One in seven Americans can't read.

[Chanur]

13% for my county. I am not surprised.

[AladainAF]

I wonder how many of that 14% graduate high school.

[Aedosen]

Originally Posted by MrSpitz

It's not that bad, the EU recently had 'illiteracy' rise by 10% since 2000. Finland has something like 4%, followed by Ireland with 12% and Estonia with 13.1% (those were the top 3 performers), and the average for the whole EU is something like 24.1% now.

So as a large country, we are doing quite well though anything over 5% is just mindbottling at this point.


In the interest of full disclosure, all my information came from the summer of 2008 report by the 'Comission of European Communities' assessing progress toward the Lisbon Objectives, a wide range of educational goals the EU set with one goal being reducing illiteracy (ironically I do not believe that is a word) by like 20%.

I have been reading the same report and I don´t think the number you were looking at, is actually the EU literacy rate. What I understood it to mean was how the scores of reading literacy tests had changed. Though maybe my reading literacy score isn´t good enough when trying to understand reports written in English So here´s the actual report:

Link to the report

In Finland the literacy rate is about 99% and I know it´s about the same for all the other Nordic countries too. So every 25th person here is not illeterate. I also doubt any of the Western European countries have literacy rate below 95% though the new Eastern European EU countries might have.

[Clericnon2boxed]

so the https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...orld-factbook/

is wrong, it states 99% literacy for the united states (and most of the rest of the western countries)

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by Tripamang

Why though? I read technical material on a daily basis that is probably much harder to understand than your common book. I enjoy science a great deal and read many many periodicals and other articles that take up a good amount of my time.

I probably haven't finished a book in 5 years. Like many things books for the most part are entertainment. Because some dick hole reads the Da Vinci Code doesn't mean he's some how more enlightened or even intelligent than your average non book reader.

I get blasted with boring, long drawn out material on a daily basis and the thought of coming home and reading even more doesn't interest me.

Read Drizzit, Sherlock Holmes, A song of Fire and ice, Altered Carbon, Discworld, Rainbow Six, Harry Potter, fuck reader's digest.

There's so much out there to casually read that's good it's not even funny. I'd have a really hard time going a year without reading one single book.

[MrSpitz]

Originally Posted by Aedosen

I have been reading the same report and I don´t think the number you were looking at, is actually the EU literacy rate. What I understood it to mean was how the scores of reading literacy tests had changed. Though maybe my reading literacy score isn´t good enough when trying to understand reports written in English So here´s the actual report:

Link to the report

In Finland the literacy rate is about 99% and I know it´s about the same for all the other Nordic countries too. So every 25th person here is not illeterate. I also doubt any of the Western European countries have literacy rate below 95% though the new Eastern European EU countries might have.

Yea I was kind of confused too but went with it.

I guess I don't know how to read either, but here is an exerpt "Low performance in reading literacy, which was benchmarked to decline 20% by 2010, has actually increased 10% between 2000 and 2006 and has reached 24.1%" It's also based on a composite of 15 year old current students in the EU.

I just went with that as illiteracy, couldn't find the exact criteria used for 'low performance in reading literacy' and just thought it was a more PC way to say the same thing.

Edit: Found how they defined their benchmark. From page 92,
"The benchmark is based on an indicator taken
from the PISA survey, which makes it possible
to identify the share of pupils who have a low
level of foundation skills such as literacy and
numeracy. Reading literacy is defined in PISA
as “understanding, using and reflecting on
written texts, in order to achieve one’s goal, to
develop one’s goals, to develop one’s
knowledge and potential and to participate in
society.” Pupils performing at level 2 are able
to locate straightforward information, make
low-level inferences of various types, work out
what a well defined part of a text means and
use some outside knowledge to understand it
(PISA 2006). Pupils who fail to reach level 2
can therefore be considered to be inadequately
prepared for the challenges of the knowledge
society and for lifelong learning. The
benchmark measures the share of pupils with
reading literacy proficiency level 1 or lower on
the PISA reading literacy scale."

So basically, students who are unable to perform at 'level 2' as they just defined it, are what they are designating the 'low performers' (the 24.1% group) . And as they define it, those people could not locate straight forward information or understand a 'well defined' text, but I'm assuming they did know the letters and words.

In any event, across the EU that is trending the opposite of progress.

[Kevincheese]

Originally Posted by Aedosen

I have been reading the same report and I don´t think the number you were looking at, is actually the EU literacy rate. What I understood it to mean was how the scores of reading literacy tests had changed. Though maybe my reading literacy score isn´t good enough when trying to understand reports written in English So here´s the actual report:

Link to the report

In Finland the literacy rate is about 99% and I know it´s about the same for all the other Nordic countries too. So every 25th person here is not illeterate.

I think you need to go back to school for math.

[Aedosen]

Originally Posted by Kevincheese

I think you need to go back to school for math.

The every 25th person comment comes from MrSpitz saying there is 4% illeteracy rating in Finland.

[Zarcath]

well, 50% of americans believe that God created us, and 30% believe that god had a hand in our evolution. If god wanted them to read, he'd have made them literate.

[Tortfeasor]

Originally Posted by mylek

The statistics in the OP seem a bit misleading to me. It should be noted that the survey only tested for Engilsh literacy. Perfectly literate non-English speakers would be lumped into the 'illiterate' category.

According to Quinloe's link something like 1 in 6 American's are non-english speakers so 1 in 7 for English illiteracy isn't too hard to believe.

This. Look at the illiteracy rates for new york and california: both in the 22-23% range. Both have very high non-native english speaking populations.

[Vepil]

Originally Posted by Strifen

And the ones who can read ?

The following statistics about book publishing and reading were found on Para Publishing - Welcome to Para Publishing,

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

This is just sad.

[CnCGOD]

Reading a book and reading daily are different. I read a lot (3-4 novels a month on my Sony PRS500) but I would still say 90% of my reading is from reports, word documents, spec sheets, websites, forums, email, etc and I could go years without reading a book without the slightest problem in critical reading skills.

[Indiana]

Home schooling.

[aznpinktuv]

Originally Posted by Screamfeeder

I 1Dr Y dat iz. iz it posebL dat ppl stopped rEDN bukz & stRtD voting 4 Amrcn Idol. n dat Cnot b it since U hav 2 rED d scroll @ d (_._) of d TV.

so ive actually tried for 10 mintues to decipher this

I ??? why that is. Is it possible that people stopped reading books and started voting for american idol. And that cannot be it since you have 2 read the scroll at the bottom of the tv... wtf is 1Dr???

[Indiana]

Originally Posted by aznpinktuv

so ive actually tried for 10 mintues to decipher this

I ??? why that is. Is it possible that people stopped reading books and started voting for american idol. And that cannot be it since you have 2 read the scroll at the bottom of the tv... wtf is 1Dr???

I "One" d(e)r. I wonder.