23% Of Americans Are illiterate...

When you decide to have children, you have the responsibility That comes with being a parent. One of those responsibilities is that you raise them so they can live up to their potential.

In terms of education, it's way to easy to blame the school system for your children's failure. We monitored our children's progress when they were in school. We found that the teachers were enthusiastic about teaching but we also helped our kids.

First example, when our kids were pretty young, we didn't think that there was enough emphasis on multiplication tables. We made flash cards and played with our kids so they learned their multiplication tables very early in life. Both of my kids finished calculus in high school.

Second example. We read to our kids nightly until they were old enough to read to themselves. We didn't watch much TV and both our kids became readers. The world is much easier if you are a proficient reader.

I think that it is up to the parents to make sure that their kids are developing the skills that they will need later in life. You can't just assume that the schools will take care of this.

reply to post by tothetenthpower

This is more proof that American's school system is failing children and going to create a situation where nobody is qualified to run the country in 30 years.

It's not just the schools. The bottom line is parenting and teaching one's children at home to do more than waste time in the classroom texting (as an example) their friends and ignoring their studies. Our kids today, in so many cases, are basically left to raise themselves as both parents are either working to make ends meet or simply don't have much of an idea of the job that comes with having younguns to begin with.

Schools need to improve, no doubt. They need to stop lowering standards to match those who refuse to learn and remember how to again 'fail' those who indeed, fail. But, again, it all begins at home...

I have heard that american millitary manuals are unique in that they use cartoonish illustrations to instruct, to deal with the low literacy rate. Somehow thats more disturbing than a lot of things I've heard recently.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


So you are saying that it doesn't matter what is being watched? I don't believe that for a second.
What a person watches says more about the person than the show they are watching. It is easy to see how intellectually challenged most people are by sheer number of crap programs. Nothing has to be subliminaly introduced or hidden in the programs we watch. They can be, and are, as overt as they want to be. People are, as a group, dumb. I agree that some people should not watch tv. The ones that can't differentiate fact from fiction especially. For selfish reasons, I wish mentally vulnerable people would stop watching tv. and maybe that would force producers and program directors to keep good shows on longer than 1 or 2 seasons and drop all the friggin retarded "pseudo reality" crap tv.....
I know I have people out there that remember when they turned our MTV into WTF tv. Anyone that was just interested in music videos had to migrate to VH1. What is the point of that seemingly out of the blue gear change?
I'll tell ya. That program change was the dividing line between my generation and the next. If you were just starting high school or in high school when you first saw "video killed the radio star" or "Don't shock the Monkey" then you too are the very oldest of this younger dumber generation that has brought with them all this crappy reality tv and who suffer from some varying degree of attention disorder.
......so even though you claim that tv isn't what it use to be...it still is but not as easily to find as the crap that has been nipping at my heels since MTV started moving away from 24/7 music videos. Don't even get me started on the 4 on the floor, mech, syntho, vocorder, processed, crap music of the day. Wow! I thought most of the 80's hairbands during our day was crap music...now it sounds as complex and melodious as a Bach concerto in comparison. There is your subliminal brain cell killing conspiracy to destroy our will to live.

I am 62, struggled all the way through grade school, reading and comprehension were a horrible problem in grade school, my mother a teacher, spent many hours teaching me to memorize words, which was a horrible way to learn to read, by the time I made it to middle school I was put in advanced classes, then I went down hill again,

I dropped out married young.

So really I can say, everything I have learned, I learned after I left school, and mostly from the public library and the internet, and the school of hard knocks.

I still have issues obviously,

reply to post by Res Ipsa


Music is such an important tool, I made sure my two youngest had musical training, and I made sure all my kids had interest in the arts.

The school system fails us as individuals, encouraging us to be little clones and not realizing we have individual talents that should be nurtured,

I spent forty years dealing with the school system, I really hate the way it operates, and how it destroys children.

I think one of the biggest problems has to do with the curriculum standards in the US.

A kid living in a poor area of town doesn't get the same education as a kid that lives on the other side of the tracks. It makes absolutely no sense to me. This instantly produces a disadvantage for at least half of population of kids right from the get go.

The curriculum layout (for all of the major subjects) should be exactly the same across the board for each grade, no matter what school you go to.

This level of illiteracy in the United States goes a fair way toward explaining the state of the nation as a whole in my opinion.

