2 "cents" worth:
1. When the issue of success or failure of public education is discussed, I usually wonder and guess that public education never had the purpose of making most students "literate". Lets say 80 or 90 or more percent of public school students graduated from high school fully prepared for college. Where would they go to college ? Many could not afford it or would be turned down because of not enough seats in all the colleges put together for all the students in the country. Then there would be masses of academically smart and frustrated young adults, very good candidates for radicalization.
The purpose of public education has always been to prepare most people to do jobs for which not much literacy is needed. The American officials of education have had to design schools to produce poor or failed literacy in most, otherwise the above dilemma would arise.
2. One can imagine the explosion of television and movie and video and even recorded music now takes up much of the time when many people used to read. If this thread turns up data evidence of diminshed literacy, this might be part of the explanation.
Charles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20031020/2ead4334/attachment.htm>