> It'd be strange and irresponsible if there are - reasonably functional - countries that don't ensure students get certain skills to be able to function in a modern workplace.
A non-zero percent of students come out of school not being able to read or write. A double-digit percentage of Americans are seemingly only being able to read at a level just barely above the absolute bare minimum level that could actually count as being able to read.[1][2] I know Americans are special, but I'd be surprised if the rest of the world is drastically different in this case (it's probably better, but my lived experience tells me many, many people are really bad at reading, and actually getting them to engage or try to extract information beyond the exact words that are on the page, is a really heavy task for them they have real trouble with). Going by the averages of the 2024 results of the PIAAC survey,[3] many places are better, but I doubt they've managed to eliminate that large bottom part which is close to illiterate.
If we already have trouble teaching kids to read, then there should be no surprise we're having even more trouble teaching them to use computers.
Well, to keep this discussion in scope, the illiterate have limited job options, particularly near zero for jobs that require computer literacy. That automatically handles the issue in contention for this context: if someone can't get a job involving computers then retraining isn't even relevant in their case.
Many, many people who are on that level of literacy are in fact working with computers. Ask anyone in L1 tech support what kinds of tickets they get. Many involve people not reading the text directly in front of them.
That sounds highly problematic. Probably why there are so many tech support horror stories. Still, if they can fake it enough to keep that job, then they can fake it enough to adapt to tooling changes. Or wash out and get replaced by another who hopefully understands the tool that their job depends on them using to properly do said job. But again also if the pay is low enough the employer probably doesn't care much about performance anyway.
A non-zero percent of students come out of school not being able to read or write. A double-digit percentage of Americans are seemingly only being able to read at a level just barely above the absolute bare minimum level that could actually count as being able to read.[1][2] I know Americans are special, but I'd be surprised if the rest of the world is drastically different in this case (it's probably better, but my lived experience tells me many, many people are really bad at reading, and actually getting them to engage or try to extract information beyond the exact words that are on the page, is a really heavy task for them they have real trouble with). Going by the averages of the 2024 results of the PIAAC survey,[3] many places are better, but I doubt they've managed to eliminate that large bottom part which is close to illiterate.
If we already have trouble teaching kids to read, then there should be no surprise we're having even more trouble teaching them to use computers.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...
[3] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/do-adults-have-the-skil...