Who Needs Literacy

ABOUT 14 PERCENT of adults in the United States cannnot perform a simple reading task like “searching a short, simple text to find out what a patient is alloved to drink before a medical test.”

About 22 percent of adults cannot perform a simple computational task like “adding the amounts on a bank deposit slip.”

Adult literacy is slightly improved from the last adult literacy survey conducted in 1992. That is what the U.S. Department of Education just released in its A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century.

Yes, but at least the rest of American adults are literate, right? Not exactly. Those with “basic” literacy, the ability to perform the simple tasks mentioned above, but nothing more, amount to 43 percent of the adult population.

Only 13 percent of American adults are rated “proficient” in prose reading, document reading, and computation skills.

So what’s the point? What’s the point of spending five percent of GDP on schooling K-12 when the net result is an America where only 13 percent of adults exhibit “proficient” skills in literacy?

Maybe these numbers are telling us something. Maybe they are telling us that literacy has been overrated. Maybe most people only need basic literacy skills. Maybe the fuss over literacy has been ginned up by literate people who think that everyone should be like them. After all, if literacy were the royal road to power, money, and the love of beautiful women, you’d think that everyone and his brother would be literate and proficient, and eager to cash in.

By the way, the survey only tested reading skills. Writing skills? Forget about it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.