Season 10, Episode Four November 17, 2024

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This is the Listening Tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Now heard in more than 440 cities in 49 countries. Welcome aboard Orangeburg, New York. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, I'll speak with an educator who's an expert on literacy.

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But first, not the headlines.

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A funny thing happened to the left-wing media since Donald Trump was again elected president of the United States. However, very few people saw it. Comparatively speaking. You see, on election day, MSNBC had about 6 million viewers. CNN had 5.1 million. Democrats and liberal-minded people flocked to the television sets to watch as the returns began to trickle in from states on the East Coast. Optimistic, nay, confident that their candidate, Kamala Harris, would rule the day. Democrat supporters were giddy with glee at the prospect of another four years of control of the executive branch of the government. Four more years of woke policies, gender confusion, illegal immigration, and the very real probability that they would never have to think about Donald Trump again unless you were part of a jury. How could they lose? They had Hollywood superstars backing Harris, Oprah, Beyoncé, the Iranian regime, and of course, the American media, with a few exceptions. The major networks had a majority of negative stories about Donald Trump and a majority of positive stories about Kamala Harris. Womever controls the media controls the message, and the message was that Donald Trump would ruin America and Kamala Harris would save democracy. It's no wonder the liberal news stations had more eyes on it than usual. Soon the happy, smiling faces of Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes and Joey Reed and others would be spreading the good news about a Harris victory, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief, then celebrate with a glass of Chardonnay. But as the evening progressed, and the results of the election didn't become clearly in favor of Harris, an uneasiness began to set in. Then, when Donald Trump won Georgia and North Carolina, the smiles on the faces of the TV talking heads didn't appear as planned. Smiles instead began to show in the eyes of the conservative media. Then, and this is just my theory, news stations like CNN and MSNBC began to get conservative viewers, eager to see what was being reported there. That's when viewership hit its peak for the left-leaning media. People who were watching Fox News weren't sure if what they were reporting was any different from what CNN and MSNBC were reporting. Well, it was the same reporting, but with vastly different takes on what was happening. Either way, five and six million viewers was good news for CNN and MSNBC, respectively. It's worth noting here that Fox News viewership on election night averaged 10.3 million between 8 and 11 p.m. Viewership was still pretty healthy on Wednesday, too, as many races hadn't yet been called, and even entire states still hadn't determined who would get their electoral votes. By Thursday, most people knew what they wanted to know. Time to take a break from the news, enjoy some quiet time, learn the kids' names again. So what was five and six million viewers for CNN and MSNBC respectively, dropped to four hundred nineteen thousand for CNN and five hundred ninety six thousand for MSNBC. Fox News viewers on Thursday were two point six million. When Thursday is compared to the same day last year, a non-election year, Fox News viewership was up sixty percent, while MSNBC was down twenty-three percent, and CNN was down forty percent. Can we come to any conclusions based on these Nielsen statistics cited by Mediaite? Sure. There is such a thing as media burnout after a national election. More people watch Fox News than CNN and MSNBC combined, and there aren't a lot of people who care to see liberals argue about what went wrong or how Donald Trump is going to make all of your nightmares come true. The left-wing media has been fully exposed as frauds, and on election day the American people revealed that they knew it. It took a while for the cover-up to be exposed. Elon Musk had to spend $44 billion to get to the truth about how the federal government influenced what Americans could see. Facebook later confirmed the Fed's efforts to censor people who didn't have the correct message. The cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop, blamed on the Russians by the Biden campaign and suppressed by the FBI and mainstream media, did much to sow distrust in the media and the government. The suppression of COVID information eroded the trust in government because of the way they tried to control social media. The people aren't buying the propaganda anymore. MSNBC's Joy Reed just described Donald Trump's cabinet choices as filling the clown car. So she clearly is holding on to what nobody wants. CNN, on the other hand, announced six days after the election that hundreds of staffers will be losing their jobs at the network. Possibly including some of their most visible talent, according to reports. The last time Donald Trump won an election in 2016, CNN led all networks in viewership with 13.3 primetime tune-ins. As I mentioned earlier, it was 5.1 million this year. I was a big fan of CNN when it first came out. I remained a fan for decades, and I liked headline news too. I miss Robin Mead. I even toured the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, which isn't headquarters anymore. But I noticed a sea change in CNN's reporting when Donald Trump got elected. So did my wife. She was completely apolitical. Never voted in her life. Watching CNN and the way they reported on the Trump administration enraged her. CNN created a monster. Don't tell her I said that. Because of CNN, my wife registered to vote as a Republican. Anderson Cooper is pulling in 20 million a year, yet only has a small piece of the primetime ratings pie. Hardly a value. But he's just one guy. Hundreds are said to be awaiting the acts or moving on in anticipation of the cuts. It may be too late for CNN, and MSNBC won't change under any circumstances. The people spoke loud and clear in favor of Republican candidates and another Donald