>Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> quoted CG&C:
>> · 50% of the U.S. population aged 16-65 is functionally illiterate.
>
>This statistic is, ironically, based on a rather poor reading of the
>NALS report from which it's drawn. The real number is significantly
>lower.
>
>See, for example,:
> http://archive.ala.org/alonline/crawford/cf602.html
> http://nces.ed.gov/naal/resources/92results.asp
>
>Hopefully the updated version of the study, due in May of this year,
>will provide clearer data on which to base conclusions.
Well, all right, things aren't quite as bad as that, but they're pretty bad. I'm not feeling very comforted after reading the NCES summary. And looking at some of the samples isn't very comforting either; "level 2" prose literacy requires a reader to locate a basic fact in a simple newspaper article, a skill that was beyond 21% of the population. "Level 4" requires people to paraphrase a simple op-ed article - only 20% of the pop could do that. Just 4% could do a simple interest rate calculation ($10,000 borrowed at x% for 10 years - how much interst would you pay?). Just 21% could figure the cost of an ounce of peanut butter if given the price per pound.
We can obsess about the definition of "functional," but if this is supposed to be a democracy, which requires a certain level of basic understanding, then "functionally illiterate" isn't that much of an exaggeration.
Doug