Forum Post: 42 Million Illiterate People in The USA
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 1, 2011, 3:37 p.m. EST by MagPie22
(144)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice? by Robert W. Sweet, Jr. President and Co-Founder The National Right to Read Foundation, 1996
http://www.nrrf.org/essay_Illiteracy.html
This is a major problem.
Occupy The American Schools
These 42 Million americans are also paying tax and went to the schools where they via the tax paid the teathers sallery.
This is1.5 ut of every 10 american who can not read. And another 50 million can not understand a word of what is written on occupywallst.org
How can you win a war when nearly 100 million people do not understand a word of what you are saying?
Look how we vote always against our interst
people need to stop watching so much tv and listening to politicians and the media. time to research things for yourself and fox news is not credible.
I only watch Fox News to watch the News Of Lies and silly morning entertainment to insure myself of where the dangerous people are... namely at Fox News and similar.
It wasn't that long ago that I came across this video on You Tube, and I never have been so ashamed in my life and sooooo angry at how poor the education system is in this country. What the heck are people learning in the public schools? I also attribute willful ignorance to the stupidity you see on this video. I wish that these people were paid actors and that this was a joke, but they are not and this is the sad reality we are faced with. http://youtu.be/fpw_9FFhfHI
I am not surprised by the statistics you just provided. I am all for the American Education System being completely revamped. It simply is not working. I would look to the European model (Finland, for example always scores high on the International tests given). WE must promote good reading and math skills (the basics). Critical thinking and problem solving skills must be strongly emphasized. I am not for the system of just memorizing info and regurgitating it. We have to get passed that.
This is going to be one major uphill battle, but we have to start somewhere and definitely a goal that every student in the US is able to read (should be seriously pursued).
How many of those that can't read got there education outside of the US?
How many of those that can't read can speak english?
How were these statistics derived?
Or is this that 72% of all statistics are made up on the spot?
Writing skills have deteriorated over the last 3 decades. My 9th-10th grade English class would be equal to a college 101-102 course.
Dear sir If you want to send a certain concepts to the people you should go to their place, not only to send the emblems of the means of communication through the visible and invisible media, and this is due to the extent of your faith in the idea that work for it.
Okay. I tried. I spoke to some football and socker viewers and told them: "Listen guys, why are you watching this? Why do you not turn it off and do something sensible like starting to learn something of value".
I was kicked out.
Your idea is noble but I think I need force to induce illiterate people with new and better ways. Words don't o it alone. The Communication Barrier needs to be broken down first. To do that I sudgest not showing sports on national TV and stop to have sports-arenas where such games can take place.
We will have a revolution. But do not give the people what they think is good for them, right?
Facism is here and has been here the past 150 years. People just do not know because they are illiterate in every sence of the word.
Concepts are not easy to convince people of it, the concepts need to double effort, you want to change perceptions about the system and capitalism, and this does not come easily, as far as your faith concepts that bear is your insistence on achieving the goals, so it's natural to be a rejection of your ideas, concepts like cooking must s to take the time to become ready to eat
Pardon me if I am not the first person to point out the shit grammar and multiple spelling mistakes in this posting.
Is this the the Ass kicking the Donkey?
Doug,
Why don't you respond to the topic?
Your smear against magpie22 is obvious. Using this kind of tactic means you have nothing to say about the 42 million illiterate in the country. You would rather smear her. Does this make you feel good to attack her?
LoL
Sorry. I am danish and I do not care about grammar too much. If you do not understand just don't read it.
I am typing as I go along.
I am however glad you point out the grammar is bad.
And the keyboard I am typing on is shit because my iMac is in Thiland and I am on a small laptop and spelling is in the eyes of the beholder so I could actually leave out every vocal except the first in every word and you should still be able to read it.
I would love to hire a person to proofread.
Did you know that professors spell like shit usually?
You still did better than many Americans, even though English is not your native language.
I basically have 3 words in life:
hungry, needs, tired
which requires eat, toilet, sleep
Problems solved.
Grammar: forgetting commas is Okay if the reader is smart enough to enter those while reading. Most are not smart enough to do that, so commas must be entered.
The fact that you are a Dane makes your criticism of th US a bit offensive, particularly given you own disregard for literacy.
Everyone types as they go along. Writing is a linear form of communication.
It appears that the facts you sloppily present are bogus, and are likely the result of the good hash available in Thailand. It also appears that you may be syphilitic from doing nasty things to youngsters for too long and without protection.
Perhaps you should go play video games or go sit on the beach.
