At the end of the day, you can't force people to like something, even if you try to make it super fun. Hot take, but I think it's more important to teach kids how to read than get them to enjoy it. They can't enjoy it anyway if they don't know how.

I did some substitute teaching and at some high schools, many of the kids can barely read or write. Yet they’re still encouraged to go to college.

One interesting aspect of reading is that “background knowledge” plays a big part in reading comprehension. Kids from wealthy backgrounds tend to have more exposure to knowledge and information not just in school, but in their home life too.

They’re just making a joke about how sociology (maybe humanities in general) is easy.

Yeah, even a lower ranking college is too hard for some students.

The school itself definitely sold itself on being a place that helped young black students succeed. But yeah, I doubt the colleges took race so strongly into account when accepting students. Sure, a lot of colleges want to say they’re diverse, (whether they actually care is another discussion) but a highly accomplished student being black is at best a bonus to them, they’re not going around enrolling under qualified black kids.

Plus every high school has different academic standards. How are you going to know that an A from this one school means nothing? Some schools have a reputation but not all are well-known.

Yeah, at a shitty high school, a reasonably intelligent kid can make good grades without a lot of effort. The numbers look good, but they didn’t learn a lot.

Grade inflation is a common problem in American public schools. The academic standards are so low that any reasonably intelligent student can get a good grade without much effort. A lot of kids pass without doing much work at all.

The tricky part is that a lot of American public schools are pretty bad, and I guess that makes a lot of people not trust the government to regulate private schools.

And for kids who genuinely do want to go to college and have a shot, they get screwed over too. They’re getting a low quality of education that leaves them unprepared for college and thus more likely to drop out. And since many come from households without a lot of education, they don’t realize that they’re not being prepared until it’s (likely) too late.

I feel so bad for those kids. They want to do well, and their parents want them to do well. But most of them aren’t in educated households and aren’t going to realize that they aren’t getting a real education until it’s too late. Really taking advantage of desperate people.