Illiteracy on the rise?

Question

Has anyone else noticed the increase of illiteracy nowadays?

It really saddens me that people lower themselves to this level. I question the parents, and teachers and influences around them. It wasn't like this when I was in school. Do these people know how uneducated it makes them look when forming a whole sentence becomes too much of an effort.

Answer 1

It will likely get worse. The gap between the white collar workers and blue collar workers is increasing. Many people in our society are not intelligent enough to perform white collar jobs. Therefore, they only achieve as much as they need to get by. Since the requirement for education in service and blue collar jobs is limited, then so is their education. People don't want to face this issue because it is harsh. The Bell Curve predicted this result. It is only going to get worse since the influx of uneducated aliens is outpacing the birth rate of educated citizens.

Answer 2

Go and read the letters of US civil war soldiers. Most of them had not even a high school diploma yet could quote poetry and classics of literature. Most "colluj gradjew8s" can only quote pop songs and think that "Charlotte's Web" is heavy reading.

Is it the children at fault? Hardly. They are the products of the system.

Is it the school boards and teachers? No (except for the morons in Kansas and the like). They can only attract those willing to teach and do their best to educate with underfunded curriculums.

Is is the fault of government? Yes, but not just government; business also bears a large part of the blame.

In the late 19th century, labour unions forced businesses to pay fair wages, creating a middle class that had never existed; before that, it was the wealthy and the poor with few in between. (Think of the inhuman conditions of the early industrial revolution with its "satanic mills".) Along with labour unions, free public schooling was made available; at the time, a high school education was sufficient for anyone to succeed in any field.

Over the past one hundred or so years, however, the budgets and standards for schools have declined gradually: not any noticeable jumps, but a long slow decline in funding and quality of the curriculum and standards.

But it's not just schools. Business has demanded more and more as levels of technology increased; while the education required to perform jobs has increased, the ability for the public to earn such an education has become increasingly difficult to the point where only the wealthy can achieve a post secondary degree. There is now a two-tiered system of rich and poor, and it is only a matter of time before the middle class ages and dies.

I am not suggesting there has been any "plot" or "conspiracy" by the rich to destroy the middle class, but without advocating and promoting government policy and law that benefits them at the expense of the populace, their wealth would not increase as it has. Businesses have sought to accumulate increasing levels of wealth with no concern for how it affects others. Corporations say, "We made 6% profit this year, so we have to make 7% profit next year," with no thought for the reality of economics; the only way to achieve this is to increase the workload of employees, pay them less, and charge more for the product.

Effectively, we are being nickeled and dimed out of our nickels and dimes. We have returned to a situation that mirrors the time before labour unions, that mirrors the worst of the industrial revolution: the wealthy stay wealthy, and the poor live in squalor and are prevented from ever rising out of poverty by rules that protect those who have. Because government obeys the wealthy instead of the public, school budgets for the "masses" are less and less a priority; we are expected to be nothing but cheap labour for McJobs, and if cheaper labour can be found elsewhere, it will.

The ironic thing about the US is that for all its bellyaching about the "threat" of communism, it is the one major economy in the world that has never had a strong socialist or communist movement or elected body. All the countries that have had one are flourishing and poverty is not as widespread except among uneducated immigrants who lack skills. Such countries made a concerted effort to educate everyone equally, not to have an elite, and it has paid off. Even Mexico has a better average education, its poorest closer to the average than those in the US.


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Answer 3

Precisely.

The state of the education system is apparent in the questions and answers on here.

Answer 4

It is rather disconcerting, isn't it? I suspect that no one teaches grammar in schools anymore.