Is it fair to say that 20% of Americans are illiterate, and that only 50% are class 3 litterate?

Question

Class 3 would be litterate enough to work in an office.

Weird, I put 2 t's into literate twice and missed them.

Answer 1

Yes that sounds about right. One of the best pieces of advice I received in college was that I should make a point of reading a "non-dumbed down" newspaper regularly. Whatever little reading is done by people these days is usually dumbed down for them, thus preserving their stunted level of literacy.

BTW, old chappy above, I don't think this is only an American phenomena.

Answer 2

You don't define what office work entails- it could be sweeping up shredded documents and being able to read safety signs in Spanish that say "Don't insert hand here".

Otherwise, we in the civilised world are not at all surprised- we've known this for years, old chap.

Answer 3

Yes, kind of sounds accurate.