Does anyone else have difficulty believing these figures? For one thing, it
simply isn't logical that within 20 years literacy figures would drop this
much. Did all literate people die within those 20 years? Of course not.
Gerald Bracey does an excellent job of debunking these rather silly and
manufactured statistics in his column that appears in Educational
Leadership. Anyone interested in viewing some of Bracey's battle against
misinformation can check the archives of the Assessment Reform Network
listserv that can be accessed at <http://www.fairtest.org>
Also, I would suggest that bus schedules and income tax forms are not
perhaps the best kinds of documents with which to measure one's ability to
read.
These figures are another example of how gullible we are when it comes to
reading reports regarding statistics about literacy and education in
general. The literacy rate in this country, according to Karl Kaestle, who
wrote _Literacy in the United STates_, has remained constant for the past
century, even though the definition of literacy continues to change. Our
definition of a literate person continues to become more sophisticated as
new literacies arrive and become incorporated into that definition.
Kaestle, by the way, writes that about 18 percent of the population is
illiterate. But included in that 18 percent are people who have a cognitive
impairment. The largest portion of that 18 percent is made up of people who
are literate in another language, but not literate in English.
For an interesting study of literacy in America, I would suggest Kaetle's
book and also Cathy Davidson's book _Reading in America_ .
Nancy
At 10:59 PM 12/26/00 -0600, you wrote:
>During the Second World War, the American ability to read, which was
astonishing, unbelievable and unprecedented in world history was
substantially deconstructed in the schools. If you look at the figures, not
from the state education department test, but from the Army general
classification scores, the difference between America in 1940 and in 1950 is
a planetary difference. It is as though it isn't the world any longer. Let
me simply take the black population for example,. In 1940 84% of American
blacks who applied for the army, and of course there were 18 million people
applying then or being drafted in 1940-41, 84% were fully literate, in 1950
the figure had dropped to 38%, in 1960 to 28% and there're further
diminutions of that. The American white population in 1940, according to the
18 million people who were inducted during the Second World War was 99%
literate. The New York State Education Department issued last year that
stated that said only 50% of the state adults could read bus instructions,
and fill out forms like income taxes forms -- simple forms.
Nancy G. Patterson
Portland Middle School, English Dept. Chair
Portland, MI 48875
"The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumberable centers of
culture."
--Roland Barthes
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http://www.msu.edu/user/patter90/opening.htm
http://www.npatterson.net/mid.html
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