October 31, 2019

America ranks seventh in literacy

Intellectual Take Out -What is America’s international literacy ranking? According to The Washington Post, the U.S. places seventh behind Nordic countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Such a score is obtained by looking at newspaper circulation and readership, library availability, education access, reading scores, and computer usage in each nation.

The Washington Post bemoans the fact that the leading nation of the free world ranks so low in such an important area. And well they should, particularly as the following U.S. literacy statistics are even more alarming:   
  • 14% of adults can’t read.
  • Only 13% of adults can read at a proficient level.
  • 28% of adults didn’t read a book in the last year.
  • 50% of adults can’t read a book written at an 8th grade level.
at

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Will it really benefit us to be 'literate' here in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Seems that everybody (and their mother) wants to either Include, or Exclude certain ideas from Textbooks, literary books, magazines, government studies, etc.

Some even have Book Burnings!

Early Europe had centers of 'literacy'. But it might be argued that they had a pretty 'heavy-handed' way of preventing arguments. And in today's world, our current climate of fear and hate only shifts public opinion toward a society that might prefer ignorance and intolerance over intellectual curiosity and acceptance of 'the other'. And that society would be the one considered Literate.

//OK, a little tongue-in-cheek, but don't discount Orwell.

October 31, 2019 at 11:41 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)