Trump presidency. They did so with their votes. The people are also speaking with their viewing time. All but the most lunatic fringe are abandoning liberal media like CNN and MSNBC. Network News, ABC, NBC, and CBS are battling each other for third and fourth place in the ratings because trust in legacy media is at an all-time low. They've all been exposed as frauds, and the American people now know they were all supporting what the majority of Americans don't want. The news wasn't fair or indifferent or impartial. The news tried to manipulate us and lied to us and misled us and hid information from us and promoted falsehoods that they never thought would see the light of day because they thought they controlled the message. The American media should have known that the truth would come out, as it did. The sad part is that it's the job of the media to get to the truth, and they did what they could to hide the truth. I don't know what's going to happen under the incoming Trump administration when it comes to the press. Certainly the press has constitutional rights that cannot be infringed. But when the press becomes a machine for propaganda that supports one side over the other, then the question needs to be asked is it still the press or is it something else? Something else that doesn't have the same rights as the press. I will not be surprised if this becomes an issue of note for the incoming administration. However, if viewing trends continue to decline for left wing media at the current rate, it may be a moot point. CNN and MSNBC may cease to exist, and the networks are all being thought of as liabilities by the companies who own them because of the current shift to streaming and away from linear television. Either way, the good news is that the American people weren't fooled by the fake news peddled by the legacy media and the left-wing cable channels. Remember the ugly summer of 2020 and how radical groups used the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis as an excuse to loot stores and cause riots and destroy property and get people killed in cities across the country in the name of social justice? The event led to defund the police and Black Lives Matter becoming a catchphrase that had to be recited verbatim or you could lose your job. It all started when a man tried to pass off a counterfeit twenty dollar bill at a store on the corner of Thirty eighth Street and Chicago Avenue. The alleged crime was reported, the police responded, and the man died after being subdued. Since then, the corner of thirty eighth and Chicago has become something of a shrine to the memory of George and the event that put the corner in the national spotlight. It's now called George Floyd Square, according to the Associated Press. You might think the added attention might be a good thing, even though somebody died. Having a shrine there might attract more people and help local businesses. That's not the case. In fact, two lawsuits have been filed by local businesses against the city for what has been done to the area since the George Floyd incident. The first lawsuit asked for one point five million dollars in damages for neglecting the area. Cement barriers were kept up around the area for more than a year, keeping out customers, and police were a persona non grata in the area following the killing of George Floyd and still are. That lawsuit was replaced by another one. The new lawsuit seeks thirty million dollars in damages and demands the city take over the properties. In other words, they just want out. They claim the city's actions since the George Floyd incident have rendered the area useless. They say the city's actions created an environment that led to lost revenue from retail sales, rentals, and real estate value. The reason for the economic decline is the rise of crime in the area because the area has become a no go zone for police. So the city of Minneapolis tried to be sensitive to the feelings of the local populace by not having a police presence that might trigger unrest. By doing so, they have created more crime in the area they were trying to pacify. Go figure. So, because of the city and the decisions made with the sensitivities brought on by the death of a man with a fake twenty, the area has now become a dead zone. Maybe that's what happens when we're left to police ourselves. While the city says it can't comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said the city understands the challenges that residents and businesses have confronted in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Well, that may not be an official comment on the pending litigation, but I think it reveals a lot about where the city stands on the issue. The city is still blaming the current condition of the area to George Floyd's murder. But the lawsuit isn't about George Floyd's murder. It's about the city's response to it and how it's affected the area in a very negative way. While the death of George Floyd was both tragic and unnecessary, what followed has been even more sad. Civil unrest, deaths of many more people, failed political policy, false accusations of racism, and cancel culture have done more harm to America because of the reaction to the death of George Floyd. Now the very corner of the world where the whole thing began is yet another result of what the episode brought us. There was a right way and a wrong way for America to respond to what happened to George Floyd. The activists clearly got it wrong, and the local law enforcement in many of the cities where unrest developed got it wrong, and the Democratic policy makers got it wrong. It's time the city of Minneapolis admits it got it wrong and does what's right to not just bring civility back to the corner of 38th in Chicago, but to the whole city. I doubt that will happen. We're all more familiar with the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, now that he ran for vice president of the United States. The Democrat leadership in the city and state would suggest they'll keep doing what they believe will look right for the agenda instead of doing what will be right for the safety and well-being of the citizens.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Let's go back through the listening tube for this.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Whoa, whoa, whoa, lady. I don't have time for any history this week.

