Noah Webster's American Spelling Book (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Check out this info: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=279135

  About 1% of American adults are said to be totally illiterate regardless of their first language.

  The far higher figures for "functional illiteracy" are extremely significant.  FWIW, my experience teaching freshmen at a state university (1976-89) lead me to guess that if anyone over 18 counts as an "adult," the percentage of American adults who can't read and write above the tenth grade level (defined as the average performance of today's tenth graders) is probably much higher than any of us would like to think.  Thirty or forty percent sounds like quite a plausible estimate to me.

  But maybe primary and secondary education has improved dramatically since 1989,,,,

  JL

Scot LaFaive <slafaive at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Scot LaFaive
Subject: Re: Noah Webster's American Spelling Book (UNCLASSIFIED)
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Four out of 10 does seem a tad high, in "civilized" countries at
least. Of course, I'm not sure what the actual estimated amount would
be.

Scot

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"
> Subject: Re: Noah Webster's American Spelling Book (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society
> > [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom Zurinskas
> > Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 1:48 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Noah Webster's American Spelling Book
> >
>
> >
> > Synthetic phonics is going back to this form of phonetics
> > first teaching. It works. It was said in the late 1800's
> > that maybe 4 in 1,000 couldn't read. Now its about 100 times that.
> >
>
>
> You think 400 people out of a 1000 can't read? You're kidding, right?
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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