Functional Illiteracy

Defined as being able to read simple sentences and the like, but in effect, illiterate and unable to read and/or comprehend complex material.

It's pretty prevalent, even in the US.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I've seen fairly high numbers everywhere. I find a lot of issue with language courses being focused on "rules" such as grammar/vocab even way beyond Grade 4 or 5 when by that time they should be learning pure literature (reading and writing at high levels).

So people come out of high school hardly able to even read a book as simple as Lord of the Rings (or for a more difficult one, Frakenstein) without any great ability to discuss any of the topics about it (invented themes or otherwise).

{Deleted completely unnecessary and irrelevant personal dig at another poster. Don't do that. —Madrugada}

edited 5th May '11 7:18:53 PM by Madrugada

I'm suddenly reminded of this.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Yeah but that's... detroit.

I get the feeling most of the students in my 100-200 level classes fell squarely into this.

It's quite depressing to peer edit an incoherent ramble about changes to Facebook in a setting I'm paying thousands of dollars to attend for the sake of "higher learning".

edited 5th May '11 1:04:04 PM by Pykrete

I am nearsighted, and it was not discovered until 5th grade. The reason was because I was never put in a situation where it become extreme blatant and obvious to spot.
I guess functional illiteracy falls into the same slope, at some point you know exactly when to ask people for something at a exact point so it seems to natural, that nobody would bother to notice such a strange question.
Basically it does not suprise me one bit that nobody would notice.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

I keep hearing grumblings about "why does my kid need to read some dusty old book written by some dead white guy" or words to that effect... Um, to make sure they can read? With better reading comprehension comes better interpretation of employee application forms, tax documents, rental agreements, the back of shampoo bottles and whatever else you will encounter as a functional member of society. If all you can read is "See Spot run! Go Spot, go!", then you may have some problems later on in adult life.

Of course, if/when we move into a post-literate society, that stuff won't matter anymore since multimedia will make literacy obsolete, or so the theory goes.

EDIT: The comments on the link Tom provided are enlightening, especially the one about Hawaiian schools. The private ones are where the quality education is being taught, especially Kamehameha. Then they got political and I stopped reading them.

Without getting into a political diatribe or derail, how should we go about fixing this? My two cents: Teaching my own children to read. (but I'm going to home-school anyway. Not everyone can do that, but I'd imagine that virtually all parents could help teach their kids to read - wait, not every parent can read, and I just logic-bombed myself-)

edited 5th May '11 1:25:55 PM by pvtnum11

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Ugh, tell me about it. And then they get mad when you run your red pen through it. As if I weren't doing them a favor by editing it!

...Is that a real place?

...Do they teach you how to shoot energy beams out of your hands?

edited 5th May '11 3:13:02 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

...you did not know that it is the name of a place and King in Hawaii?

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Kind of like how New Jersey has a city named Hoboken.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

^ For a second I Read That As "Hadoken".

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Yeah, a real school and everything. It's suposed to be a private school for those with Hawaiian descent. Named after King Kamehameha I.

I know a family who tried to get their kids into it. It's hard, even with Hawaiian ancestroy - a five-year-old must be able to count to twenty, do simple addition and subtraction, read a list of words and recite the alphabet, and some other criteria I'm forgetting. (they got their oldest daughter in, but not the younger ones.)

Not sure about the laser beams.

edited 5th May '11 3:20:18 PM by pvtnum11

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

It's pronounced differently though, KaMEhaMEha as opposed to DBZ's KAmeHAmeHA.

edited 5th May '11 3:21:01 PM by slashedtire

Nothing to see here. Move along.

kəmehəˈmɛhə, to be more precise. But yeah, different.

edited 5th May '11 3:22:10 PM by pvtnum11

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I do now. Feel a bit stupid, actually.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

I see. KNOWLEDGE HAS BEEN PASSED ON.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

And now New Jersey is way cooler now, with having a Hadoken school and stuff.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

You think the US have Illiteracy issues? I'm from Mexico, I'm studying psychology which requires me to read about 10 to 20 pages full of text daily (this is the main reason I read so few literature nowadays).

There are currently 30 persons in my classroom, out of those 30 I'm sure only half of my classmates read the texts, and of those 15 there's posibly 10 who understand it, of those 10 there are only 5 who understands why they should know it.

One of the first things I was teached at college (and one of the most importants) is that everyone is different, theories are just theories and if you can't contrast them with reality you won't even be graduate, I'm quite infamous with my classmates (and some teachers) for antagonizing the author's opinions (or even the teachers'), most of the time the teacher procceeds to explain why am I wrong. Most of my classmates think that I'm some kind of freak for actually trying to build my own interpretations instead of accepting that which is given to me.

I might sound arrogant, but when everyone around you still thinks that Freud is the best thing to happen to psycholgy is hard to not develop a superiority complex.

edited 5th May '11 3:52:28 PM by redpyro

I'm not a native english speaker, please forgive my bad grammar and misspells.

Yeah, Illiteracy is everywhere. But we hide the problem by having an "official" literacy rate of 99 percent, when it's really appreciably lower, if you were factor in functional illiterates.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Damn power-gamers.

But honestly, what do you expect when so much of the writing is just as bad?

Asking people to be able to read is fine. Asking people to be willing to slog through Purple Prose like Lord Of The Rings, less so.

My advice would be to further promote Tabletop Games since those require reading and interpretation without all the bullshit that normal literature classes have. Combined with the fact that children are rarely if ever exposed to anything worth reading, it's not surprising that they don't pick it up.

Fight smart, not fair.

Where are you guys from, in Mexico I was never forced to read Lord of the Rings, the longest book I had to read while on elementary school was the little prince.

I'm not a native english speaker, please forgive my bad grammar and misspells.

I dunno, Lord Of The Rings wasn't required reading for me either.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Aside from maybe The Tale of Two Cities, I was never required to read anything surpassing two-hundred pages.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.

I once saw figures about functional illiteracy in the US, and while I don't remember the actual number - I mean, I think it was actually more than 10% of people over 15 years of age that could not read a novel or a multi-page newspaper article and accurately describe the contents and analyse them - anyway - while I don't remember the actual number, I found it unbelievable.

I wish I remembered the source; I know it was an article in a newspaper or magazine, but I don't even remember if it was in Finnish or English. But the article claimed that it's entirely possible to have a small group of adults, randomly picked in, IIRC, New York, and have them read a small paragraph from the same day's paper and when you ask them to describe the content of the paragraph some of them will be unable to tell you what it said. They'll know it was about, say, the economy or the climate or whatever, but when you ask them questions about the article, you'll find that they know extremely little of what they just read. Is it possible that this is true?

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.