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The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

As I read these words to you, I can't help but notice how important literacy is to what I do here on the listening tube. Luckily for you right now, literacy isn't an issue because I'm talking to you. But I wrote what I'm saying and I'm reading it right now. My guest this week is an expert in literacy. I was lucky enough to have Dr. Emily Sherwood spend some time in the listening tube. As you might imagine, I was interested in her viewpoints on a variety of literacy-related topics. How do you characterize the state of literacy in America today?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Uh, there are lots of words I could use. Um, I think underprepared is probably the best word that I could come up with at the moment. We have a lot of students who are falling through the cracks in literacy in the U.S. Scores have dramatically dropped since about 2010, 2011. And that has been a global, this also has been a global trend as well. It's not just in the United States. But we have a lot of students who are getting into middle high school, even graduating without basic reading skills. Reading stamina is very low. That means that students are not able to read for long periods of time without getting tired. We're just facing a lot of challenges in the literacy world right now.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Well, I've I've always had low reading stamina myself, so I'm not sure if if there's an outside cause to that. But it now, this may sound like a political question, but I I don't think it is. But under the Biden administration now, immigration has introduced to our schools a challenge we may not have ever seen before. People from all over the world have come here. Many of them speak other languages. Assuming they all stay here, what course of action do schools need to take to cope with that new dynamic?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Okay, well, the actual um immigrants, you know, have been coming throughout our society for long periods of time, really through the beginning of the country, but we are seeing an increase, particularly of school-aged children. It used to be mostly single males who came, um, and now it's a lot of families. The the United States does have a program set aside for this. Pretty much every school that has students learning English has to have what's called an English for speakers of other language programs, or sometimes it's called ESL, English for speakers, or English as a second language. There are different terms, ELs, English learners, but every state and every school has that program. Problem is this program has not been funded, and there's also a huge lack of resources. Um, there's a huge lack of teacher training, particularly with core teachers, teachers who are teaching these children outside of that one class, and it just hasn't been a priority. And this country just has not prioritized that in the education system, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Now I spent about a decade living in uh Southern California, and of course, there were there's there's a very large Hispanic population there, and I know a lot of schools, my you know, my kids went to school with kids who spoke English as a second language. But now we have all these other different these kids who speak a vast number of different languages. Is that program even set up to accommodate these other languages?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

