Literacy and Democracy
The internet kept coming up sporadically over the weekend as I was thinking about The Next Democracy and, I think, rightly so. It’s difficult to imagine the future of civic engagement, including political engagement, as taking anything other than an increasingly online form as the idea of community itself becomes increasingly oriented around online communities of interest. This naturally led to some talk about the need to expand access to broadband, which I certainly agree with.
But a more fundamental issue than whether or not people can avail themselves of a home internet connection is that a terrifyingly large proportion of Americans can’t read and internet access isn’t going to be very helpful absent literacy:
The way this is defined, “consulting reference materials to determine which foods contain a particular vitamin” qualifies you for intermediate prose literacy. So in addition to double digit numbers of people who really can’t read at all, we have around 40 percent of the population in a situation where they have no real practical ability to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the information revolution.
In another vein, this is part of the context that the chattering classes seem to me to be overlooking in a lot of conversations about the future of newspapers. We already have a society in which people are extremely ill-informed and in which there are large, systematic lapses in the practical availability of information to broad numbers of people. The impoverished democracy that many people fear might arrive in the future is basically the world we’re living in right now. This is also why I think it’s a mistake for progressives to downplay the importance of an improved education system—a more literate population would be a population that’s much more capable of organizing itself in defense of policies that trend toward broadly based prosperity.
21 Responses to “Literacy and Democracy”
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April 6th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
This is also why I think it’s a mistake for progressives to downplay the importance of an improved education system
What progressives downplay the importance of an improved education system? I would say that’s a core part of the liberal agenda and always has been.
Perhaps you mean not all progressives agree with your policy prescriptions. That’s another matter.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
what’s really terrifying is the prevalence of poor spelling.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
“This is also why I think it’s a mistake for progressives to downplay the importance of an improved education system—a more literate population would be a population that’s much more capable of organizing itself in defense of policies that trend toward broadly based prosperity.”
Translation: if only Americans were “better educated” they would be more supportive of Matt’s agenda.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
“Translation: if only Americans were “better educated” they would be more supportive of Matt’s agenda.”
Well, this is actually true. Generally people are more liberal/progressive the better-educated they are.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
internet access isn’t going to be very helpful absent literacy
Um, what? The extraordinary thing, of late, is the proof that text isn’t the only thing that can be widely distributed through the Pipes. Illiteracy is a problem, but it isn’t clear that the importance of the Internet makes it more of a problem.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I find it impossible to believe that 43% of American adults are incapable of “consulting reference materials to determine which foods contain a particular vitamin” (even if many of them aren’t allowed to consult a reference written in their native language).
Also, a definition of the other three categories (and maybe even a link) would be helpful.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Can Matt or someone post a link to that study. It would be nice to have a better idea of how the study is defining the different levels of literacy. It seems hard to believe that over 80% of the country is functionally illiterate and unable to take advantage of the vast amount of information on the internet.
Regardless, it would be nice if people were smarter.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
kid bitzer Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
what’s really terrifying is the prevalence of poor spelling.
=========================================================
Yes, it can be absolutely agonozing
April 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
While I disagree with Kafka’s snide implication, there are those like Mixner (charles) who combine literacy with a determination to ignore facts and come to anti-progressive conclusions (i.e. Torture is Good). So, literacy is a good thing, but it is not sufficient. Logic and empiricism are also vital if we are to have an informed, and therefore progressive, populace.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
It’s from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, here:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007480
You can find the definitions of literacy levels and different types of literacy in the report at that link.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Mississippi is a red state in more ways than one.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep/lowlim/lowlim4.htm
April 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Two things in particular that jump out at me:
(1) While I’m not assuming that the set of people in the “proficient” group for prose is identical to the “proficient” group for documents and/or quantitative, the stability of the group’s size across categories was interesting to me, when compared to the basic and intermediate group’s fluctuations. On reflection, this actually coincides with what I think my intuition would’ve been.
