47. The National Adult Literacy Survey: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

47. The National Adult Literacy Survey: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

The National Adult Literacy Survey  

     In 1982, Anthony Oettinger, a member of the private discussion group called the Council  on Foreign Relations, asked an audience of communications executives this question:  "Do we really have to have everybody literate — writing and

reading in the traditional  sense — when we have means through our technology to achieve a new flowering of oral  communication?" Oettinger suggested "our idea of literacy" is "obsolete." Eighty-three  years earlier John Dewey had written in "The Primary Education Fetish" that "the plea for  the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance  attaching to literature seems to be a perversion."  

      For the balance of this discussion I'm going to step into deeper water, first reviewing  what reading in a Western alphabet really means and what makes it a reasonably easy  skill to transmit or to self-teach, and then tackling what happened to deprive the ordinary  person of the ability to manage it very well. I want to first show you how, then answer the  more speculative question why. 

      The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen  with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the  Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five  levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:  

     1. Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can't read. Some of this  group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight,  and birth spaces on application forms. 

      2. Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They  cannot write simple messages or letters. 

      3. Fifty- five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading.  A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter  in a 20-ounce jar costing $1 .99 when told they could round the answer off to a  whole number.  

      4. Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and  all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the  procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries. 

      5. About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills  adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school  students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other     developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how  misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are,  since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the  entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is  concealed.  

     6. Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate  where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their  intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to  interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things  mean. A working definition of immaturity might include an excessive need for  other people to interpret information for us.  

     Certainly it's possible to argue that bad readers aren't victims at all but perpetrators,  cursed by inferior biology to possess only shadows of intellect. That's what bell-curve  theory, evolutionary theory, aristocratic social theory, eugenics theory, strong-state  political theory, and some kinds of theology are about. All agree most of us are inferior,  if not downright dangerous. The integrity of such theoretical outlooks — at least where  reading was concerned — took a stiff shot on the chin from America. Here, democratic  practice allowed a revolutionary generation to learn how to read. Those granted the  opportunity took advantage of it brilliantly.  

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