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 [log in to unmask] http://www.msu.edu/user/patter90/opening.htm http://www.npatterson.net/mid.html To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/