Can we talk about the real issue in this article? Forty-five MILLION people are functionally illiterate. How was I not aware of this? Why aren't people more concerned about this?
I've recently been reading an excellent book, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Tyack). Among its useful points is that the definition of illiterate has been changing throughout the history of school reform movements --- first it was defined as 'can you self-reportedly read?', then as 'did you finish $grade_after_which_you_are_literate' --- where this grade has gone from 1, to 3, to 5, as reformers need to argue that reform movements are necessary. The last year that it was asked whether you could read, 97% of people reported that they could.
It strikes me as a curious problem that we now think 5th grade is necessary for functional literacy. What's being taught between 1st and 5th grades that's necessary for literacy? How are more people entering the 'illiterate' pool? Cannot we just wait for the illiterate pool to die out?
Or perhaps, as some people do, functional literacy is attempting to measure some sort of societal literacy: fluency in a 'common set of core beliefs' of our society. Tyack argues that this 'common set' has always been a low-rigor concept, never well taught by the school system and never well measured, and as such years of schooling and socialization can be used as a proxy for how familiar you are with society. Unfortunately, this societal literacy is sometimes at odds with true literacy: some schools automatically promote societal contingents of one age group to the next grade, regardless if everyone in that group has competency in the current grade.
Thus, I claim the fourty-five million figure was not measured with a sound bar for literacy, and urge a more nuanced view of literacy that celebrates America's success in making its population ~completely literate.
Something on the order of 40 million people are first generation immigrants. Obviously a lot of them are very well educated, but many others come with little formal education and little english. I know there are some literacy requirements for citizenship, but I don't know how much that and education together would cut into the 40 million.
I presume that's some non-trivial part of the "functionally illiterate" in the US. The graph even shows the number rising rapidly which may go some way to explain rising levels of illiteracy in the US.
(And just in case there's any ambiguity, I don't attach any stigma to immigrants coming here being functionally or entirely illiterate. Half of my own ancestors didn't know English when they got here either)
Is it mandatory for U.S. citizens to all have a basic level of education? I wonder because we learned in economics class long time ago about how Asian countries were basically requiring everyone to have a basic level of education to help drive growth in the country.
"Schooling is compulsory for all children in the United States, but the age range for which school attendance is required varies from state to state. Most children begin elementary education with kindergarten (usually five to six years old) and finish secondary education with twelfth grade (usually eighteen years old). In some cases, pupils may be promoted beyond the next regular grade. Some states allow students to leave school between 14–17 with parental permission, before finishing high school; other states require students to stay in school until age 18"
This Wikipedia page also happens to conflict with the article on our literacy rate, claiming it's 99%. Would be interested to see why the difference exists.
Children have to go to school in the USA. But you can't force them to do well. Many kids don't want to learn for various reasons, and not all parents are a part of the process. The blame is then unfairly placed on the school system, and the kids end up quitting school as they get older.
I live in a poor area and I was in line at McDonald's and became angry that there wasn't a long line, but the line was moving very slowly. When I got to the cashier I realized the 20 year old girl they had working could hardly read and that's what was taking so long.
I ended up feeling bad for getting mad at the situation, I can't imagine not being able to read and what she must feel having to work there without being able to.
