one in seven americans can barely read (can't participate in DU)

[ensho]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-01-08-adult-literacy_N.htm


Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story

A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle.
-snip-
---------------------

[Deja Q]

1. Get them hooked to Harry Potter. J K Rowling claims that's how kids want to read... her books.

Of course, what she doesn't say is that her initials stand for "Just Kidding".

[orleans]

53. is that a picture of mike nesmith? (i probably have the spelling wrong)

the guy from the monkees?

[Occam Bandage]

2. On a related note, 6 in 7 Americans are unable to participate in Free Republic discussions. nt

[Jackpine Radical]

5. That is downright libellous! For shame.

Only two thirds of them are illiterate. The other one third are psychopathic Svengalis who are responsible for programming their lower-functioning brethren. inda like Cheney & Bush.

[saigon68]

24. LIKE THIS SIMIAN?

[Jackpine Radical]

27. Well--yeah.

Like that.

[Blarch]

3. Hmmmmm...

About 12% of the nation thinks we are heading in the right direction, isn't that about 32 million ?

[Juche]

4. The average american reads at an 8th grade level

Hopefully internet penetration will increase that, at least somewhat as that requires alot of reading.

[Cleita]

8. With YouTube these days being forced to read on the internet is getting

less important.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Is that 'average 8th grade level'. or 'target 8th grade level'?

If the former, does that mean that education has improved recently? Or that people typically don't improve in their reading ability after 8th grade?

[GentryDixon]

13. And newspapers write on that level.

[Bill McBlueState]

15. It's probably good

for a newspaper to contain articles that most people can read and understand.

[Greyhound]

19. I think that estimate is highly optimistic. n/t

[Igel]

22. Hardly.

It's taught people that the ability to read longer things, more complex things, is unimportant. Also that learning facts doesn't matter, if the Internet is your long-term memory and Google or another search engine is your brain's retrieval system.

It's not quantity, it's quality, that's at issue.

[moggie]

63. "alot" is not a word n/t

[Juche]

68. Sorry

Go look up supercilious, I'm pretty sure that is a word.

[NightWatcher]

6. holy shit, that's nearly 50%

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think". Hitler said this but in our case "fortune" has nothing to do with it, but instead is part of the plan.

[lumberjack_jeff]

58. This raises the question about our math skills too.

;)

[Deja Q]

7. In seriousness,

How does this statistic get changed?

Can't blame it on PDDs; 1 in every 150 is said to have a PDD. This literacy problem is 1 in every 7. It's sad, but a PDD is ~21 times less frequent a statistic. This literacy problem is mammoth. Even more mammoth than the 8 year old who eats Happy Meals for breakfast, brunch, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, supper, and bedtime snack... which makes sense, the kids - like their parents - can't read the obvious NUTRITION LABEL on the side...

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=obese%20child&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
(there's a visual or 18 if you like having insomnia...)

http://www.ronjones.org/Weblinks/childobesity.html
(good informative site)

And now that I've waddled in my tangent, it's back to the main topic at hand:

"Is our children learning?" Well, not in the 1960s either, it seems...

[ensho]

9. yes, what to do about the situation is the question

nt

[patrice]

10. And of the 6 who can read, Comprehension age is what?

I don't like grade-level, because grade standards seem to be falling.

What do you guess the average cognitive age is for the 6 who can read?

10-12 years old?

[Posteritatis]

48. The comprehension levels are defined in terms of abilities and sample tasks

I hate grade-level standards too, if just because they're so damned fluid from year to year and, as you say, are generally falling anyway.

You can read the standards here:

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/perf_levels.asp

The remaining one is at "below basic," the other six are across the other three levels.

[dkofos]

12. Is are children learning??

[backscatter712]

18. Childrens do learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-3FSUafZqk

[tbyg52]

44. Children will listen. You've got to be carefully taught.

Edited to add that those are Broadway musical references, in case anyone didn't know. And happy that I caught the edit time frame in time to avoid embarrassing myself by quoting one wrong.... ;)

[Digit]

14. I was shocked today by a fellow student

This morning I attended orientation for a vocational class in Greensboro, NC. One of the students told us how she had been laid off, along with many other workers in her company.
She said most of them had been working there for many years and did not have their GED, and now they were finding that jobs required at LEAST a GED. Furthermore, she said that all the programs out there had waiting lists. This is so sad.

