[lbo-talk] U.S. working class: buncha morons

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Doug:
> 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.

True.  I've heard similar complaints from employers who cannot fill
positions or have high turnover rates in positions that require cognitive or
communicative skills.  It seems that there is a growing gap between those
with high and low cognitive/communicative skills and the "disappearing
middle."  As a result, there might be no problem in filling low skill
burger-flipping positions, but there is a problem filling positions that
require intermediate skills because they are generally shunned by the
high-skill folk.

I do not think, however, that the problem is created by the ruling class, as
Carl suggested. I think it is a combination of anti-intellectual culture (I
had my own and my wife's kids in school so I know something about it), and
underfunded public schools whose main function is warehousing instead of
educating.

Wojtek