Either way go fuck yourself.
Joeschmoe1000
is a troll
Joe, you are a troll, and of the kind I really despise
Please just fade away........
Cimtisrsi of the US is Okay ceincnidrgo UN is ldetaco in NCY and teh IFM is oedwn by The Rsdhchoilt famliy. Don't yuo tkihn.
Wiirgnt is AOTSLBUE nto a lanreii frorm of cnnmomtioicu. Wehre on eahtr ddi you get tish iaed from?
Adn yoru Tdalhina tngih; Aer yuo skci or do you just have ietuqnfren orssamg adn wehn tehy do aeirv yuo flee thye aer paetmrreu and unlulfiignlf?
"Eihtre wya", do you heva a hrda time dcnigied wath it is?
Yo do not pdervoi anthngyi to this dnistsscoiu and scine you lkac bscai kdwegnoel I dera yo to raed tshi:read this:
Critisism of the US is Okay concidering UN is located in NYC and the IMF is owned by The Rothschild famliy. Don't you think.
Writing is ABSOLUTE not a liniear forrm of communiction. Where on earth did you get this idea from?
And your Thailand thing; Are you sick or do you just have infrequent orgasms and when they do arive you feel they are premature and unfulfilling?
"Either way", do you have a hard time deciding what it is?
Yo do not provide anything to this discustions and since you lack basic knowledge I dare yo to read this:
(if you understood that and can answer I presume you are human but I may be wrong)
MagPie22,
You never have to defend yourself against these trolls. This troll baited you and it was unnecessary to respond. At the very point where the troll outright disrespected you in last line of his last post was way over the line. You just call them on it and cut off debate. This way you keep your dignity. Don't debate what they saying just call them out on the bad language and stop.
I don't like when this happens to innocent people here and you are quite welcome here so don't let these troll discourage you. Some of us are more than willing to have a good respectful clean discussion.
.........................................Welcome to the 99
This is a link to a thread explaining the trolling activities and how they operate: http://occupywallst.org/forum/how-trolls-think-trollosophy-exposed/
Thank you very much. I will follow your advise.
The US literacy rate is 99.0 by some studies. There is another study that was conducted in 2003 that the lowest literacy rates were found in prison and had learning disabilities. Another problem was that English was not spoken in the home before starting school.
That last has its very own problem because if the parents were not literate in the language of their country of origin then it is very difficult for them to learn English or receive homework instructions in their own language.
Hey, stop teaching to the test. Testing companies make obscene amounts of money for standardized tests and they do not pay taxes. One of them also produces textbooks.Essay questions are subjective. You cannot make a comparison between states because they each use different tests and you cannot fairly make comparisons between countries.
And guess who wins? Faux privatization charter schools that have produced dismal results. The charter schools are not held to the same standards and they do not have to accept everyone. People are getting played by the media. It is disgusting.
Once a great many people believed in the system of each one teach one, it worked very well.
What's wrong with getting involved? In offering time and a book to a young person? Or to an adult?
Too many of us are self centered, and to offer an out, a great many of us need to be...
Yet if we want to affect change it means taking action on an individual basis.
Government has been co-opted, we have not been heard for a very long time.
By the way, I visit a great many forums daily and have found that Conservative forums contain as many if not more typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors as any other.
Illiterate does not mean unknowing.
Thank you.
I once started teaching a young man how to fix his motorcycle. It had punctured. The conversation went much like this:
Boy: My motorcycle is punctured.
Me: Aha, well, go and fix it.
Boy: How?
Me: Well, get some puncturekit and fix it up. You know, right?
Boy: Fix it, how?
Me: Okay, let me show you the kit for fix a puncture. Here it is. Now, open the box and use the tools inside.
Boy: How do I do that?
Me: Do what? Open the box or fix it with the tools?
Boy: Fix it.
Me: You never fixed a punctured tire before?
Boy: How do you fix a punctured tire?
Me: Okay, let me check the box. Wait. Okay, something is missing in the box and you need to buy a new tube of glue.
Boy: Where do I buy that?
Me: Listen, did you never fix a tires before?
Boy: Never. But where do I buy a new tube of glue?
Me: Probably at the gas-station. Try that first.
Boy: My motorcycle is punctured so how do I get to the gas-station?
At this point I gave up and left it to someone else.
It would seem that if I can teach hundreds of parents, children, brothers and sisters how to let go of a loved one who is addicted to drugs, you could have found the patience to teach one boy to fix a punctured 'motorcycle'. I assume you meant motorcycle tire.