I am from Northern Virginia and I never even knew anyone who did not complete high school until I moved down here.
I actually live in Raleigh, but it still astounds me how many people don't bother to complete something which is so essential.

Since I am unemployed, I might check out programs where I can donate some time to programs which teach people to read. These people need help.

[Tindalos]

16. Notice how they blame the individual?

"Harvey cites undiagnosed learning disabilities, immigration and high school dropouts as reasons for the poor literacy numbers.'

Blame illiteracy on the individual, not the system? I call bullsh** on that. Even if an individual has difficulties, they can still learn if resources are available. The biggest problem, imho, is lack of funding.


I knew a guy who couldn't read who actually graduated from HS. They didn't want to fail him in elementary school in case he felt bad, so they just kept passing him. Nobody ever bothered to teach him to read. How sad is that?

I gotta get back into tutoring.

[leftstreet]

20. Nice catch

It's ALWAYS the fault of the victim

x(

[CanSocDem]

25. No...

I think the poster is saying that 'education' went thru a phase where a students self esteem was more important than "reading" skills. What we produced are now illiterate boobs, who don't give a shit. And they're in control.....

[leftstreet]

26. I don't know if that's what the poster is saying

:shrug:

I know that individuals always get blamed by the very system that fu*ks them over to begin with

[Tindalos]

30. That is exactly what I meant.

Obviously my wording was poor. What you said it better.

[Tindalos]

31. Actually I meant the lack of funding and not caring

led to a large number of people who can't read but still got through the system. That was a huge disservice to them. Basic reading skills should be considered essential and it is inexcusable that so little attention is given to ensuring people are literate. Books, tutors, and extra classroom aids would help address the needs of students with disabilities and second-language problems. Funds for such things are often lacking.

As you point out, if the "system" had done a better job educating people, then maybe the last 8 years would have been different.

[BrklynLiberal]

35. I believe that the last 8 years was just the culmination of a longterm effort on

the part of the neocons/conservatives to make sure the school system did not provide an adequate education to most of the population..this way they could do their best to ensure the kind of public that would not realize what was happening around them..and allow something like prez shit-for-brains to get into the White House.

The dumbing down of America was an intentional goal on their part.

The increasing diagnoses of learning disabilities, adhd, etc. allows big Pharma to profit off the diminishing educational system...so instead of improving the educational system, they drug up the kids, and say that is the solution.

[Tindalos]

36. Could be.

I'm not convinced that they did it intentionally, at least not at first. I think the dumbing down was an unintended side effect of their policies that worked in their favour. I'm not sure when they noticed the effect, but it wouldn't surprise me if they've been exploiting it for a long time.

[TCJ70]

28. The only one of those that actual applies to an individuals choices is...

...dropping out of high school. That's barely blaming the victim.

[Tindalos]

33. The other two are individual traits/circumstances largely beyond the person's control.

If someone has a disability or needs extra help due to language difficulties, then resources should be available to help them. Other countries, such as Canada, take in higher numbers of immigrants, have higher numbers of second-language students in schools, and yet manage to have a higher literacy rate than the US. I'm not sure how accurate it is to compare literacy rates between countries but I find it odd to defend illiteracy by saying that someone didn't learn to read because they spoke another language, or had a disability.

Imho, the article is arguing that it is too difficult to teach them and the "system" just can't be bothered to make the extra effort. Maybe your interpretation was different. To me it sounds like they are saying "If these people only spoke English or were 'normal' like us, then they'd be easy to teach and we'd have no problem. But they're not so we aren't even going to try." Maybe it's just me, but it does sound like they are blaming the failure of the schools/society/system to teach literacy on individuals (not "victims", please) for something that is largely beyond their control. Even people who drop out often struggle with the system for years and, if their needs had been met, maybe they would have stayed.

[Posteritatis]

50. I don't know if I'd see Canadian literacy rates as much higher

About the same as the US average, maybe, but I don't necessarily think we'd be much better off. The dropout rates in some of the provinces were obscene until not too long ago - thirty percent in Nova Scotia, forty in Alberta, something in those general ranges. They're much lower across the board now (here in HS they've been halved or better, which is .. well, a start), but we've still got our share of problems too. Additional educational resources for students with different needs are a disaster in my neck of the woods, for instance.

