Literacy in the United States Totally Explained

Everything about Literacy In The United States totally explained

Rates of literacy in the United States depend on which of the various definitions of literacy is used. Governments may label individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate; but the most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government argues that such adults are functionally illiterate--they can't read well enough to hold a good job. A five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in September 1993. It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in twelve states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", couldn't "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy. These studies assert that 46 to 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the threshold poverty level for an individual.
The World Fact Book prepared by the CIA claims that the U.S. literacy rate is 99 percent, but defines literacy as being able to read and write when a person is 15 years old or older. A person who can only read a few hundred--or even a couple of thousand--simple words learned in the first four grades in school, is only marginally literate.
Jonathan Kozol, in his book Illiterate America, states that there may not be any intentional deception in the literacy figures. He goes on to explain that the census bureau reported literacy rates of 99 percent based on personal interviews of a relatively small portion of the population and on written responses to census bureau mailings. If the interviewees or written responders had completed fifth grade they were considered literate. In the 1970 census, for example, five percent of those surveyed had less than a fifth-grade education. The census bureau considered eighty percent of those with less than a fifth-grade education as being literate and thus calculated a 99 percent literacy rate. In the 1980 and 1990 censuses, most of the census bureau calculations of literacy were based upon grade completion. They used written questionnaires and a small number of home visits and telephone interviews. If a respondent stated that they'd completed less than five grades, they were asked if they could read and write, and their unsubstantiated answer was recorded as a fact. Kozol asserts that this method of determining literacy is certain to underestimate illiteracy for the following reasons:

Illiterate people wouldn't respond to written forms and their family members--also likely to be illiterate--would not either.

Illiterate people are less likely to have telephones than the general public, because of unemployment or low paying jobs.

Illiterate people may distrust anyone knocking on their door or calling on the telephone and seeking information because they're often hounded by bill collectors, salesmen, and others because of their financial condition and because they may have been cheated as a result of their illiteracy. Therefore they can't be expected to give accurate answers to questions asked by census bureau workers they don't know, especially if the answers are embarrassing.

Grade level completion doesn't equal grade level competence.

Those who have no permanent home address, no telephone, no post office box, and no regular job--a condition shared by more than six million adults, most of whom are illiterate--cannot be found by the census bureau in time to be included in the count.Further Information

Get more info on 'Literacy In The United States'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://literacy_in_the_united_states.totallyexplained.com">Literacy in the United States Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.