Reading Mattheissen's Shadow Country , daily (not gaily) mopping the flooded basement: I've spent many recent hours mulling the higher ground.
Shadow Country reimagines the Ed Watson legend, but its foreground details the settlement of Florida's Ten Thousand Islands from post-Civil War though the frenzied and corrupt land development of the 1920's. For descendants of escaped slaves, white felons on the lam, survivors of the Seminole Wars, plume-hunters and assorted drifters, this higher ground of course was but relative, beset as they were by heat, hurricane, mosquito, water moccasin, alligator and briney poverty. Geographically the higher ground was even more mingy, consisting of those islands formed by Calusa shell middens. The largest such island was Chokoloskee, with a highest point of twenty feet above sea-level.
Higher ground, of course, is narcotic. Immediately one forgets the narrow dimensions of the foothold, the immense area and depth of the waters from which one escaped, the illusory nature of escape.
Every few months, my non-profit mind becomes a swirl of "why don't people." Why don't they read to their kids, obtain a library card, sign up to receive free books from my group? The solution is always to review this summary of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy ("NAAL").
The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics ("NCES") tested 19,000 adults (ages 16+) in three aspects of English literacy: quantitative, documentary and prose. NCES extrapolated those results to the 222 million such adults.
Two percent (4.4 million people) were eliminated from the findings, as foreign speakers who could not be tested. An additional three percent
(6.6 million) could recognize some letters, numbers or words; were alternatively assessed, and are included in the study's Below Basic category. Thus five percent of adults - 11 million people - are illiterate in English.
Descriptions of the assessment categories appear at page 16 of the linked summary. You will note that NCES refused to call the highest category "advanced," as unrepresentative of the skills. The highest category rather is "proficient." For prose, "proficient" equates to an ability to compare two dueling newspaper editorials.
Here are the prose literacy results. I cannot truncate the white space below, so scroll down for the chart. (No computer-literacy cracks!)
| LITERACY LEVEL | MILLIONS | PERCENT |
|---|---|---|
| Below Basic | 30 | 14 |
| Basic | 63 | 29 |
| Intermediate | 95 | 44 |
| Proficient | 28 | 13 |
Each category incorporates, of course, a range of scores. A better grasp on the skills gap can be gained by comparing Report Figures 3 and 9. Figure 3 illustrates what is termed a "moderately" difficult task: using a simple sandpaper selection guide. Figure 9 then reports the actual success for that task in each category. Of Below Basic scorers, only 8 percent could read the chart. At Basic, 39 percent. Intermediate had a 76 percent success rate, and Proficient scorers a 97 percent rate. Of course, the respective population sizes means that only 56 percent of adults can read that very basic chart.
From the right angle, are the alligators smiling?
I have started Shadow Country but got side tracked by several non fiction works, among them The Botany of Desire.
ReplyDeleteI have thought of what life must be like if I were to be illiterate. I don't think life gets impoverished necessarily. I think those of us hungry for stimulation of this nature would find other ways, quite like deaf people and blind people, compensate. I am not sure that literate sensibility equates with symbolic sensibility. I consider that a forgetful attitude about the actual long illiterate past of humankind and also a false elevation of the present technocratic posture over the achievements of the ancestors. However, I do like my comforts, such as access to great medical care. Or yet another good book to read. Or the marvelous records of our robots on Mars.
Literacy (and its close kin, being able to understand crucial mathmatics, e.g. how geometric and exponential progressions differ from linear ones) is not crucial to personhood -- however it is essential to citizenship in a modern democracy. People who can't read and cipher shouldn't vote -- certainly they shouldn't vote on issues.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of democracy, but if you're going to do it, you'd better do it right, and shell out the money to educate people properly. Otherwise you're just asking for it.
I have to agree with Dale: sub-standard literacy must be viewed in the context of the extant culture. Whether or not literacy is essential to personhood historically or in the abstract, our culture functionally treats the sub-literate as less than a person in every possible way.
ReplyDeleteOur reprehensible -- and accelerating -- failures to educate have constructed a regime of predation and slavery. The sub-literate never can sell their labor for a living wage; cannot learn of, or pay for, the ease afforded by even basic health care and prevention. Whenever you hear nonsensical radio ads (cheap mortgages during the Fall of 2008), you know the target audience.
Look at the report by the
Measure of American Human Development Project, based upon the United Nation's global Human Development indices. Advanced literacy (there expressed as educational attainment) = higher wages = healthier and longer lives.
I look at the demise of newspapers, and shudder. (And I want to throttle each and every publisher - FU Sam Zell - for actively abdicating this public trust.) For kids with sub-literate parents, looking at the newspaper -even the headlines in a kiosk - can save them from print-blindness. You can use them as a current events quiz, and engage the kids who like puzzles (or just winning).
I agree of course. I was imagining the past, not illiteracy in the present. I was also expressing a wistfulness for less complex culture (in this overdeveloped world on technological steroids) which would allow a little breathing room. I am just really tired. And at the end I remarked that I appreciate certain pieces of the present. I just had a minor heart attack. As a member of Kaiser Permanente, that angiogram, angioplasty, and stent placement by a true professional heart surgeon cost me $250. I would probably not be dead of this small episode had I been born in some other clime, but it wouldn't be long.
ReplyDeleteChristopher: I hear you. The encoding of memory and learning has indeed enabled much that drives us mad. I have refused to convert to digital tv, for example, and can almost map the new quiet space in my head. Particularly since you are recuperating, turn off the gadgets and get some rest.
ReplyDeleteIn the spirit of peace and love, I will sedulously refrain from asking whether you've read Neal Stephenson's
Snow Crash, in which the use of texts itself protects people from hearing God-voices and being rendered programmable, a la
Julian Jaynes.