Illiteracy in the US

[cema]

11 Million Adults Illiterate, Study Shows. Of course, the very first phrase explains it a bit: An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English. Still, this is inconvenient. And so, many signs, manuals etc I see here are now written in at least two languages, English and Spanish. A large portion of government documents (all levels of government) are also published in several languages. (In some states one can even choose to take an oral driving exam in Russian or Vietnamese!) So I wonder if the level of functional illiteracy has not been overestimated.

Another funny quote: Adult literacy dropped or was flat across every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped out of high school. I wonder about the illiteracy rate among the people with graduate degrees.

Comments

[spamsink]

Elementary, my dear Watson! (Older) people with no command of English, but with foreign graduate degrees immigrate and spoil the statistics.

[scholar-vit.livejournal.com]

A friend's daughter, a high school student, mentioned to her classmate that she helps her Granny with English. The classmate, a Mexican girl, answered, "Well, you probably can help her with Math - you know, addition, subtraction, etc."

The Granny used to be an Associate Professor at Leningrad University.

[ygam.livejournal.com]

- Сынок, что это ты рисуешь какие-то закорючки? Пиши ровнее.

- Это не закорючки, папа, это интегралы.

[oregosha.livejournal.com]

Klass!!! :))

[cema.livejournal.com]

- Ну что сынок, помогли тебе мои интегралы, которые я преподавала тебе в школе?
- Конечно, Марь Ванна! У меня как-то сдуло ветром шляпу прямо в люк! Я нашёл проволоку, согнул в форму интеграла и легко достал!

(Старая шутка из интернета.)

[cema.livejournal.com]

This portion of population is so small that (1) no wonder it is constant and (2) I am not even sure it is greater than the statistical error. I understand that they would have to mention this in a scientific paper, but saying it in the article for a general audience (without referring to the numbers) is somewhat silly.