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When I was a GED tutor years ago, I had students who were functionally illiterate - could read individual words or at least sound out the harder ones, but couldn't understand a full text. But never someone who couldn't read at all.
I encountered them in the 1950s in western NY state, while I was clerking in a store. They could recognize familiar packages, but not read what was on them, and they could only sign their names.
In recent years I have met young people - one the son of a friend - who were functionally illiterate.
You would be hard pressed, if not impossible, to find someone who could not read at all. People will normally pick up this no matter what and where they are. They would have to be living in a cave, disability issues, or actually make an effort to be illiterate in a place they live to the point of not being able to read anything.
What I have put in bold describes many English-speaking people I have encountered who were permanent residents in foreign countries. They very, very often had no ability to communicate in the language of the country, and recognized at best perhaps ten or twenty basic words on signs.....although "detour" was often not one of them.
Yes, indeed, some people do "make an effort to be illiterate."
I've recently done some work with the working poor community in a city with newer immigrants from mainly Central and South America. Some are virtually illiterate in their native language and many have zero understanding of spoken or written English. Everyone I see is employed and hard working. Often they bring their children to help them read and translate.
I've recently done some work with the working poor community in a city with newer immigrants from mainly Central and South America. Some are virtually illiterate in their native language and many have zero understanding of spoken or written English. Everyone I see is employed and hard working. Often they bring their children to help them read and translate.
It is not uncommon with immigrant families from lower socioeconomic brackets in Spanish-speaking countries to have a good command of spoken language in their first language, but not to be able to read or write in it. I have worked with ESL children with Spanish as the language spoken in the home who are verbally fluent in Spanish, but cannot read or write in in, because they've only been immersed in it in the spoken format. They were not raised reading literature in Spanish, haven't spent their lives doing business that required functional command of written Spanish, etc. Speaking a language/auditorily interpreting a language and reading and writing a language are distinctly different skills sets.
Language barriers represent an entirely different facet of ability issues than illiteracy that is based around something other than having a different native tongue.
I recommend the book Life is So Good, by George Dawson.
Dawson was a lifelong Texan, born in 1898, who was the son of a farmer and grandson and great grandson of slaves. He worked at a sawmill and supported all his large siblings as a teen and young man, despite being illiterate. In adulthood, he married a woman who could read, and he worked for the city road crew in Dallas. He and his wife had seven children, and he helped all of them with their homework even though he could not read himself.
When he was 98 years old, he encountered a adult education worker, and learned to read. He wrote his autobiography, with assistance of another writer, shortly after that, and it was published when he was 103 years old.
You would be hard pressed, if not impossible, to find someone who could not read at all. People will normally pick up this no matter what and where they are. They would have to be living in a cave, disability issues, or actually make an effort to be illiterate in a place they live to the point of not being able to read anything.
35 million Americans are either functionally illiterate or can't read at all. I saw a stat about this about a week ago and it was current info.
You would be hard pressed, if not impossible, to find someone who could not read at all. People will normally pick up this no matter what and where they are. They would have to be living in a cave, disability issues, or actually make an effort to be illiterate in a place they live to the point of not being able to read anything.
35 million Americans are either functionally illiterate or can't read at all. I saw a stat about this about a week ago and it was current info.
Wow. Thanks for posting that stat. Add in the illiterate non-citizens living in the US and that is a whole lot of adults.
The adult literacy rate in Cuba is 99.75%, its around 80% in the US. I was recently in Cuba found the comparison interesting especially since its such a poor country.
You would be hard pressed, if not impossible, to find someone who could not read at all. People will normally pick up this no matter what and where they are. They would have to be living in a cave, disability issues, or actually make an effort to be illiterate in a place they live to the point of not being able to read anything.
You'd be surprised. You don't have to "try." Think of kids brought up in not only the poorest but most broken homes.
I volunteered in a program that taught adult literacy. There were many enrolled that could not read, for many reasons. It was eye opening.
My great grandmother couldn't read; she could write her name though. She was from the mountains in South Carolina.
I worked with a woman whose husband couldn't read. He managed to get a CDL, and drove cement trucks. He had to follow another truck because he couldn't read the addresses or follow directions on where to deliver.
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