Growing Problem of Illiteracy

The majority of America's illiterate population is to be found among high school drop-outs. However, even among Americans who have completed schooling, many are "functionally illiterate," which means that they are extremely limited in their reading and writing abilities. Different educators define functional illiteracy in different ways. For example: "Some experts draw the line of functional illiteracy at an eighth grade reading level, which would include 20-30% of the U.S. population. Other literacy groups claim as many as 50% of all Americans don't read well enough to understand articles in Time or Newsweek (Current programs, 1988, p. 10). Functional illiteracy makes it difficult for people to fu

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obs. In some cases, employers have tried to compensate for the problem by providing on-the-job literacy training for their workers (Current programs, 1988, p. 10). In other cases, employers have simply tried to make the jobs easier for their illiterate employees. This can be seen, for example, in the use of training videos instead of written materials, or in the use of cash registers which show pictures of food rather than words and numbers (Current programs, 1988, p. 10). Thus, it can be seen that many American companies today "are engaged less in developing literacy skills and more in just dumbing down the job so people who can't read well can do the work" (Current programs, 1988, pp. 10-11). In this way, it can be seen that American businesses are as guilty as the schools for perpetuating the illiteracy problem as it currently exists. Simply making jobs easier evades the issue that literacy is an important tool for improving the lives of the poor and other underprivileged groups in America. Literacy enhances a person's ability to cope with the world, while opening up new opportunities that never existed before. It is shameful that illiteracy still exists on a large scale in the United States. Furthermore, it is shamef
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2800
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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