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Comment by cesaref | Hacker News Reader

'These numbers include all children of middle school age, not just those who attend school.'

I think the low scores are telling you more about the pressure on children in poorer countries to work to support their families, rather than the quality of teaching when they are able to attend school.

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True, but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England (lived all three so still follow the local news and seen stories about this in the last two weeks).

>but numbers are surprisingly bad in the US, Sweden, and in England

Kids in rich countries have their brain fried from watching Cocomelon, Youtube Kids and Tiktok. They've been spawn-camped by ad-tech. Gotta get them when they're young.

The numbers have been going up as those things have been introduced, not down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42318019

HN blames social media for everything, but this clearly isn’t it.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

The US scores are relatively consistent going back over a half-century. TikTok and Cocomelon are not the culprits.

I think many kids growing up today in developing countries also have their brains fried by the same ad-tech.

Kids in developing countries have pretty hard parents who beat productive values like education into them.

In developed countries kids who are not going to school are probably still getting an education. it is a legal requirement in the UK (for example) that parents ensure kids get a "suitable and efficient education".

Yeah, it's concerning, but not particularly relevant to those of us in places where children are required to go to school. I want to know what percentage of children, who can read and attend school, can't comprehend what they are reading.

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