Not to mention, kids who need to work have a lot less TIME to read for pleasure.
Here’s my anecdote: my parents read to us every night as kids. They had books in the house, though certainly not as many as @thorny_locust’s parents, and I don’t remember seeing them reading much - they were too busy. They didn’t make us turn off the TV to read (although we didn’t have satellite or cable, so kids programs were only on at limited times anyway), and we spent a lot of time playing outdoors unsupervised in a way kids nowadays probably can’t. I was a big reader as a child, my sisters became average ones. My mum took us to the library to borrow books, and got books for as at the mobile library, and at primary school the ‘library’ was some bookshelves in the corner of the classroom, easily accessible. So the great majority of the books I read came from one library or another.
What does all that add up to? And does anyone else here have siblings? If so, are they similar or different to you? We are all quite different, so I could never believe that environment was the only thing that mattered.
That’s quite funny, that even you disliked school-assigned books. And I don’t know what schools can do about this, because in retrospect the books we studied were mostly fairly contemporary children’s books, which at least some of the class might have enjoyed reading normally - but somehow studying them in school made them boring.
Now this is surely true, and makes far more sense than saying they share ‘test-taking skills’. But the SAT is not merely a vocabulary test, is it?
Is that actually common in a rich country like the USA?
yes. It’s extremely common.
In this weird year of zoom school, I did some high school tutoring, and one of the kids I tutored took advantage of “remote school” to literally attend high school from her job site.
Where your ‘’‘understanding’‘’ of what life is actually like in America comes from remains mind-boggling.
So I just googled “SAT words” and “bard” was one of the words on a list I found, so I did probably pick up at least something from fantasy books. I actually did read Lord of the Rings at a young age but I really don’t remember very much overlap at all
I definitely learned a lot in general, vocab, reading comprehension etc. from books I read for fun as a kid, but I really don’t remember very much overlap between words I learned from that and SAT words. Other than the infamous ones like “abnegation” there were a lot of adjectives and adverbs that I probably just skipped over if I read them in a book.
So yeah, there was vocab that got tested that I think the average American teenager would pick up from day-to-day life. For the “SAT words” that people studied in high school and I didn’t know the majority of them. The ones I knew I mostly picked up from vocab in class or from books we had to read for class.
EDIT: By the way DT I’m genuinely curious who you’re reading/listening to. I assumed Sam Harris but all I really know is he’s been on a big IQ kick lately and you don’t seem to track with a lot of the other things he likes to talk about.
I’d put my money on Ben Shapiro.
I’m getting a real “Facts don’t care about your feelings [and therefore I am justified in being a race realist]” vibe.
Richest country in the world… Are there no child labour laws?
And is this volunteer tutoring? If so, that’s great.
There’s a young adult fantasy book trilogy out now where that word is quite prominent, so it may not be so infamous in future.
I mentioned some above; it’s Freddie deBoer who talks about education a lot.
You are so interested, and yet so ignorant.
How about you Google it?
Yes, we have child labor laws. She’s in high school. She’s allowed to work. Most high school kids have jobs.
(And she was still attending school)
And yes, I’ve been volunteering to tutor in a classroom (or zoom room) at a school that serves mostly poorer kids. It’s fun, and sometimes rewarding when a kid suddenly realizes that they actually DO understand the material.
And like others, I’m shocked that you have such strong opinions about things you obviously know nothing about. Like the SAT, and education in America.
In which about 1 in 7 children live in poverty, remember?
Here’s a summary of US federal labor laws for young workers. Note that 14- and 15-year-olds may work up to 40 hours per week, with carve-outs for school hours, while 16- and 17-year-olds can work unlimited hours (because in most states there’s no mandatory school attendance past age 16).
Children younger than 14 often work casually at babysitting or in a family-owned business, but the ages 14-18 (which are also the high school years crucial for academic achievement) are where the bulk of paid employment happens for minors.
Ah didn’t see above. Good to know although I’ll probably never find out who that dude is.
I’d just like to stipulate for the record that I have been familiar with the word “regatta” since childhood.
So have I. Which is perhaps why I didn’t question the validity of the SAT in college admissions when I was going through. White kids from the suburbs, never worked a day in their life, and with merely “above average” but hardly exceptional grades love the SAT.
ETA: I’ll add that I had a somewhat different impression of standardized testing, for a variety of reasons that don’t come merely with age or employment, when I took the LSAT more recently.
Regatta is what Italians call their version of cottage cheese!
(more words)
So calling school swim events regattas is a South African thing, I take it?
I have been employed in some sense or other since I was ten; last year’s COVID shenanigans marked the first time I’d ever been truly “unemployed” in nearly three decades.
The only time I really hear the word regatta is a fundraising event for the free store bank, where they dump a bunch of rubber ducks in the river, and there are prizes for the sponsors of the winning ducks.