I recently learned that almost 1 in 5 Americans are illiterate.
How many Americans do you think are reasonably well educated, so that they would understand somewhat complex issues like tariffs? Or could seek out information if they didnāt understand?
Im still surprised by that , the quality of education in my country is low but holly fuck im stunned by the lack of education in the states
It is highly regional, too.
Despite the existence of the Department of Education (which Trump is trying to dismantle), there is no national standard for education in the US. In general, each state is free to decide upon its own policies and standards.
Some states, such as those in the northeast, have very high-performing school systems. So when that ā1 in 5 are illiterateā statistic is mentioned (I actually have not verified that number, just quoting the prior claim as an example), it would be caused by low-performing states where the situation is much more dire dragging down the national average.
Hereās a general look at quality of education in the US by state, though recommend folks look up their own numbers because I havenāt validated the numbers pulled in the article I grabbed this from.
Itās not a perfect divide between red states and blue states (Florida appears good, California less so, as an example), but in general we see the lower performing states located mainly in the South where the Republicans have more support. Basically, a less educated populace is easier to manipulate.
For extra fun, look into where school districts allocate their funding and how it relates to their rankings. Some of the worst performing public schools spend a lot more on athletics than they spend on anything else. Itās like they want to be professional athlete mills instead of functioning adult mills.
Important note - literacy isnāt simply about being able to recognize and pronounce letters and words. A person can sound out every word in English, and understand what each word says, and still be illiterate if they cannot comprehend the message the words express together.
Thatās where this illiteracy arises - itās a failure of reading comprehension. In this light, I imagine many of us have attempted conversation online with somebody functionally illiterate.
Literacy is also about English (at least as commonly reported in the US). About 1/3 of functionally illiterate adults in the US are foreign born. I have never seen literacy stats that measure āliterate in any languageā.
Thatās still really bad. If 2/3 of illiterate people were born in America, that really highlights how inconsistent education is in America.
When I was a kid, I lived in a regular suburban neighborhood but the middle school and high schools that I was zoned for were so awful that my parents enrolled me into a charter school. (The elementary school was fine) Since then, some of the crappy schools in my city are now magnet schools and so my parentsā house appears to be zoned to different schools. There appears to be less public schools now. Thatās probably not a good thing.
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