The program really isn't set up, period. It was it was kind of just put in place, particularly in places that do not have a lot of English language learners. It's kind of just block, you know, they don't really a lot of places don't even have a curriculum, or if they have a curriculum, it's not very good. There's not been a lot of attention in the scholarly world. There's starting to be, but a lot of but there has not been, and a lot of it's been politicized as well. There's starting to be a lot of their research on this. As far as language acquisition, because this is kind of a specialty of mine, it is harder for students who are from language groups that are not close to English to learn English. For example, I worked in China for three years. Um, Chinese students, it's hard to learn English because it's just so different. The same with, you know, some of the Asian languages, some of the African languages. However, sometimes those students have benefits in the forms of you know, parent education or socioeconomic differences. Yeah, the program needs a lot of help. That's all I can say. And it really depends on where you are. When I was in Tennessee, it was actually pretty solid. And especially in my school district, we had very good results. It was very well organized. Here in South Carolina, it it's a it's it's not organized at all. It's very poorly managed. So it just depends on where you are as well, because as you know, the um the states largely control education.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I would imagine that's very frustrating for the teachers who are put in charge of helping these students.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

It's incredibly frustrated and there's a huge teacher, well, there's a huge teacher shortage period in this country. Both for, you know, students, teachers of teaching English and for just teachers in general. There's a huge teacher shortage, and that's part of it is that teachers don't have the education, the training, and the resources they need for anything. When we're talking about underserved students, you know, special needs is also a big issue. We have a lot of students in special education, and a lot of these students are starting to have socioemotional needs, which is a totally different bear than what teachers have been dealing with, you know, um, as far as learning disabilities and that sort of thing. So it's a very hard time to be a teacher right now.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Well, I've always given teachers a hard time. So I I guess I I could have a little bit more sympathy for them. Uh now uh social media has exposed a lot about people's literacy, spelling, grammar, there are acronyms I don't understand. Punctuation seems to have gone by the wayside. What effect has social media been when it comes to our understanding of what literacy is?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

So in the literacy world, there's actually a whole branch of studies called this. It's called new literacies or digital literacies. And there's a whole, I don't want to say it there's kind of a controversy over what how much, you know, how much computer-based literacy is good and how much we should be using it. Uh the research shows that it's hard to distinguish between social media and just use of smartphones. But the research shows that both socioeconomic problems and educational problems, in other words, reduced test scores, started about the time that the um iPhone came out in 2011-2012 smartphones. That was a big um thing. Social media has been blamed on, you know, the socio, especially on um socio-emotional needs for children and on lack of literacy because students are just not reading anymore. Um so we have this population that, you know, their main form of reading are these very short text, you know, like you said with the acronyms and so forth. That's not how people talk in regular life, and it's not how people do in the professional world. So um there is a big concern in the education world about the use of social media. And then there are of course people who welcome and who say this is just, you know, another another form of literacy that, you know, as part of the evolution of technology, I guess, you know, that this is the new way of reading, and that's that's what people are going to have to get used to.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Right. I get, yeah, social media and cell phone usage, I guess, would be very similar in that respect. I I hadn't really thought about the cell phone part of it as well. But yeah, that's probably where it all began using the acronyms and and abbreviations and things like that, because we just didn't want to type everything out.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Well, and I worked in China for three years during COVID, which is a whole nother story. I'm gonna write a book about it. But China is way more into cell phones than we are, and they are having an incredibly difficult time with young people. Um, they're starting to see a lot of socio-emotional problems they've never seen. They're starting to see a lot of academic problems. And so their government has just limited the amount of smartphone use a child can use. I mean, they they can do that as they're you know an authoritarian country. They just limit it, I think it's three hours a week now because they recognize that this is a big problem.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

But yet they can they can let us use TikTok for as many hours as we want, right?

