a mediocre, basic structure of writing. A problem has arisen with the lexile level juxtaposed with the content level.

Plenty of 'YA' novels contain graphic content that is very mature and should be handled as such - namely, sex and mental health. In a lot of popular BookTok and 'mafia/forbidden romance' books, the reading and writing level is consumable for 14-18 year olds, but the content maturity is very adult.

Hence, mature topics are handled poorly and young people are exposed to very damaging material without proper education or understanding of real-life consequences. Similar to the sex ed crisis; when teenagers aren't given a proper explanation and education about impactful issues, they grow into uneducated and naive adults.

Does this show up in school?

Yes. yes, 1000%. I work as a TA for several of my professors and I tutor high school students.

I have noticed a resounding difference in reading and writing ability in the last five years.

When I was in the tenth grade, we read Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ayn Rand. it was expected that you could reasonably explain and hypothesize about themes, real-life examples, and differences between old and new world priorities.

I have talked to students that don't know what a theme is. They cannot analyze more than spelling and grammar. The writing quality they test into basically plateaus at 9th grade. Most popular media is a 9th grade or younger reading level. This doesn't prompt people to advance their reading skills, because 'they don't have to.'

This terrifies me, because there are so many occupations that require advanced lexile levels and adults just aren't meeting standard.

A large part of this has to do with the internet.

DISCLAIMER 2

I am not bashing the internet. I love Google. The only thing I have to say is that google has changed the way we think. Before google was more than a learning device, usually you would find a dictionary or a thesaurus to look up definitions.

I am Gen Z (I'll be nineteen soon) and I was raised with a home computer, but my mom insisted I use the encyclopedias first. When you go through the process of looking up the letter, then the cross section, blah de blah, it creates a kind of 'deep processing' where you get the context, definition, and application of the word/subject you're looking up.

When you google a word/subject, it gives you a surface level summary and a definition. Hell, you don't even have to spell the word right, it'll do it for you.

This also creates the spelling issues of most adults. With autocorrect and voice-to-text, spelling isn't a priority. I think my grade is the last that even did spelling sheets.

This is scary, personally.

I think in the future, educated positions will be replaced with AI and most people will fill in the jobs that don't require more than a high school diploma. In America, some states don't require a Master's to teach.

I suppose medicine, technology, science etc would still advance if we had AI to do it for us, but I can't imagine living as a species without the ability to think maturely. The dependence on everything else would be disturbing.

anyway thanks for listening xox