(2) I am surprised by smaller basic and intermediate groups for quantitative literacy, given that canonically I believe median SAT math scores are superior to median SAT verbal scores. Obviously, both content and group composition vary greatly, but I would’ve expected a general resemblance.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
And of course when I said “smaller basic and intermediate groups for quantitative literacy” what I actually meant to say was “much larger intermediate groups and much larger below basic groups, indicating that in general people were worse at this than the others,” because I actually have at the least a basic ability to interpret data on a chart. At least, I’ve always assumed I do.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
If you had told me 30 years ago that college would not be free for all qualified US citizens in the year 2009 I would have laughed. I would dismissed the notion with a condescending wave of my hand. “Not free?” I would have, and might have said, “Nonsense. We are the greatest Nation on earth. Think how cheap it is now! Of course it will be free.”
When I talk to college students now and tell them how much I loved college book stores, how I would buy five times as many books as was required because the books were so freeking cheap, they look at me horror. Like I am a crazy man. I don’t represent a man from the not to distant past, but a scary time traveler who believes he was sent from a civilization that never existed. I am the Man from Atlantis.
I care about education, Matt. What do we gotta do?
April 6th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I teach at a state university in California. 1/4-1/3 of the students in my classes write at a sixth-grade level (I’m guessing–IIRC I was taught the concept of paragraphing in fifth grade, and they’re just beyond that (though many have grammar poorer than that of my classmates in fifth grade, certainly)). Some large percentage of students don’t like reading at all (I’m guessing 60-80%). It’s not clear to me what ought to be done, but I do know these students simply don’t have the skills to succeed in college.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I come from way-back-when before TV was so common. My grandfather took in 6 newspapers a day — and read all of them!
I can tell you even then most people didn’t like to read. Even my grandfather claimed he didn’t like to read (except the stock market reports and sports) and I believed him. Maybe it was partly posturing, but he certainly never read a history book, to my knowledge, except the Bible, which he had studied long ago in his youth and which he maintained contained all the history anyone would need to know.
I have known many people who became readers only in college or afterwards. Or even in their twenties, so I wouldn’t judge people exclusively by what they say or do in college.
On the other hand, illiteracy is a terrible problem that it would be a tremendous social investment to address. And this goes for continuing education, worker-reeducation, and Adult education generally. Leveling up is the way to go.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
It’s interesting that in this post Matt has so internalized his arguing points for educational gimcracks that he actually seems to think that progressives “downplay the importance of an improved education system”- an idea so opposite to history and events that any rational person would be asking themselves how they could think it.
Frankly, I’m not sure that a driver who can’t read is a bigger threat than a columnist who can’t comprehend.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:14 am
It appears that a large majority of the social problems that Matt worries about are exacerbated by illegal immigration, yet he seldom has anything to say about that other than snark.
When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:31 am
If you look at Graph 2-6a in the federal literacy study that Matt cites, you’ll see that prose literacy increased nicely for most demographic groups between 1992 and 2003. For example, the percent of blacks Below Basic in fell from 30% to 24% and the percent of whites Below Basic fell from 9% to 7% and Asians from 25% to 14%.
Unfortunately, the percent of Hispanics who Below Basic increased from 35% to 44%, while the Hispanic share of the adult population grew from 8% to 12%. In other words, the number of Below Basic Hispanics in the U.S. almost doubled in just 11 years.
In other words, we’re getting more literate, except that illegal immigration is dragging us down.
See p. 16 for numbers:
http://nces.ed.gov/Pubs2007/2007480.pdf
April 7th, 2009 at 3:48 am
I had a good look through that report.
None of the examples or definitions of prose proficiency tests make reference to the question: “consulting reference materials to determine which foods contain a particular vitamin”.
Nowhere is the word “vitamin” used in that report.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
After reading through the article, I feel that I need more information on the topic. Can you suggest some resources ?