unknown 25:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Well, yeah, I mean they I don't think they care about that.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Now, as you had mentioned, literacy rates in the United States have been suffering, as you said, since around 2010, they've been falling. Now, the some of the latest statistics I could find on it were from 2020, over four years ago, and it said literacy rates were about 40 percent in general in our schools, 30 percent in urban areas. The rates are based on a grade level basis. So I my question is: were people smarter when the grade levels were established, or are we just failing our students?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

That's kind of a loaded question. There are multiple reasons. Um first of all, grade levels, what has been expected on each grade level, particularly at the lower grade levels, has increased, particularly in primary school, like from K to three. What you know, first graders are expected to do now is is like second or third graders were expected to do, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So we've increased a lot of it. Okay, so we've we've increased the the level they need to reach in order to rigor has been increased somewhat.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

That happened under George W. Bush and shortly after that, um, kind of the no-child left behind error. However, we also just have not we we've been failing students. Um every state also has different standards. For example, in the south, they tend to be a lot lower than in the north, and we're still seeing the same thing. We're still seeing students, you know, we're still seeing this drop. So I don't think that could totally be explained by higher standards. There is an actual problem, and and any teacher out there will tell you that there's an actual problem.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

The Department of Education was established in 1980. What has been done on the federal level to improve our illiteracy rates? You you've said many uh on a number of occasions here that the states control education, but has the federal government done anything to help?

SPEAKER_01 27:19

The federal government has done some things to help certain populations. For example, special education is largely funded through the federal government. They also do things like send technology. They um, you know, they have funds for technology, they have funds for lower income students. That's that's a big deal in some of these schools that don't have much funding. They do give a little bit for ESL, but it's honestly it's not enough to even consider doing much. That's the main as far as improving education, that's their main contribution, is just for these special populations. The main thing that they've done is just increase testing. That's been their main, their main drive. They they believe the idea is anyway, and it's a nice idea, is that if you put more and more accountability on teachers and students, they will perform better. So, you know, the main thing that they've done is they've increased accountability. You think of no child left behind. That was their main thing, is that they started doing a lot more testing, particularly and and also looking at the subgroups. For example, EESL was never a subgroup. Um, special ed was considered a subgroup, but it was never included in the in most states, it was never included in the accountability. Now it is. So they have done that kind of thing. And that could have that on it, in all honesty, that could affect test scores as well. But as far as actually improving education, there's been very little. In 20, I want to say 2012, and I could be getting these dates wrong. There's a big push for response to intervention or RTI. Um, and that had to do with special education. And we were hoping, I was hoping anyway, that that would really reform things. Um, the idea of response to education, intervention or RTI is that you catch students early when they're struggling with reading, particularly in grades K to 3. You can prevent special education in some cases, um, which makes me wonder, you know, how accurate special education really is. If you're just saying a student has a disability, but you can prevent it for learning disabilities. And I was really hopeful about that. And in Tennessee, in some districts, particularly the district I was in, you did see a big difference, particularly in early reading. It was pretty phenomenal. However, RTI has not been implemented very well. Here in South Carolina, it's not really being implemented at all. So again, it was a good idea, but there wasn't the funding, the resources, and the guidance to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

And I'm sorry, RTI stands for what again?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Response to intervention. It was developed at Vanderbilt University. It's a husband and wife team, Dr. Fulkes, F-U-C-H-S. Um, they developed it.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

I've done 125 episodes of the listening tube so far. An episode is generally a little more than 5,000 words. I often tell stories or share anecdotes that relate to my personal experiences. To the tune of around 700,000 words so far, now that I think about it, but people seem to enjoy hearing stories if they're told in an entertaining way. Except for my wife, who's heard them, let's just say more than once. Does storytelling play a role in literacy?

