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“You don't think much of my chances, do you?"
"Not much," agreed the ex-Minister of Education. "You're a Smyrnian."
"That's no legal bar. I've had a lay education."
"Well, come now. Since when does prejudice follow any law but its own.” —Asimov, Foundation, 1952

Sadly still relevant today.

#Reading#SciFi#Asimov#Politics

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"This month, the OECD released the results of a vast exercise: in-person assessments of the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills of 160,000 adults aged 16-65 in 31 different countries and economies. Compared with the last set of assessments a decade earlier, the trends in literacy skills were striking. Proficiency improved significantly in only two countries (Finland and Denmark), remained stable in 14, and declined significantly in 11, with the biggest deterioration in Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand and Poland.

Among adults with tertiary-level education (such as university graduates), literacy proficiency fell in 13 countries and only increased in Finland, while nearly all countries and economies experienced declines in literacy proficiency among adults with below upper secondary education. Singapore and the US had the biggest inequalities in both literacy and numeracy.

“Thirty per cent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child,” Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, told me — referring to the proportion of people in the US who scored level 1 or below in literacy. “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

https://www.ft.com/content/e2ddd496-4f07-4dc8-a47c-314354da8d46

#Literacy#Numeracy#ProblemSolving #OECD#Reading

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Looking a bit for some #books suggestions. I've been thinking of trying to fill out my #ebooks library more. I need to have a huge collection of stuff I'd be able to access on my tablet (which I can easily charge via solar power) if I lost access to a lot of things (such as Internet...)

What I'd really like to look for more of right now are particularly #Fantasy novels, but maybe a bit of #Scifi as well. But one thing I'd really like to look more fore is the stuff that is less "gritty." I'm tired of so many books focusing so hard on suffering, torture, good people driven bad, etc. More of the stuff where you know in the end the good guys will win and they won't compromise on what they know is right, even if it may be really hard along the way.

Maybe some cozy stuff too?

#Reading