Friday Night Quiz: what's wrong with the following paragraphs?

[tzikeh]

1) The hardly Earth-shattering-yet-slightly-annoying one from Time's Managing Editor's column:

It's part of the storyteller's art to reveal a single defining moment in a character's life, the inflection point at which the reader gains some insight into what makes the person tick. Huck escapes from his father and sets off down the river. Lear banishes Cordelia. Bogart reaches into his jacket pocket and gives Bergman the papers.

This is annoying for several other reasons beyond the main error, not the least of which is that the Managing Editor of a national news magazine writes like this.

2) The horrific, far-more-annoying one, thanks to which tzikeh wants to set things on fire:

In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.

The sad part is (and I'm guessing, but I'd bet serious money) that the poster doesn't even *realize* that they've buried the lede. Though I guess it's not really the lede, since it's not the topic of the post. Sigh.

Comments

[cjk1701.livejournal.com]

Only every third guy is a proficient reader by the time he finishes high school?

...said a slightly horrified random friendsfriends passerby.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

...

Telescope out for the bigger picture.

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

Less than half of any students are proficient readers?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

We have a winnah! Sadly, your prize is an ever-declining IQ average and people who can't think properly becoming President voting running the show.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Um, actually, IQs have steadily risen since at least WWII. Alas, I returned the book to the library, so I forget exactly when the rise dates to, but it's been documented. A quick google search has some references to it, although not the exact study.

[cjk1701.livejournal.com]

It's just that the number caught my eye. Obviously there'll never be 100% proficient readers in any student body, but less than every second girl and every third boy, that's damn scary. How does one define proficient in that context?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

cereta's comment below is a good one -- I'm still trying to backtrack to the original article which used those stats. I'll post as soon as I have it.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Thing is, though, if you read enough on the theory and history of literacy, it's not as bad as it sounds. I mean, it's not good, but it's better than what would have existed for the overall population 150 years ago, leagues better than 300 years ago. People forget that mandatory education isn't all that old (there are statutes that go back a long time, but they hardly affected the kid living out on the farm in the middle of nowhere, and secondary ed really hasn't been mandatory that long). Also, what we consider "reading proficiency" keeps getting more and more complex as reading tasks keep getting more and more complex (the demands of reading even a set of instructions for assembling a crib these days versus just being able to read the label on a can or bag of flour).

Believe me, as the person who gets to deal with poor readers at the next level, I'm really frustrated, but part of what frustrates me is that the options that used to exist for people who struggle with complex comprehension just don't anymore. The days when every one of my dad's uncles could drop out of school at 16 and still support a family are just gone, and we're really short on ways to help.

[ratcreature]

I'm not sure how much these tests really say. I mean, I've seen example tasks from one such "reading proficiency test" in an article about general literacy rates or something like that, and that one tested also things like deciphering a train schedule, weird graphs or those nutritional information tables on food packaging, which in some ways makes sense, because as a practical task you may have to read those and I see why they'd count those as simple reading tasks to pass even the "basic" level let alone whatever they call "proficient". OTOH it's not like all train schedules were set out in a user friendly way or even just similar to each other, I know I have seen some that I couldn't make sense of, and I'm not illiterate, and I even use public transport regularly. Also in school we never practiced reading train schedules either.

[vass]

Believe me, as the person who gets to deal with poor readers at the next level, I'm really frustrated, but part of what frustrates me is that the options that used to exist for people who struggle with complex comprehension just don't anymore. The days when every one of my dad's uncles could drop out of school at 16 and still support a family are just gone, and we're really short on ways to help.

That? Is a really good point.

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

The days when every one of my dad's uncles could drop out of school at 16 and still support a family are just gone, and we're really short on ways to help.

I know. This frustrates me sooooo much. For a couple of years I served as the academic advisor in the department I work in at a large state university, and it just killed me to see so many kids there who had absolutely no business being in college but they had to be, because otherwise they'll never be able to make a living. I'd watch their self-esteem and confidence just get lower and lower with every class but they kept struggling, so they could maybe, someday, get a halfway decent job.

[brak666.livejournal.com]

Isn't the real story there not so much the gap between the number of boys and girls who are rated proficient readers so much as the fact that half the girls and 3/4 of the boys in America are apparently not proficienct readers?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

*ding ding ding ding*

[penwiper26.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously the important issue isn't that reading proficiency is below 50% for everybody; the important thing is that the poor widdle boys are still getting beaten by girls in the classroom. Our mandate clearly involves fostering gender resentment more than caring about the education of children.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And many people are agreeing with the poster that Something Must Be Done about the boys "slipping behind".

[nomadicwriter]

Oh, no no. Didn't you notice that carefully unbiased language there? The girls are in front because they're "pulling ahead", not because the boys are "slipping behind". But where the boys are in front, the girls aren't "closing the gap" (which implies that they could actually catch up, ha ha ha how silly), it's merely that the boys' lead on them is slipping a bit. Clearly, the boys are not at fault here, it's Them Darn Wimmin getting too far ahead of their natural position and making the poor boys look bad.

[nomadicwriter]

...You know, I was so blinded by the first paragraph's general stylistic badness that it took me about four reads to twig the epic failure of that third example.

Leaving aside the whole - frankly rather pertinent - issue of people being 'readers' of movies, how the hell do you manage to write a paragraph specifically addressing characters and not notice that you have, in fact, named the actors? (I can't decide if it's more depressing to think that they didn't notice, or that they did and still decided to go with the more recognisable actor names, without seeing anything wrong with that. Or special bonus option C, that they noticed but stuck with it because they couldn't think of any alternative example from the whole of the history of literature.

...How many layers of fail does it take to make a fail-cake?)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

how the hell do you manage to write a paragraph specifically addressing characters and not notice that you have, in fact, named the actors?

Sort of amazing coming from a Managing Editor, no?

...How many layers of fail does it take to make a fail-cake?

Mmmmm. Cake.

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

God damn it, now I want cake.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

*cough* What a happy coincidence.

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

Gee, what a gosh-darn tragedy. You meant that the past 30 years' worth of effort to get girls caught up and no longer left out have been working (though not in EVERY area) and now everyone is WORRIED AND UPSET about that success because the boys no longer have a universal advantage?

And the fact that ONLY approximately 36% or so of all 12th graders combined rate as "proficient readers" isn't something to be concerned about in and of itself?

And a 16% gap is a "yawning divide"? It's wide, to be sure, but there are other factors where the divide is MUCH greater.

I HATE how the media deals with education stats.

Did you know, by the way, that 50% of America's schools are in the lower half in academic performance???

::seethes::