While TAing in university a few years ago, I did encounter a genuinely, wholly illiterate student who was a born-and-raised Anglophone local. He literally couldn't form a coherent sentence, even though he could hold his own in class discussion. It was baffling, depressing and frightening all at once.

Also, for the record, I do see some "blame the victim" happening there, but I'm not sure if I see it with the same force as you do; there's a distinction between "this problem is caused by the individual's traits A, B and C, which are his fault," "this problem is society's fault," and "this problem is caused by the individual's traits A, B and C, which could be his fault, not his fault, etc." There's a combination of those there; for instance, an undiagnosed learning disability is definitely a problem with the individual, but it's also sure as hell a problem with parents, schools, physicians, etc., who failed to suspect and diagnose it. Dropouts happen for a variety of cultural and economic reasons, sometimes with damned good cause, but there's also people who drop out because skool sukx lolz.

Going by the study, fifteen percent of the American population is functionally illiterate. That's far too big a pool of people to say "society's to blame, not the individual!" or vice versa, because there's going to be a lot of cases where one's definitely at fault, a lot where the other's definitely at fault, and a third chunk where they both are.

[Tindalos]

57. Your right about the literacy rates.

For some reason, I thought there was a greater difference between the countries. Mea culpa for not checking before posting.

I may be reading too much into the article about personal blame. That was just how it struck me when I first read it. It is, as you point out, a very complex issue. I just wish more energy was put into fixing the problems. Imho literacy, and education in general, are too often given low priority.

[Posteritatis]

65. Definitely agree

There definitely needs to be a lot more done about literacy, though. I may be biased as I'm trying to head into the field, but I pretty much do consider education to be society's silver bullet. It figures, of course, that there isn't another such bullet for de-breaking education; so many other things are part of the problem that it's daunting to even figure out where to start. (Well, okay, taking NCLB out back and shooting it with a conventional bullet's a good start, but after that, I mean.)

And I'm not wholly sure about the literacy rates myself; I wouldn't mind seeing a study like this done in Canada, since we do that silly claim-100%-literacy thing too, and I know that's not accurate.

[Gwendolyn]

64. How is that statement you quoted in post #16 blaming the victim?

Trouble areas need to be identified before you can solve an issue or pervasive problem. All that quote identifies is where resources and funding should be applied.

Canada may take in a higher number of immigrants but I'll hazard a guess that most of the incoming already speak one of the two official languages. People arriving from Haiti, Morocco, Egypt, etc... already speak French and so are assimilated much quicker. You certainly won't find large populations of people who are only functional in a third language.

Edited for typo. :dunce:

[Tindalos]

67. I said they were blaming the individual, not victims.

To me, it sounded like they are attributing the difficulties to the individual, rather than focusing on how the system can address the problems. That's how I interpreted it but maybe I misread it.


FYI, Canada has diverse languages and the population is concentrated into a few areas, not spread evenly across the country. It's probably true that many immigrants speak English or French before they arrive, but that doesn't mean they are fluent. There is still the need for ESL programs. Chinese dialects are the third most common language in Canada. Based on the 2006 census:

A majority (70.2%) of the foreign-born population in 2006 reported a mother tongue other than English or French. (Mother tongue is defined as the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census.) Among the foreign-born who had a non-English, non-French mother tongue, the largest proportion reported Chinese languages (18.6%), followed by Italian (6.6%), Punjabi (5.9%), Spanish (5.8%), German (5.4%), Tagalog (4.8%) and Arabic (4.7%).

The Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver census metropolitan areas (CMAs) were home to 68.9% of the recent immigrants in 2006. In contrast, slightly more than one-quarter (27.1%) of Canada's total population lived in these three CMAs.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/071204/dq071204a-eng.htm

[Gwendolyn]

69. Sorry, it was someone else who mentioned the word "victim."

It's difficult to get much of a sense of tone from that article since it seems to be a quick summary of the findings.

Your info regarding Canadians pretty much emphasizes my own perceptions. I grew up in Canada as an allophone and went through both the French and English school systems.

