Yoshie, there is this old anecdote about a difference between Japanese and American automakers. When a problem is found in the design of Japanese cars, the automaker calls on its engineers. An American automaker in the same situation calls on its lawyers.
All semantic spin you can put on things does not change the basic fact that a large segment of the population has problems performing cognitive and communicative tasks. You do not need a weatherman to tell that this is the way the winds are blowing.
The following anecdotal evidence is in order, because it does not involve stereotypical burger flipping population. When I was in the graduate school at Rutgers, most of the TA, especially in math and science, were foreign-born graduate students, many of them speaking with a heavy accent. The undergrads had often problems understanding them and bitched bitterly, but the administration replied that these are the most qualified people in the respective subjects.
Two observations about cognitive and communicative abilities of the students are in order: (i) foreign born students were admittedly better qualified to teach math and science than native students; and (ii) native born college students had problems understanding somebody speaking their own language with an accent; one might expect that of an uneducated burger flipper, but college students are supposed to have superior cognitive and communicative abilities, at least according to the official standards of admission.
Again, we can debate about possible root causes of this situation, and undoubtedly there are many. My favorites are the pervasive anti-intellectualism and populism that rewards people for looking and acting stupid. This is learned stupidity coming from social and cultural conditioning, as the intellect is one of those things that you either use it or lose it.
Wojtek