Hmm, what percentage of the US population is illiterate?

[SyntaxError]

I did a search on google, and I couldn't find any consistent numbers. I saws things ranging from 2% up to 50%... Any ideas? I find it hard to believe we only have a 2% illiteracy rate, but I'm not sure if 50% is accurate either. I'm thinking maybe about 30%?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Since I've lived in Arkansas,

I've met two people who cheerfully admit that they cannot read.

[XemaSab]

5. We have those in California too...

But as far as the OP goes, there's total illiteracy, and not being able to read and make sense of a newspaper article.

Maybe that's the 2-50%? :shrug:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. I've heard that most Americans have a comprehension rate

at about the 6th grade level.

[kineneb]

22. ack. I could read above that level in 3rd grade!

6th grade level, hmmm, explains a lot...

[magellan]

2. If the Freeps are any example, it's at least 30% n/t

[SyntaxError]

4. heh...

I have noticed that they tend to confuse words like their, they're, there, you're and your a lot more than others.

Still curious as to any trustworthy statistics though....

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. I see a great deal of that here

An alarming degree of it, in fact.

[Hippo_Tron]

18. That's HUGH1111

[AdHocSolver]

34. That is the "idiocy" rate. The OP asked about the "illiteracy" rate. n/t

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. Check The National Assessment of Adult Literacy

http://www.nifl.gov/

[SyntaxError]

9. Trying to sort through that now...

heh, I think I'm illiterate...

[stevedeshazer]

15. Read who they are

A veritable snake pit of neo-conservatives.

All appointed by Bush and his crime syndicate.

http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/advisoryindex.html

Not a trusted source, to say the least.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

20. Ick.

Thanks, I never knew that. I've seen their assessments used before and had no idea. <shudder>

[trotsky]

7. Just 1% according to the CIA fact book.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#People

To be honest, I'm surprised. I thought it would be ~3%.

[Kucinich4America]

8. What's Chimpy's current approval rating?

:evilgrin:

[BlueJazz]

11. Good One !!

n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. That approval rating would include the ultra rich who I assume are not illiterate, just greedy.

:shrug: And I don't know why the illiterate are made fun of. That just isn't right.

[Fridays Child]

10. 40-44 million (21-23% of adults) are functionally illiterate.

http://lovetoread.org/literacyfacts.html

[SyntaxError]

21. wow...

I guess it's better than 50% or even 30%, but that's still really high... I couldn't imagine not being able to read.

[BuyingThyme]

26. They seem to define anybody who doesn't speak English as illiterate.

But, then again, I suspect a very high percentage of U.S. immigrants cannot read or write in any language.

[Fridays Child]

27. True, and the standard is actually "functional literacy."

It is nearly impossible to achieve economic security, in this country, if you can't read and write English.

[nancyr]

13. I've read that it's 40%.

[Odin2005]

14. Nearly all Americans are literate to some degree, but...

...there are a lot of Americans that are only literate at an elementary school level and have the same limited grasp of vocabulary.

[Ikonoklast]

16. Who you callin' illiterate?

MY parents are married.

[AdHocSolver]

35. Good one! LOL! n/t

[kestrel91316]

19. My guess is the percentage of Americans who have a reading

comprehension on par with their alleged "educational" level is below 25%.

Very few of the college-educated folks I encounter seem to be able to read at what I consider a college level. And very few of the people with only a HS education can do what I consider "reading" at better than grade-school level.

The majority of my clients appear to be unable to read and comprehend basic medication instructions such as: Give one tablet twice a day until finished. Believe it or not, there are about half a dozen ways to get confused about it if your brain is sub-par, such as: do you mean one half in the morning and one half in the evening? (no); does this mean in the morning and the evening? (gee, i dunno, what do you think?); so I give this once a day for what, 5 days? (no, try again; read the label and my lips); etc.

Oh, then there are the ones who call after they get home and ask what the medication instructions were again (after having been reminded that the label has written instructions) - I guess the effort of looking at the label is a bit much, let alone deciphering the code. Easier to just call and have it spoon-fed by us AGAIN.

[kineneb]

23. ok. I am over-educated...can read Goethe in original German

and read Fraktur script.

...wanders off, shaking head.

ed> and still can't spell in any language...

[AdHocSolver]

37. One has to differentiate between being able to read, and understanding what one reads.

It is unfortunate, but true, that while the literacy rate may be 98 percent, the comprehension rate is far less.

There are many reasons for this. In order to learn how to interpret what one reads, one needs to have access to well-written discourse. Unfortunately, a person is subjected to a lot of gibberish in the mass media. The school textbooks I have seen often are not clear about the topics they are discussing. I have read many nonfiction books over the years, and even disregarding the poor editing, or lack of editing, in many of them (spelling, grammar), I would estimate that half of them have unclear phrasing or disjointed statements whose meaning escapes me. This includes technical books in which I have experience with the subject.

I wouldn't label these clients of yours "sub-par". They lack self-confidence in their ability to properly interpret the instructions, as short as they are, and I sympathsize with them. People today experience a barrage of idiotic verbiage in advertising, politics, mass media, and even in school. They are at a loss in parsing the directions to make sense of them.