It's true that most people hunker down near the border due to extreme weather conditions that render much of the country uninhabitable. This might be a reason people assimilate quicker.

My observations concerning the high number of immigrants from the Middle East also counts, as many from these areas of the world do speak a beautiful, lilting French, and at least some speak English as well. It's difficult to find Europeans that don't at least have two languages, and while this may label me as racist, Chinese communities tend to place a high value on education in general. I may be wrong, but it seems that the problems of literacy in the US with regard to immigrants could be at least partially attributable to high illegal immigration which can lead to isolation, along with the issues of funding you raised.

[BlooInBloo]

17. And that's according to an American lowest-possible-hurdle definition of "read".

EDIT: According to a reasonable standard, something like 6 out of 7 would fail.

[hfojvt]

21. is it fair to assume

that in this study they are factoring out adults who are blind, adults with mental disabilities (Down's syndrome, brain injuries from car accidents, Alzheimer's patients, etc.)?

Of course, many blind people can read Braille.

[lpbk2713]

23. This explains why the freeper website is so basic and rudimentary.

The FR Admins have to keep it as simple as possible.

[nc4bo]

29. Exactly what I was thinkng. nt

[wildbilln864]

32. I'd almost bet a good number of those live in my area....

Hell they can't even count change yet they voted for bush and wanted McCain as Prez! :banghead:

[BrklynLiberal]

34. I heard that statistic this AM on the radio and was stunned.

The repukes have been doing a great job of dumbing down the country...

This is a tragedy. Our education system is going down the tubes...

[nolabels]

37. Not being too terribly literate has never stoped me from poting here

:hurts:

[L0oniX]

62. and just look how well Jeffk does...

http://www.somethingawful.com/hosted/jeffk/

[leftofthedial]

38. in a related story,

22% of Americans think George Bush is a good President.

[tbyg52]

39. Patch the adults as much as possible, but for the future, catch 'em young.

Books, books, books to children. Parents to read to them, if possible, but, if not, HEAD START!

[BlooInBloo]

42. Yup - the game's basically over by the time they're 10-12 years old.

[AdHocSolver]

40. See Spot. See Spot run. Oh, oh, oh! See spot run.

This is Dick. This is Jane. See Dick and Jane. Oh, oh, oh!

This is Puff. Puff is a cat. See Puff run. Oh, oh, oh! See Spot run. See Spot and Puff run. Oh, oh, oh!

This is little sister Sally. See Sally run. Oh, oh, oh!

[tbyg52]

43. I'm not sure what your point is, but

there are lots better children's (or adult's primer) books than that.

I know - I was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to buy them for me (although looking back as an adult I think it was a stretch for them), and did, and read them to me. Bless them.

Edited for the apparently inevitable stupid typo. Don't blame my parents, blame my aging fingers. ;)

[AdHocSolver]

52. Education in the US is so dumbed-down (for many reasons) that it is no surprise so many can't read.

The Dick and Jane readers are merely one example of why so many Americans are functionally illiterate and essentially uneducated in all areas of knowledge.

Dick and Jane were in vogue when I was in school many years ago. I remember being bored out of my mind reading and reciting that mindless pap. I became, for all intents and purposes, a mental drop out, from the third through the seventh grades. In middle school, I had a couple of teachers who challenged me mentally. Same situation in high school. Fortunately, I had several good instructors in college. The rest of my years in elementary, middle, and high school are one big blur of boredom.

The brain is like a muscle. Use it or lose it. The biggest fault with education has been that students' minds have atrophied from lack of exercise. Rote learning may work well for memorizing multiplication tables, but not for learning and understanding history, politics, economics, or any number of other subjects. Multiple-choice tests, to which much of teaching is geared, are, for the most part, a joke. El-hi education in this country is either boring, irrelevant, or both.

I got a degree in education and taught school for a couple of years. Except for a couple of really good education professors, I learned first hand why education is so screwed up in this country. The professors who teach the teachers "how to teach" are dim bulbs who are by and large mental drones. The people they graduate are products of the same system that they come to work in and many are unable to break the mold that they find themselves in. Those who understand the problems and try to improve the system will often come up against an administration that will see any "innovation" as a threat to their authority. Principals and department heads as well as boards of education will often have political agendas and will fight to maintain control of their turf. Politics is every bit as ruthless in the school systems (and higher education) as in the corporations and government.

