The Glade 4.0

LK, just to put things in a bit of perspective, the rate of level 1 and 2 (level 2 being unable to read well enough to fill out a job application) adult illiteracy in Mississippi is 64%. Go here and look up your county, I'm sure you'll be surprised.

Another thing to consider is (as you've mentioned) the rate of unemployment. IIRC the official unemployment rate in Detroit is 30%+, when you add in the people who have given up looking etc., it's estimated at 50%+.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Hopwin, the Flesch-Kincaid index is built into Microsoft Word as well. It returns the reading level of a piece of writing.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

That page is using 1990 census data though.

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Minnesota is at 35% and yeah I'm a little surprised it's that high.

I'm not. There are a lot of people who are functionally illiterate and unaware of the fact. There is a great deal of confusion regarding just what it means to be able to read.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

To emphasize my earlier point...

My main form of procrastination is to read tons of various news articles, blogs, forum posts, comments, etc. online. A side effect of this is that I'm very literate (by my own standards). Maybe 70-80 hours per week of reading for the last several years. Also I can type quickly without looking at my fingers. People who watch TV all day gain none of this.

edit:

It's actually interesting how at school during class the form of procrastination is to doodle or just let your mind wander... you can't gain any skills. Textbooks are usually boring (except for history).

hahaha

I don't know about the papers you guys read, but the stuff I'm reading from my local newspapers (one is now online only) looks like it's written by 6th graders (poor grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation).

In other words, I think it's written at '6th grade level' because that is the skill level of the contributors.

Regarding the literacy rate, yes; let us know when you find a searchable database with more current information.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Man, that's just sad. I guess I'm glad I don't read the newspaper.

Take an online college course where every student's papers are publicly available for critique. I don't know how English professors avoid going on killing sprees. You get people who claim to have immigrated from Palestine, Sudan, or Indonesia like less than a year ago and not knowing any English prior to that point, and their papers STILL have better grammar and spelling than the median.

I'm not sure this particular fact is tht much of an issue. The fancier the language, the more likely (it seems to me) that the newspaper is editorializing rather than reporting.

Still, your underlying point is well taken.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Although I speak less Spanish than any native speaker, the Spanish I do speak would be, grammatically speaking, much better than the norm for most everyday Mexicans. People who learn a language as a native learn the slang, vernacular, and idioms, and speak that way. Nonnative speakers have to learn the rules and translate what they want to say from their native language into the new one until they get very good at it. Even then they will have learned the "academic" way of speaking rather than the everyday way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Considering that this statement can be taken multiple ways, could you maybe speak as to what you do read that would qualify as better?

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That's awesome.
According to the data for my city, I'm a minority...48% white and 51% black. (There is 1% asian, but I'm sure that will drop as soon as Mookhow goes back to Texas.)
Percent at level I is 34% and percent at level I or II is 66%...not sure exactly how to decipher that.
Also, 45% of the population is either unemployed or not in the labor force. I'm quite certain that number is actually higher than that.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

http://www.dclearns.org/documents/factsheet_skills_1.4.pdf

Level 1: Adults typically cannot read well enough to fill out an application, read a food label, or read a simple story to a child.

Level 2: Adults begin to compare, contrast, or integrate pieces of information but generally cannot perform higher level reading and problem-solving skills.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It's interesting (and sad) that there are so many different organizations and testing methods that use the "Level 1, Level 2..." system from MELT to SPL, ALS, NALS and NAAL; I'm not even sure what's what any more. I'm just going to go with the idea that if you're level 2 or below, it's bad.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I'd like to see a copy of the criteria/test/whatever that they administer to determine whether someone is level I or level II.

Here's a place to start: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Well, mostly I either read for pleasure (sci fi, fantasy) or read for work (technical docs or publications). I do a fair amount of internet surfing/reading as well, which as everyone here knows that ranges from insipid to fairly intelligent.

My comment was more a general disgust with the apparent low standards of newspapers.

At least you *can* read the paper!

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Holy shitsnacks!

I used to read novels in between classes in grade school, or whenever class wasn't in progress. I was super popular in school btw.


I think we get that, but it's still sort of annoying. Just say whatever it is you're thinking. You're not an anime. Or you could replace "..." with "...metal gear!" Then again, it's way less annoying than having doom-bots show up at the house though, so keep on keepin' on!

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Here's a job app for Wal Mart. Can you fill it out?
Yes/No.

If yes, can you read this book /hands random book.

If no, then you're illiterate. Its an easy test

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Holy shitsnacks!

Aha! I finded it! http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/acad/osa/fle.html

I forgot about this, because in high school we referred to it as 'The FLE' but it's really the Functional Literacy Exam and you had to take it your senior year....you were not allowed to graduate without passing the FLE. If I remember correctly, I got an almost perfect score except for one question....don't recall which. And FWIW, the exam was not grammar school level...there were actually some difficult questions. It wasn't so difficult, however, that anybody would have failed it, but not everyone aced it either.

That's kind of the angle I was going for with asking the question...I don't think the criteria as used for Level I and Level II are as easy as we might think...I guess what I'm saying is, yes there is obviously a functional literacy problem, but not as bad as what I had originally pictured when I first read the OP.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Selling newspapers to people who wish to use them for anything other than lining a birdcage or making hats requires that they be written at a level most of those who might wish to purchase them can understand.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I think it means there are between 3 to 6 people in Mississippi that are not illiterate, and they likely all live in your house.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut