"We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us"

[Formaldehyde]

This is mostly nonsense, particularly the bolded part.

Why? Because it is true?

http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/literacy.shtml

23% of adults were in Level 1;
27% in Level 2;

34.1% of applicants tested by respondent firms lacked the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.

http://www.timetoread.com/Resource/Literacy/faq.html

An individual who is illiterate cannot read or write at all. Persons with low literacy skills would be in the NALS Levels 1 and 2. According to the survey results, almost all adults in Level 1 can read a little but not well enough to read a food label or a children's story, or to fill out an application, such as one for employment. A person with Level 1 literacy may have difficulty finding an intersection on a street map, understanding prices on a menu, totaling the numbers on a bank deposit slip, locating the time and place of a meeting on a form, so that ability to function independently is affected. Adults at Level 2 can compare and contrast information, such as figuring the cost of something or identifying the difference between two items, but they typically lack problem-solving skills.

How do parents influence their children's literacy level?

Children who are not read to from an early age, who grow up in homes without books, newspapers and magazines, and who do not observe adults reading for pleasure and information and in other ways serving as literacy role models, are more likely to have literacy deficiencies.

Research shows that early experiences with books and being read to are vital for developing young readers. Experts recommend that children be read to from infancy on. They encourage the reading of familiar stories over and over, to give children time to pick up on language patterns and conventions of print. And they encourage lots of rich language use and conversation, to build children's vocabularies.

Parents who have low literacy are less likely to do all of these things, which is why their children are at risk for low literacy too.

 

[Phlegmak]

This is not impressive or meaningful:

34.1% of applicants tested by respondent firms lacked the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.

If you've ever been declined for a job, then you're in that 34.1%. A few months ago, I had a disasterous job interview. At the time of the interview, I forgot everything, even though I was perfectly qualified for the job, and I made a horrible impression.

The other things you quoted are more meaningful, but I am highly skeptical.

 

[Leonel]

Hey what's wrong with believing in ghosts?

 

[Formaldehyde]

This is not impressive or meaningful:

If you've ever been declined for a job, then you're in that 34.1%. A few months ago, I had a disasterous job interview. At the time of the interview, I forgot everything, even though I was perfectly qualified for the job, and I made a horrible impression.

No, they said "basic skills". In other words, people who were functionally illiterate wanting to be checkout clerks at supermarkets or employees at McDonalds.

 

[Phlegmak]

No, they said "basic skills". In other words, people who were functionally illiterate wanting to be checkout clerks at supermarkets or employees at McDonalds.

I don't see how you can come to that conclusion based on that text only. But I don't really care about this particular subject to argue further on it.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Because I think it is fairly obvious from the context?

https://www.bankrate.com/cyhm/news/biz/thumb/20010725a.asp?prodtype=cc

Small-business owners in the hiring market, beware! Chances are that more than a third of your applicants will lack the basic skills necessary to do the job, according to an annual survey by the American Management Association.

The AMA defines basic skills as functional workplace literacy: " ... the ability to read instructions, write reports, and/or do arithmetic at a level adequate to perform common workplace tasks."

The association's 2001 survey found that 34.1 percent of job applicants last year flunked pre-employment reading and math exams. That is fractionally better than in previous years. In 1999, 38.3 percent of those tested failed, while 35.5 percent of job seekers failed in 1998. But the latest numbers remain high enough to give human resource managers pause.

I think it's pretty obvious myself. If you let most cashiers ring up the total, then given them additional change so you don't have to break folding money to pay for it, most of them have to rering the tendered amount to know how much change to give you back. And those are the good ones that someone decided to hire...

 

[Phlegmak]

Because I think it is fairly obvious from the context?

https://www.bankrate.com/cyhm/news/biz/thumb/20010725a.asp?prodtype=cc

I think it's pretty obvious myself. If you let most cashiers ring up the total, then given them additional change so you don't have to break folding money to pay for it, most of them have to rering the tendered amount to know how much change to give you back. And those are the good ones that someone decided to hire...

Alright then.

 

[GoodGame]

Perfection is the solution.


Anyways, I don't get much from the article, other than a Random Rant about peoples' belief systems, and that a republic doesn't change overnight, unlike a full fledged facist tyranny.

 

[mangxema]

Twenty percent think the sun might revolve around the Earth.

