http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001534.pdf 96.5%of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned
The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:
Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can’t read. Some of this group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and birth spaces on application forms.
Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They cannot write simple messages or letters.
Fifty-five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading. A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.
Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries.
About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is concealed.
Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:
Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can’t read. Some of this group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and birth spaces on application forms.
Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They cannot write simple messages or letters.
Fifty-five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading. A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.
Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries.
About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is concealed.
Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A working definition of immaturity might include an excessive need for other people to interpret information for us.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/03/MN306918.DTL On Wednesday, CNN didn't deny that it knew anything about the war's start date, but a network official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said picking the 19th was merely a good guess. The official said CNN's reporters have a lot of good government contacts and various dates had been tossed around.
Other networks were also making guesses -- a source at CBS said the news department was convinced it was March 20 -- but those musings began roughly two weeks after CNN's "guess" and just before the war started. If your memory can rush back through the fog of war, you'll recall that on March 4, it was diplomacy -- or faltering diplomacy -- that dominated the headlines. It wasn't until more than a week later, when the British suddenly proposed March 17 as a drop-dead date for U.N. Security Council bickering and Iraqi compliance, that a start date was even imaginable.
After that, President Bush announced his now famous 48-hour deadline and, when the 48 hours ran out -- on Wednesday, March 19 -- war started.
War and Globalization
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3117338213439292490&q=Hijacking+Catastrophe&total=29&start=20&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7 Hijacking Catastrophe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SltOy_F6ZII&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YlcpXBFOXA&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZaWh0cJPQ&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8S_vOZqJbE&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GT7ti8LZ6A&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkOtqGNJ8qI&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C02QHS0D44&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YlcpXBFOXA&mode=related&search http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kBX00TR-aA&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jghh00bn_DA&mode=related&search= “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.”
She's present in our country right now, just waiting to make her - to carry out her divine missionhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/27/1454229 CHALMERS JOHNSON: Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge, the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his reflection, and he dove in and drowned. I chose the title, because it seems to me that she's present in our country right now, just waiting to make her -- to carry out her divine mission.
By the subtitle, I really do mean it. This is not just hype to sell books -- “The Last Days of the American Republic.” I’m here concerned with a very real, concrete problem in political analysis, namely that the political system of the United States today, history tells us, is one of the most unstable combinations there is -- that is, domestic democracy and foreign empire -- that the choices are stark. A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.
I’ve spent some time in the book talking about an alternative, namely that of the British Empire after World War II, in which it made the decision, not perfectly executed by any manner of means, but nonetheless made the decision to give up its empire in order to keep its democracy. It became apparent to the British quite late in the game that they could keep the jewel in their crown, India, only at the expense of administrative massacres, of which they had carried them out often in India. In the wake of the war against Nazism, which had just ended, it became, I think, obvious to the British that in order to retain their empire, they would have to become a tyranny, and they, therefore, I believe, properly chose, admirably chose to give up their empire.
As I say, they didn't do it perfectly. There were tremendous atavistic fallbacks in the 1950s in the Anglo, French, Israeli attack on Egypt; in the repression of the Kikuyu -- savage repression, really -- in Kenya; and then, of course, the most obvious and weird atavism of them all, Tony Blair and his enthusiasm for renewed British imperialism in Iraq. But nonetheless, it seems to me that the history of Britain is clear that it gave up its empire in order to remain a democracy. I believe this is something we should be discussing very hard in the United States.