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Absolutely. Storytelling is very powerful, and um, particularly with cultures in Asia and in Latin America, it is the primary way of transmitting language. So, in many homes um in this country now, that we're a very diverse country all around the world, storytelling is primarily the way that we transmit languages. And of course, you know, those stories being written down has given students another way to use those stories.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

And how is storytelling valuable to literacy?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Well, literacy has a basis in oral language. Students must have a strong oral language before they can read. Storytelling can be a very good precouser to literacy. Also when written down, um, it can be very engaging to students. It often has to do with students' culture, which research has shown that that is helpful if instructional materials are aligned to the student's culture. But I remember teaching, you know, I remember teaching stone soup to mostly Latino students, which is an Asian folk tale, and they just loved it because it was so engaging.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Well, does a child get more comprehension from reading a story or hearing a story?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

We're talking about two different skills here. So many students have good listening comprehension, but they have poor reading comprehension. So there has been this idea, and this is another reason why education is suffering, because it's a pretty prevalent idea, especially in the special education community, that you know, we're in a world with technology. So why do students really need to know how to read if they can get everything recorded? Problem with that is reading does something to the brain that listening does not. Primarily with world with understanding the world, world knowledge, and with vocabulary. It's very hard to get the same level of vocabulary knowledge and world knowledge with listening than than it does with reading. So it's important that students read. You know, whether they comprehend better with listening or reading, that depends on the student. I know I do better with reading, but uh I'm sure a lot of students in today's day and age do better with listening. But reading as a as a form of gathering information in some ways is superior to listening.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Is the English language basically the same as it has been for the past hundred years or 50 years? I know slang words come and go, and and that's groovy, but is the language still fundamentally the same?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Um, a lot of the vocabulary is different. You know, we use a lot more shortened words. There's also new words that have come into our vernacular. And also English is starting to get a lot of influences from other languages, particularly Spanish, particularly some of the Asian languages, particularly in the cities. Now, that being said, I think it's similar enough that you know we could all read a text from 100 years ago and understand it. It's not it's not totally foreign yet, but it is becoming its own dialect that is different than what it's been in the past.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

As an evolving language, you can't ignore the counterculture and the slang that they bring. Every generation will have its own way of expressing itself. Over the years, I've seen a lot of the black community develop an entirely different set of slang words, not colloquialisms like the the different European communities used to have, but on a more broad scale. Back in the day, we we called it jive. And it it was it was even parodied in movies and on television programs. Then a California professor proposed Ebonics as a way to legitimize the and differentiate black language from conventional English. I understand the attraction of slang, but is it more of a detriment to the literacy of black children?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Okay, this is something I'm not an expert in. However, I can tell you based on the research I've done and what I've read, uh, my belief on it. So in black English or African American English or Ebonics, there there are multiple different words for terms for it. It's usually spoken in the community, but there is the expectation that in school and in formal situations and in writing that you will use formal English. If that occurs, it is just like a bilingual child who has uh bilingualism has some really good benefits to the brain to social to socially, and it's and it's good actually. It helps benefit students. The problem is if that if that language, if if English is not taught to be written in the formal English, you know, if the students not acquire formal English, that becomes a problem. If schools do a good job, that should not be a big problem, particularly since that that language is mostly oral, it should not be an issue. However, we all know that schools, you know, are fallible.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Okay, because I know, like from my own personal experience, the language you hear in your home, you often assume is the correct language. It wasn't until I went to broadcasting school that I learned that some of the words I was using weren't even words at all. So, like the one example would be outen, like to outon a cigarette. You cannot outen a cigarette. You must put out a cigarette. Haint, H A I N apostrophe T. Haint was a word that was commonly used in my household and and by my neighbors too. And I used it once when I lived in Southern California, and someone said, What does that even mean? And I I literally had to think about it, and it haint is uh the the definition I came up for it was uh a solicitation of agreement. Like the sky's blue, haint. I guess my point is if if you if you're only hearing incorrect language in the home, how how difficult is it to translate that into how do you separate your home language from your school language? Is that an issue?