Illiteracy was the way that the nobility (and I use that term lightly) in Europe would keep the lower class mired in ignorance and under control,

The Catholic church did the same thing for centuries to keep the people relying on the priesthood for guidance and understanding in scripture.

It makes sense that the "elite" in our own country would adopt a similar approach towards the unwashed masses.

Hi, all.

The way the title is writen is another clue/indication of that illiteracy !!
The TV programs that the majority watch is another clue/indication of that illiteracy !!

. . .and english is NOT my primary langage. B-)

Blue skies.

reply to post by ProfessorChaos


That's true PC, I believe it.

reply to post by BritofTexas

Isn't that part of the problem?

The Texas State Board of Education spends more time vetting text books for the ideals they wish to push than concentrating on the basics.

And where goes Texas, so goes the nation.
How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us

That’s pretty interesting about the text books. I didn’t know that.

I was referring to private schools rather than public schools though. I agree there should be no ideals pushed in public schools, but private schools on the other hand ARE free to push certain ideals. This is why many people seek these schools. I don’t understand why the public school system can’t just teach the basics and leave their personal, political and religious agendas out of it.

I would like to keep the money I pay into the public school system and apply it towards tuition at a private school. I’d love to send my kids to a Christian private school but I can’t afford to pay for both tuition and taxes, and the state isn’t going to let me slide on the school taxes any time soon. Governments always impose taxes and raise taxes but they seldom repeal taxes once imposed.

SNAKES!

There is a difference between grammar and intelligence seen quite a few people obsessed with grammar than try to engage in what they are saying.

That said:



Some people have not spent their entire lives in front a keyboard.

At least a third of this is out of our hands.

You need an IQ of at least 75 for basic reading comprehension.

That would be 5% of the population if the average IQ was 100, but it's really 97 in the US.

So we're looking at 7-8% that are incapable of learning no matter what.
The remaining 15-16 percent either are too old to learn, else are likely literate in a different language

reply to post by nomnom


WTF kind of math are you doing? 7-8% of the people don't have the capability to read, here in this Country?
Let me know if you can get the IRS to buy that crap.

reply to post by Res Ipsa


It's a very easy calculation.

Not sure where you're having trouble.

Please clarify.

You do realize that greater than 3% of the population is technically mentally retarded, correct?

That's just an IQ less than 70.

I think the real problem is, "Americans don't give a fu@k".

That is our problem.

I wonder how that figure matches up to the minority population. I grew up in the States and the public school system is 3rd world unless you live in a nice well taxed part of town.

My area had mostly white kids and in high school we had a smoking lounge and a multimillion dollar football stadium but cross the street and blam you are in a minority filled school that cant afford a swingset.

The article numbers may be off but it is true nonetheless. Education in the States is not standardized like Canada so many kids simply go without just because of their skin color and where they live.

Sorry if that is offensive but it is a fact of modern day USA.

Originally posted by Wildbob77
When you decide to have children, you have the responsibility That comes with being a parent. One of those responsibilities is that you raise them so they can live up to their potential.

In terms of education, it's way to easy to blame the school system for your children's failure. We monitored our children's progress when they were in school. We found that the teachers were enthusiastic about teaching but we also helped our kids.

First example, when our kids were pretty young, we didn't think that there was enough emphasis on multiplication tables. We made flash cards and played with our kids so they learned their multiplication tables very early in life. Both of my kids finished calculus in high school.

Second example. We read to our kids nightly until they were old enough to read to themselves. We didn't watch much TV and both our kids became readers. The world is much easier if you are a proficient reader.

I think that it is up to the parents to make sure that their kids are developing the skills that they will need later in life. You can't just assume that the schools will take care of this.

QFT.
The school systems are actually halfway decent. The major problem is parents don't take any interest in their kids education. Of course, the school systems could be better, I'm just saying, they aren't the main problem. Parents stick their kids in front of a TV and think that's parenting.

This is a slap in the face to me because I started reading at the tender age of two, and books were all I were into. And when I got bored with normal books, I'd read encyclopedias.

Really freaked the kids out when I was in school and brought on a discourse about real Soviet Russia/US relations. My brother is seven and he can't even read a toddler's Transformer book, and bothers me to high heaven when he asks me to sound out the simplest words.

Oh America...What happened?

reply to post by neo96


ugh, I can't stand grammar nazis, and I'm usually someone who types out things completely.
I def agre wit u on thiz point, neo96.

I think the problem is when people write like that in school, and I've heard it happens on occasion lol.