Moreover, I know doctors, lawyers, executives, engineers, and even teachers and professors who have as much trouble understanding simple discourse about subjects outside of their area of expertise as the "sub-par" clients that you mention.

[kestrel91316]

38. Good post, yes. But I was unaware that a simple one-sentence

instruction such as "Give one tablet twice a day until finished" or other similar required any "expertise" whatsoever. I call that basic first-grade level reading comprehension.......

[NRaleighLiberal]

24. Well, what percent think that Saddam was responsible for 911?

What is *'s approval rating? How many listen to right wing hate radio? How many purchased and read any books by Ann Coulter or Shaun Hannity?

That should give you a start.

[ileus]

25. I've never known a true illiterate.

[Generic Brad]

28. And don't forget about the pre-schoolers

They are 99.99% illiterate. That demographic is bringing the rest of us down.

[Catherine Vincent]

29. I believe it's mostly the elderly.

I have to confess that my parents are included in that percentage (whatever it is).

My mom had to drop out of school in the 3rd grade, her mother pulled her so that she can work in the fields. She married at 15 and was pregnant a year later and several more years later. She wasn't able to go back to school to get her diploma. My father never went to school. He can't read at all. They are both in their 70's. They grew up in Louisiana and during that time, I don't think sending your children to school was the law. I remember when I was young, they were attending a reading group for illiterate adults at the church once a week but they didn't keep it up. After all these years they recognize road signs to drive and everything but if you put a book in my father's face, he wouldn't be able to read it. He only knows how to sign his name. My mother reads very little. She calls me at work sometimes to tell her what this word is if she spells it. All us kids tried to help teach them as we were growing up but we have grown accustomed to just reading for them.

[treestar]

30. Actual illiteracy is probably very low

But then, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The rate of literate but unable to comprehend anything complex is probably really, really high.

[MindPilot]

31. I had no idea it was that high

I've only ever met one person who I knew was illiterate. I guess the rest were really good at hiding it.

[Igel]

36. Back in the '80s I tutored this guy who was upset:

He could help his kids when they were in first grade, and a bit when they were in second grade, but by third grade they'd long since passed him by, and his wife realized he couldn't even read at the second grade level. He faked some first-grade stuff. So in his late 20s he wanted to learn how to read so he could pass his electrician's apprentice exams: he'd worked as an electrician for years and had faked being able to read, quickly (and deftly) memorizing colors and specs as he heard them read.

But he couldn't read them. Or this sentence. And, after 8 months of coaching and drilling and tutoring, he still couldn't spell or read the stuff we'd started with in lesson one. He was frustrated, I was frustrated, and the damned textbook bounced off the wall more than once. I wasn't his first tutor, to be sure. Native speaker of English. High school graduate. Commercial drivers license for the company van.

He just couldn't learn how to read--phonics flopped, whole-word was even worse. Not dyslexic, as far as I could tell, though it's not like I'm qualified to judge. He just had no memory for orthography.

[ikojo]

32. I do know this...the company I work for provides

insurance for Medicare eligible people. Any communication sent by the company to the members must be written at no greater than an eighth grade reading level.

There is total illiteracy and functional illiteracy. I think those who are illiterate in the US tend to be more functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot complete a job application.

[SoCalDem]

33. Functional illiteracy is probably quite high

I think there are a LOT of people who do not understand sentence structure, cannot write a sensible paragraph, and who probably read at about a 7th grade level..

Is it any wonder why so many people get "taken to the cleaners" by con-men & scoundrels?

Years ago when I interviewed applicants, they had to do an "essay" section called "TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF".. On slow nights, we would take out applications and read them ..for wicked entertainment:evilgrin:.. some of these people were supposedly high school grads and even college.. Those "essays" often read like a 6th grader's diary entry:)

[AdHocSolver]

39. One learns to speak and write based on what one hears and reads.

When I was in the second grade many years ago, the students were taught to read from the Dick and Jane readers. The level of reading was: "See Spot. See spot run." Short, vapid sentences like that, over and over again for an entire semester. This idiotic trash was used to teach reading, using the "look and say" method, to a whole generation (or maybe two) of children. The term used to describe it was "dumbed down" schooling. It was painfully boring.

I was exceedingly fortunate in the second grade to have an elderly teacher who was probably educated with McGuffey readers. She taught the class phonics. It was liberating and saved me mentally. By the time I finished second grade, I was reading at the sixth grade level. In the third grade, it was back to Dick and Jane. I dropped out mentally, and I don't remember much more about school until I started the seventh grade in Middle School.

The brain is like a muscle. You have to exercise it to develop it. When reading and other school subjects are taught using mental pablum, when advertising and much of popular culture is aimed at the lowest common denominator, and when students are looked upon as containers to stuff (with useless "facts") instead of as intelligent beings to teach how to understand and independently interpret data, then you wind up with a society of functional illiterates.

On the other hand, maybe that is precisely what the ruling class wants: a society of functional illiterates who are easily led, cheated, bamboozled, and manipulated.