@Jim: I’m curious how you feel about the K-12 potential of AI – ideally used with human tutors as well. The right AI not only could help spot gaps in kids’ knowledge but also create highly individualized drills. The tutors could offer encouragement and help keep the kids on task. As the challenges of the One Laptop per Chiid initiative showed, tech by itself isn’t enough. You need the humans too! Needless to say, the AI could be used not only to help teachers upgrade their own subject matter knowledge, but also their pedagogical techniques.

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Most of all, I’m worried about society as a whole, but if nothing else, your comments serve as a warning to major publishers. They need to look beyond the elite for markets, and the only way for this to happen is to consider not only companies’ immediate needs but also those of society at large.

Perhaps not reading aloud to children and otherwise encouraging them should be considered a form of child abuse – with special provisions made for families where the parents themselves are illiterate or where they must work several jobs. I know – dream on. But I myself think the parents are as much at fault as the schools. If nothing else, we need to change laws that give parents too much clout at the expense of their children’s education. And, yes, we need tutoring as well as accommodations for non-English speakers. Carrots, too, not just sticks!

Higher standards for teachers colleges would help as well. One problem is that many teaches themselves are not that much into books.

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Improved mass literacy is difficult to achieve. Having taught middle school, where the pressure on teachers to improve student reading and comprehension scores is heavy, I had 32 students in class. The students who are slower readers or who have learning disabilities or ADD tend to create distractions and act out. Non-native English speakers have additional obstacles. Tutoring programs help for sure. I initially thought computers and smart phones would encourage literacy, but dazzling graphics and videos capture attention at the expense of real reading, especially long-form books. Even in good schools, turning the lowest 20% into readers is extraordinarily difficult. They will of course go on to become non-voters, or low-information voters vulnerable to disinformation and demagoguery.

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Excellent points, Jim. Among other things, voters’ ignorance is ultimately one reason for the abysmal quality of so many public officials – including, of course, corrupt ideologues like Justices Thomas and Alito. Trump himself thrives on many people’s ignorance, not just their anger. Improved mass literacy would pay countless dividends in countless ways.

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Gosh, $92 per household per year, what a sad statistic. I didn’t realize my wife and I are such outliers. We spend about that much per month. While our sons and grandson are not so book- or reading-impoverished as the average American, I do doubt that younger generations will value reading as much as my siblings, in-laws, wife and I do. We may be the last literate generation, and America may be entering a post-literate era. A friend who teaches religion and philosophy at the college level says that’s already happened. College students who are sent to a religious college by their parents don’t have very basic knowledge, never heard of Abraham nor Moses nor the three Abrahamic religions. College students I taught could name the seven dwarfs but not more than 2 Supreme Court justices.

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I’m sorry about your VoiceView difficulties, Drew. Let’s hope Amazon will improve the interface. It would also be wonderful if the company once again let sighted people use TTS easily. With AI, TTS can be amazingly good. It should be available on all E Ink devices, not just the Fire.

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Amazon Fire tablet is not the same as Amazon Kindle. Fire does not accept Epub. I need to convert the document

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Here’s an Amazon page with relevant information: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle

Look at the sidebar on the right if the main part of the page won’t help. It discusses procedures for various operating systems. Let me know if this doesn’t solve your problem. Good luck! DR

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I am going crazy trying to get an Epub book onto my Amazon
Fire Tablet. I have read dozens of useless suggestions. One problem is thatg my PC recognizes the Tablet as a Bluetooth Device. Calibre dos not seem to help.

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https://us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=dc105823b1fcc927218d209b9&id=60e4a9aa4b

Let me know if you have trouble signing up.

Because of my time situation and the death of long-time contributor Chris Meadows (much missed!), TeleRead posts are infrequent right now. But the site is still alive.

Interestingly, we get HUNDREDS of requests each year to write for TeleRead. But they’re just about all from marketers eager to fill the site with junk links. So sad–what the blogging world has come to.

Best of luck with your own blog!

David Rothman

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