Thing is, you better start teaching them how to read and write!
60% More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate. Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level.
They are many years away from grasping Closures and Curry.
That's a good place to start then, but even better would be to have - you know, like most other places on earth in the developed world - a school system that would ensure basic literacy by the ripe old age of 9 or so.
%age of the population that has left the education system and that classifies as functionally illiterate would be one way to do it. You're not going to get the answer with a written survey though.
Newly arrived immigrants from parts of the world where basic education is 'optional' is a problem as well but the fact that so many people native to a region do not have basic reading and writing skills is a real source of worry in a world that relies on reading and writing for almost all interaction.
Other things that require reading ability are and that are important to a functioning society are voting and the ability to use medication.
It's been a really long time since reading/writing were optional and with the increased reliance on technology to function in society that is only getting more important.
By "measure", I meant a specific methodology that compares, say, the US and western Europe. Or just one country in western Europe. For example, if France had a study that broke results out similarly to https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp
Your implication is that France would simply lack an equivalent to the "Below Basic" group. I doubt this.
Most countries in Western Europe do not have 'home schooling', which is one big differentiating factor here, and those that do in general do not have numbers worth measuring.
I'm sure France has an equivalent group, but I'm also sure that that group would be substantially smaller based on plenty of exposure to French citizens and American citizens.
France has one of the best education systems in Europe and if you've gone to school there it is almost un-thinkable that you would not have achieved at least basic reading and writing skills.
There are people that fall through the cracks of the education system, but even children of illegal immigrants are required to go to school (and it's free).
Marine Le Pen wants to change this by the way, that's double stupid because (1) the chances they will end up staying are fairly large and (2) if they can't read/write they will end up in crime in larger proportions than otherwise.
Homeschooling is a purple trout. The one thing the rather small fraction of homeschoolers are certainly succeeding on is basic literacy. It's things like higher math and science literacy that would be an issue.
(People aren't taking their kids out of schools because they want them to stay uneducated...they are doing it because they disagree with what the school considers education. But they don't disagree about things like knowing the alphabet or how to read or whatever)
Anyway, my guess was that you were probably making forceful claims about anecdata and here we are.
> Anyway, my guess was that you were probably making forceful claims about anecdata and here we are.
Well, that anecdata is based on having spent a lot of time on both sides of the Atlantic and I really can't remember anybody ever in Europe that wasn't literate past the age of 10 and I've met enough people in the USA that were extremely nice but could barely write their own name that I don't feel the need to turn every comment about this subject into a paper complete with citations.
The US does not bother to report their literacy figures to the various global bodies so that makes comparing them a little bit harder than it normally would be but I'm fine to let me personal experience guide me in this, let's be happy this was about literacy and not about world history or geography.
You seem to get a lot of pleasure from these sniping sessions so consider me happy to oblige you as a target.
Thing is, you better start teaching them how to read and write!
60% More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate. Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. They are many years away from grasping Closures and Curry.
Source: http://www.begintoread.com/research/literacystatistics.html