Imagine you’re an adult and learning how to read is the main thing on your bucket list.

@wowtimesaretuff You've stumbled into a niche corner of X. If you're not interested there's other content on here.

@AwardFollowRI @gabissima @esanzi @benappel At least twice the NYTimes has reported, including in this article the OP is referring to, that it's 1500.

@AwardFollowRI @gabissima @esanzi @benappel There are 1500 men in federal women's prisons.

@SingLikeAMother I agree. It also makes me wonder about IQ scores in nations that have very low literacy. I don't know how you could even test people who don't have experience with words on the page.

My experience is that no-school results in a stunning lack of not only facts and skills but also organizational principles that are so imbued for literate people that they seem like breathing. Sure, maybe these people learned back home how to hand-thresh the wheat they grew in their tiny plot and to make bread in their clay oven or the smell of the air when the rain is coming and so on. If they stayed there it would be fine; although I don't think so as entrenched poverty seems to be a big problem. Regardless, they are here in the US and those subsistence-agrarian skills are useless here, and the complete lack of school has made teaching them anything a thousand times harder than the students who went to crappy school where they didn't learn how to read well but are still in an entirely different realm.

@charjahar I was clarifying that I'm not talking about people who come from literate, educated households, or are homeschooled. I am talking about people who come from countries where school was not available to them.

Yeah, but born to learn what? Fractions? Reading? Facts about the earth and solar system that go beyond basic awareness of the sun rising and setting? Spend some time with people who never went to school (not talking about the kid whose college-educated parents kept them home from school). I find them interesting and valuable the way I do anyone else. But there is a huge lack in knowledge and skills, specifically those that are required to survive in a literate society.

So much of late 20th-c thought around education and therapy, which turned into early 21st-c policy, can be summed up as, "My teachers and parents were harsh authoritarians, therefore..."

@Brianne1325410 I agree that strong leadership and loving discipline are essential. But most parents don't need the level of precision that this kid might require. Some kids are missing whatever thing in your brain tells you to get along with others and to not kick teachers.

@J_Von_Random And causes lasting damage in so many ways. I'm not praising terrible school. I'm saying the net benefit to society is vastly better than no school.

Beautiful. It's a perfect tiny example of how we took away traditional things but didn't replace them with anything. That focusing, unifying element was lost. (When we moved upstate from Brooklyn, my 7-year old had to learn the Pledge on the fly. She was homeschooled, but her Brownie troop said it.)

@jeffreyb I agree.

@Brianne1325410 Possibly...and also could be a really really difficult child with little impulse control. Most 4yo's don't need to be taught not to kick a teacher.

@tonywendice1954 All of the adult students I know, whether they went to school or not, are testimony to this. (It really sucks when they try and try and keep finding programs that turn them away or use discredited approached like whole language.)

@GeneSnelling That's not an answer to anything I posed. I'm in favor school choice too.

@Philomedia I'm not talking at all about homeschoolers or unschoolers. Should have clarified. I work with people who come from countries where school is often not an option.

@JamesAFurey I hear parents these days having long conversations with their little children about their "big feelings". It seems wrong because one of the most important things about growing up is learning to manage and often ignore your feelings so you can get on with the tasks at hand.

I once went off on a tangent while giving a presentation to a group of co-workers, almost all of them immigrants and parents, explaining how discovery learning was tanking and explicit direct instruction was turning out to be more effective. It was so satisfying to deliver this news to them. They all knew it all along.