Really? Really?!?

 

[emzie]

As much as I laughed along with the writer in the OP, hasn't every generation lamented what it has become? So what if fewer people can do advanced math -- they don't have to. Our skill sets have changed. No one on this thread can build their own home, something our great grandfathers once had to do, but are you or I missing out on something because of our ignorance in home building?

 

[Camikaze]

"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."

How stupid. Obviously Jesus spoke Latin.

 

[Irish Caesar]

Honestly, where does the author get off saying this ridiculous nonsense?

Because if you're pompous enough, loud enough, and make sure you don't accidentally use tact, people who already agree with your conclusions will find you convincing and hail you as a visionary.

 

[Leonel]

Really? Really?!?

Well it's better than the percentage of French that believe that.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

Because if you're pompous enough, loud enough, and make sure you don't accidentally use tact, people who already agree with your conclusions will find you convincing and hail you as a visionary.

Is this an original of yours or did it come from somewhere else? Either way, I like it.

 

[Neomega]

Slam dunk, my good fellow. Some parts are exaggerated and others are false, but most of it is spot on.



That, is a sobering thought indeed...

In the preface to Mein Kampf, it is noted that Germans were the most educated, most well read people in the world, especially when it came to science.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It's not terribly surprising that this story has met with such negative reaction from some quarters where the truth is probably a bit too close to home. We don't need to be able to do simple arithmetic or even read anymore. We have machnes that can do that now. My TV told me so.

Because if you're pompous enough, loud enough, and make sure you don't accidentally use tact, people who already agree with your conclusions will find you convincing and hail you as a visionary.

Ironically, that sure sounds like GWB and the neocons to me.

We now know a neoconservative is someone who sets his house on fire then boasts six years later that nobody can put it out. Bill Moyers

 

[Irish Caesar]

Is this an original of yours or did it come from somewhere else? Either way, I like it.

It's my own words.

That sure sounds like GWB and the neocons to me.

Your preconceived notions don't agree with what I said! Oh no!

 

[Formaldehyde]

I think you have yourself confused with me again.

The logic here, if that's the term, seems to rest on the a priori conviction that belief and knowledge are separate and unequal. Belief is higher, nobler; it comes from the heart; it feels like truth. There's a kind of biblical grandeur to it, and as God's chosen, we have an inherent right to it. Knowledge, on the other hand, is impersonal, easily manipulated, inherently suspect. Like the facts it's based on, it's slippery, insubstantial — not solid like the things you believe.

The corollary to the axiom that belief beats knowledge, of course, is that ordinary folks shouldn't value the latter too highly, and should be suspicious of those who do. Which may explain our inherent discomfort with argument. We may not know much, but at least we know what we believe. Tricky elitists, on the other hand, are always going on. Confusing things. We don't trust them.

Communicate intelligently in America and you're immediately suspect. As one voter from Alaska expressed it last fall, speaking of Obama, "He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly." This isn't race talking; it's education. There's something sneaky about a man like Obama (or even John Kerry, who, though no Disraeli, could construct a sentence in English with a beginning, a middle, and an end), because he seems intelligent. It makes people uneasy. Who knows what he might be thinking?

Praise me for a citizen or warm up the pillory, it comes down to the unpleasant fact that a significant number of our fellow citizens are now as greedy and gullible as a boxful of puppies; they'll believe anything; they'll attack the empty glove; they'll follow that plastic bone right off the cliff. Nothing about this election has changed that fact. If they're ever activated — if the wrong individual gets to them, in other words, before the educational system does — we may live to experience a tyranny of the majority Tocqueville never imagined.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

It's my own words.

Well, for what it's worth I thought it was very good.

It's not terribly surprising that this story has met with such negative reaction from some quarters where the truth is probably a bit too close to home. We don't need to be able to do simple arithmetic or even read anymore. We have machnes that can do that now. My TV told me so.

Ironically, that sure sounds like GWB and the neocons to me.

We now know a neoconservative is someone who sets his house on fire then boasts six years later that nobody can put it out. Bill Moyers

Oh man, dick by Formaldehyde.

 

[emzie]

Well it's better than the percentage of French that believe that.

The French don't believe the sun may revolve around the earth. Not in greater numbers than Americans anyway. However, a plurality does believe the sun may revolve around France, yes.