I recall reading somewhere that adult literacy was at like 98% in the US. Though that was like 25 years ago, and I suppose a 6th grade level still counts as “literate”? Or did we slide backwards?
If we have to talk about this in terms of “grade levels”, at what point is someone actually considered illiterate?
Measuring two different things. Your number: can read the words, mostly understand the words they read.
6th graders are generally literate. However, they’re not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece, and they likely won’t question the narrator, assuming they’re reliable.
You can imagine how half of adults being that bad at these things has colored political discourse.
I recall reading somewhere that adult literacy was at like 98% in the US. Though that was like 25 years ago, and I suppose a 6th grade level still counts as “literate”? Or did we slide backwards?
If we have to talk about this in terms of “grade levels”, at what point is someone actually considered illiterate?
Measuring two different things. Your number: can read the words, mostly understand the words they read.
6th graders are generally literate. However, they’re not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece, and they likely won’t question the narrator, assuming they’re reliable.
You can imagine how half of adults being that bad at these things has colored political discourse.