My kids who are in college complained about the same lack of challenge and the boredom in school that I experienced, and that I saw in my students when I taught school. I tried to make my classes more relevant and more interesting to my students with mixed results. Many of the students responded positively to my "innovations", but a lot of them, especially at the high school level, were acclimated to the "system" and didn't want to be challenged. They were quite satisfied to bumble through until they were paroled, er ah, graduated.

[tbyg52]

56. Thanks for amplifying.

You're right about rote learning and memorization - there are very few cases in which that is the best or only way to learn something. I've spent my life avoiding memorization as much as I could, because I dislike it.

You're right about school, now that I think back. It kinda rolled right off my back, though, because I simply snuck paperback books when I was bored, and my teachers pretty much let me.... ;)

[fla nocount]

41. They try to participate here. Would you like a list? n/t

[Odin2005]

45. This is simply because most people hardly ever read anything anymore.

They have their asses slouched in from of the Boob Tube instead. People's range of vocabulary seems to have shrunk since my grandmother was my age as well. Newspaper articles and political speeches seem to have been richer is Latin-derived and Greek-derived vocabulary back then compared to now (so much so that George Orwell companied about the overuse of Latin and Greek-derived words). I get told constantly by people that I "use too many big words". :eyes: My grandmother grew up in a poor farm family during the Depression and she is more literate and has a richer vocabulary then most of my peers.

[tbyg52]

46. >> They have their asses slouched in from of the Boob Tube instead.

That was me, from childhood. I also had a book in my hand. I guess I was an early multitasker....!

Actually, no. The TV was background noise, to be paid attention to if something interesting/urgent came up. My parents (neither of whom graduated college) treated it the same way. (Well, yeah - they taught me!)

[Posteritatis]

47. The bar for "below basic literacy" in this study is *incredibly* generous

If someone can handle a TV schedule or compare a couple of prices, they qualify as one of those six in seven. Someone able to hack a modern newspaper, even the more dumbed-down ones, would probably be 'intermediate' or 'proficient' by its standards. That means that other fifteen percent are really lost in the literacy department, to the point where Youtubian English would be beyond them.

I found the definitions they use here:

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/perf_levels.asp

Methinks folks need to do a bit of thinking about what constitutes literacy in this day and age. Obviously the 100% figure claimed officially by the US (and most other western countries, I'd assume) is just patently false, but God forbid people actually recognize that fact... oy.

(I suppose I should be glad that I've only encountered one genuinely illiterate person in school at the college level so far. Then again, I had to grade his assay at an essay...)

[moggie]

66. 40% of Americans read one book or less per year

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/

To me, that almost qualifies as clinically dead.

[Catherine Vincent]

49. Lean on me....

Clark: "You tried it your way for years. And your students can't even get past the Minimum Basic Skills Test. That means they can hardly read!! http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechleanonme1.html

[reggie the dog]

51. many of these people post

over at freeperland

[BR_Parkway]

54. Now we know who those people are that still support Shrub - they've

got no way to get info about him except what the squawking box and Rush tell them - how could they believe anything else.

[earth mom]

55. I'm always shocked at how few homes have books.

:wow:

[supernova]

59. How many of these people are conservative?

I don't mean their thinkers who inhabit AEI and the rest. I mean the average joe vote who just pulls the R level unthinkingly.

[skooooo]

60. BOOKS ARE FOR LOOSERS!!!

[L0oniX]

61. No wonder Bush can only read My Pet Goat.

[LWolf]

70. And in related news:

This year's survey came back: 83 % of my incoming middle school students "HATE READING."

They've been taught to decode. They don't comprehend well, because they also "hate thinking," and because their idea of "reading" is to say the words really fast, aloud or in their heads, and call it "done" so that they can move on to either talking to friends or something electronic. Ipods, games, tv, etc..

And, of course, when I make them accountable for both reading and thinking, I'm not their "favorite," lol.

Don't get me wrong. They like me, because they know I like them. They just don't like working with me, because of all the reading and thinking.

When American culture values reading for itself, as more than a chore that must be endured, more adults will be literate.