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Okay, this goes into educational psycho language acquisition, um, which is a little complicated. But ultimately, it should not be an issue if you have enough oral language at home and if you have enough knowledge about language. So let's say that a child, you know, is born into a family that speaks African American English. If that child is told a lot of stories, if that child, you know, maybe is read to, um, that child gets a lot of vocabulary, that child should be able to transfer into what we might call standard English. However, if that child does not have a good background, and it's the same with any language, you know, that child could struggle in school.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Okay, so in a in many ways, then a child's literacy is not only dependent upon what the child learns in school, but also uh how their parents speak to them.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Absolutely. So um, if you're ever really interested in this, there's a good article, and it's very controversial, uh, particularly in this day of age, but it was published in the 1970s called The Great Catastrophe. And um these scholars looked at children from different social backgrounds and parent education, you know. And what they found was that there was a 40 million word gap between children largely for professional families and children whose families were on welfare.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Um you say 40 million?

SPEAKER_01 39:01

I said 40 million. They believe that by the time the child goes to school, it's a 40 million. They've they've heard not this, not I mean, the words may repeat, but you've heard 40 million words over time, less. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

And of course, there are lots of reasons for that. You know, parents are very stressed who are from low-income families, they may have to put their child in suboptimal child care sometimes. I mean, there are lots of reasons for that. But it's particularly oral language, particularly hearing language at very young is is very important.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Which do you consider more valuable to read? Fiction or nonfiction?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Again, that's kind of a loaded question. Um the research shows that for understanding the world and for succeeding in life, nonfiction is more valuable. That's one reason why No Child Left Behind really pushed it for national text. Um, because they found, and there was some research behind it. Um, we can question you know how thorough the research was. But they the belief was that you know, in real life at a job, you're going to need to know how to understand informational test texts like manuals or you know, documents, much more than they're gonna ask you to read a novel.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

But a novel is probably a lot more fun to read.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Okay, that's where I was going. Students also need to read for fun, you know, to acquire vocabulary and read things that they like, and many times fiction does that.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Well, certainly uh Harry Potter outsells the encyclopedia.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Oh, absolutely.

unknown 40:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

And we want children to read, you know, whatever they want to read. But there is a concern still, and if you look at the test scores, which are usually not broken down into informational texts and literacy, you would have to ask for it. But generally, um, children have an easier time reading fiction texts than informational literacy. So it's and our world knowledge is very low. You think about again, I don't want to get into politics, but you think about the level of misinformation that's out there on either side. That's largely because children don't people don't know how our government works, how things work. And if particularly informational texts would help people with that.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

So then I guess it would it would just depend on where you are in your educational level and what your goals might be moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Yeah, I would say that. I mean, anytime that you read it's good, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, whatever. But I feel like to be prepared for life and to know about life, usually it's informational. Of course, we do have things like historical fiction, you know, and that sort of thing that that can that can also help students.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Now, as a reading specialist in China, what words were they most interested in knowing? Slang, profanity, technical words? What what do you what do you recall from from that?

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Oh, that's a very good question. It was during COVID and it was kind of a crazy time. So I don't think I really had the the usual experience. But they were very interested in words that had to do with American culture, you know, like slang or pop pop culture words.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

What might be some of the results of a continuously declining literacy rate and what can be done to prevent it?

SPEAKER_01 42:36

The results are largely economic. If you look at you know, some of the developing countries, particularly in Latin America, particularly in Africa, one thing that they have in common is very low levels of education. So our economy is really at risk if we continue to go this path. And Reagan actually noticed that in the 1980s. He called in a nation at risk, and that kind of became the whole school academy valid accountability movement. But economically and also I believe politically, as I was saying before, when you can't read, when you can't find information yourself, you couldn't believe anything. And so I feel like there are major, there are major implications both for our country, really, for the survival of our nation and the quality of life that that we want to have.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

You can learn more about Dr. Sherwood on her Facebook page. You can also find her book, Not Just Pirates, which is not just a book to read, but a book about reading and a book to improve reading skills. Thanks to Dr. Emily Sherwood for spending some time in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2024. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Subscribe today or text me from the homepage. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for the I'll add infinitum.