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But personally I don't even know even a single person who cannot read. If you speak English, it should be really easy to learn how to read.
Have you ever met someone who can't read? to what extent? I'm just curious.
I have a significant number of friends who literally cannot read ... and these people are Millennials, not 80 year olds! Some are lazy and don't care, others have learning disabilities.
There are a lot of people out there who can't read at an 8th-grade level, meaning they cannot understand the information in a want ad, follow the instructions on a prescription label, read a whole paragraph out of a newspaper without getting stuck and then discuss it intelligently, or sound out and look up an unfamiliar word. Depending on where you are standing -- at a church social with the picnic tables full of accountants and MDs, or in a group of those people who have to sleep at the laundromat because they have nowhere else to go -- the rates can run as low as zero or as high as 50%.
I know a married couple raising a teenager who can barely read a paragraph between them. I know a guy who can write perfectly well but can hardly read at all. I know schoolkids who think they are good readers, have been told they are by their teachers, but couldn't figure out an unfamiliar word if you paid them to do it.
There are far more than you think, you might be surprised who some of them are. Many of them go to a great deal of trouble or do without things in order to hide it. Even more common are those that read at an elementary level, there is a reason most newspapers have traditionally been written at about a 5th grade level.
Thank you. Saved me the trouble.
Turns out almost 40% of adults read at a 5th grade level or below while only 15% read at a high school graduate level or above.
Yes, I just looked the above up, just don't know how to link on this tablet.
I taught high school for a bit over 30 years and the average reading level for our incoming 9th graders was 3rd/4th grade for most of that time.
In the TV show It's always sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie didn't know the meaning of words like "filibuster" and "philanthropist". It's a hilarious show, and I started thinking, how many U.S adults are as illiterate as Charlie?
The oddest two men I ever met who could not read was a man who owned a large cattle operation and an Air Force captain.
The first relied on his wife and sons to read anything he needed to have read to him. He was an all cash business, so if you brought him a cow, he handed you cash. Then he trucked the cow to the meatpacker's place and sold it for more cash than he paid.
The second was a man who got through college ROTC because he was a gifted athelete, but he couldn't read to save his neck. He was pretty good at compensating. If he had to know it tomorrow, he had his wife read it to him that night. He even made it through Squadron Officer's School that way. Throughout his time in the service, various commanders kept passing him along because no one wanted to be the bad guy who called him out.
I mean, who's still typing on their phone? You can just talk to your phone and it types for you.
And phones are SUPER AWESOME spellers.
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