One thing about children (or those who are perceived as such) is that it's ingrained in them to at least attempt to manipulate you, regardless of the outcome, it appears this young man won.
He was and is very smart, I agree. Lazy and selffish and has no idea of social conduct. The next person he asked to help actually got really upset and told him off. Even that did not help. His mother never learned him anything really and his friends where as egoistic as he was. Me, me and me. I do not give a shit about others than myself.... etc. That was his philosofy.
Well, eventually I left my girlfriend who was the young mans nephew. Fuck idiots like that I thought and gave up on the whole rotten bunch.
So you see, they lost and I won my dignity back which almost got lost in my attemt to be f.....ing nice. Silly me. And good for me.
People in general have no idea how f...ked up they are until someone tells them they are!
These statistics are highly surprising and I doubt their veracity. I believe there is a much higher percentage of illiterates in US. Much higher.
I think you might be absolutely right.
[Removed]
Yes .... There are a lot of illiterate people in the U.S.. Our public education system is a complete failure.
The bigger problem is all the ignorant people in the U.S..
The OWS movement is a magnet for ignorant people.
The entire Inner city is Illiterate, have you read the test scores from "da Hood"
Da hood is a product like anything you see. Da hood think they have freedom to be "Da Hood" but in fact they only know what they know and no better - or worse.
"da Hood" and its outfall is taught.
"Ya ca'nt b serious man" said the president and he played this for the people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV5c7nb65L0&feature=artist
And the police played the same song. And so did the courts.
Even Rothschilds played the song upon which he started a war to prove it.
I would agree! I went down once a week to help them put some gardens in a pretty nasty park, when I finishing my BS in Biology. I had HS grads that couldn't spell, didn't know where cucumbers came from. I was fairly disappointed, I may be a big loud mean capitalist asshole but I care about kids and our nations future, and I watched it dying that month.
The gardens died or the cucumbers or the kids or a combination thereof?
But in fact it is true that many young people do not know even the very basics of life. I am sure some kids believe Britney Spears is the president of Ireland and chickens comes from frozen bags and marmelade grows on trees. And cucumbers are a biproduct from the production of Playboy Magazine.
If you ask a few people and kids about simple issues you will get replies that are Made In Hollywood. Anyway, people know what they know and nothing more. Would I want to teach a bunch of teenagers dancing on Youtube that they need to get their act together? NO! I would be rediculed and I am in no mood to defend myself against absolute ignorance.
The cucumbers never grew and I was referring to our nations demise, I sure hope we get a a few kids with the drive to succeed. From where I sit we are in desperate trouble, that extends well beyond the morons on the hill or Wall street.
We can do our little to educate but I think we have come to a point where the lies have become truths and we can no longer educate in the simple construction of society from Mr. king of Gods Amen-Ra in Egypt to our kings of governments and banks. They simple think it is too difficult to grasp and think it is all too difficult to understand. We need educators who have more brains than dancing YouTube teenagers.
It's the banks' faults, man, come on!!! 99% of OWS people are illiterate.
And many of them can now be found in a park near you.
I hardly think so. The illiterates are not in the OWS park. They are usually sitting home watching sports games or hiding away from the public. The 42 million illiterates are very hard to see and find actually.
Your literacy rate is over 99%... that's less that 3,000,000 people. Are you really trying to tell me that we only have a literacy rate of 84%? That's less that Mexico. You need to reconsider your source.
Well, 83 might be right. Give a book about a relatively difficult subject to 1000 random people and see if they can comprehend what the topic is about and see if they can put it into context. I think you will surpriced. I even think you are near 85% (plus) illiteracy.
Many people can not even put Donald Duck into context.
Many and most people can not read a news papers or a simple book on socioeconomy and put it into context.
They can probably read but they do not comprehend and can far from put it into context.
This is why we have zombies watching American Idol and such and most people consume shit like that because they are illiterate.
How's that Hopey-Changey stuff working for ya?
Hope and change works.
100 million Americans aren't.
Some schools turn out illiterate morons, while at the same time, those same schools with the same teachers turn out doctors. Point being, the problem lies more with the parents, and possibly with genetics, than with the schools themselves.
Genetics. This is interesting. There are about 1 trillion billion million quadrillion combinations of genes but we could sort them into pools and then create a variety of schools for each pool. The "doctors" in one etc.
Now, a link is missing here. You see, government schools are incubators to sort out not genes but flair for being the best robot doing what the state wants and nothing more. If you do not fit then you are debunked because you are a "rebel" or a low grade pupil and you are rewarded with low grades telling you that you have no value. Bollocks.
