Sunday, January 11, 2009

14% of Americans can't read.

No wonder why no one reads the Coozer Files... From Live Science:

Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can't read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills.

The figures are for 2003, the latest year available. State and county results are available here.

For shits and giggles, I checked some of the stats. I figured I could point and laugh at Iowa from my high perch of literacy in the cognac-sipping, well-read county of Queens, NY. It turns out we're 46% illiterate! (For the record, Iowa is only 7% illiterate.)

2 comments:

Steve from Moon said...

Then there is the large portion of the US population that can read, but doesn't understand the meaning (or implications) of what they have just read...

Larissa said...

You know- I wonder if some of it might be a large percentage of immigrants- people who may very well be literate in their own language, but cannot read English. Especially when you're emigrating from a country with a different alphabet...