The school is a machine which is no better than a machine sorting out rotten fruit but in fact the rotten fruit is just perfect and can go into wineproduction etc.
The school has only value if the 99% are not vasted... and they are. They get the low grade jobs, get to be societies lawless criminals and psyco's and so the school really is just an incubator to design all the types we need in a modern society to keep the weels spinning ever happily thereafter. Sounds like a fairytale? Sounds like our society today in a nutshell.
And parent. Sure. Absolutely right. Circle complete. Social inheritance we call it. State schools have done their work and incubates parent to produce children that are less than "doctors" so the teachers do not have to do the work.
Now, I know many doctors who should NEVER have been doctors. In fact I believe most of the doctors today are persciption-doctors and nothing more working only for the medical companies and their handwring is as bad as an idiot who can not write.
humorous....
considering the level of spelling and grammar here.... looks like OWS is included in those numbers.
by the way, I'm confused.. what is the teathers sallery? Is that anything like a scullery?
Take the challenge above and let us continue.
I wonder how many of those 100 million illiterate people are literate in a language different from the one tested.
So, isn't being literate in the language being used the point, because with 1500 world languages, we are all illiterate in something.
"According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 42 million adult Americans can't read; "
So we presume they are americans and they speak english. But they can not read or write english and this is the main issue. Yes, perhaps they are good at other languages but as an american you would think they could read and write englih. But they can not.
Yes, you are illiterate if you can not read and/or write your own language.
No, you are not an illiterate if you can not read/write other languages.
There is functional illiteracy and illiteracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy
If the language used in your daily society is english and you can not read/write english you have a problem. If the same person can read chineese they are still illiterate - but not if they are chineese in China.
We do say "I am an illiterate at such and such" but in this case we are speaking of illiteracy where simple understanding of reading brings you nowhere. It does not make those
Anyway, you see, I am danish and I read and write english but my keyboard is fucked and I do not really care about proofspelling too much because if people do not understand what I write then who cares a f...
Now. Challenge. He/she is american but can write and read chineese, right?
The Democrat Party has done quite well with a following of undereducated, illerate people for decades. Whey can't OWS do the same?
Of course it is in fact the case that the majority of college-educated voters voted for Obama. Perhaps you'd like to try to spin the facts again, and complain that Democrats are all "so-called intellectuals" and "elitists" and suchlike pitiful whining.
P.S: It's spelled "illiterate", not "illerate", which is not actually a word. "Whey" is a word, but it refers to the watery part of milk that separates out when one makes cheese.
Two choices; GOB or DEM.
People get a free choice to vote for either GOB or DEM.
But some people want to vote for something else which does not exist.
That is not freedom.
So they vote on the best of two evils to avoid the worst of two evils.
The two parties are the same. In fact.
So there is no free choice.
Only if you have power can you get more power hence a vote for nothing gives you no power hence people have no power.
PS. The american system of two parties is seen everywhere in socalled democracies.
Your syntax is wrong. "Whey" should be "Why" - but I wonderstand :)
I'm not surprised at these figures at all. Just look at the hundreds of functionally ILLITERATE, grammatically-challenged TROLLS on this very forum.
The truth is hard to realize but once it sinks in, if ever, you will wake up one morning and someone will ask you: "Is grammar more important than understanding?" and you will most likely reply: "Yes, because I do not understand your question".
I once asked a guy, I presume, on this very forum, if he could disect Shakespear and his Sonet 42. No reply. Go figure.
And as long as the syntax pops out Okay any dumb computer can understand.
Now I challenge you: please write in Chineese a grammatically right sentence and present it here. If you can not you have absolutely understood my point, right? If not, then I shall explain further. But now for the challenge. I dare you.
Rather garbled Searle, but I get your point.
Well, you see, Google translate and other machine translations can not translate to chineese grammatically right. So he would have a hard time cheating unless he knew a chineese which I think he does not. So the test is on. I think he will fail but let us see.
Grammar is said to be important. Sure it is. But not more important than syntax. So why did he excluded syntax? Curious about that.
And since he did understand that there are illiterate people in this very forum he should be able to take on the challenge. But he will not. I know.
many of them are in the OWS movement
How many is "many" in your opinion?
Let us presume "many" of 42 million would be more than half, right? Then let us presume it would be like 30 million. Then you would have those 30 million in the OWS movement. I think not. Did you count "many" illiterate people in the OWS movement.
Perhaps "many" in your understanding is avarage or perhaps some other number. Please fill us in.