Literacy Matters

[akashiver]

Y'know, every so often I get annoyed by the "we don't have a problem with declining literacy" brigade. Fact is that literacy - at least on the college level at IU - is way below where it should be. I'm not talking about misplaced commas, here, but about a substantial portion of students not knowing sentence structure or the meanings of words. Worse, no matter how clear a sentence is, some of them just can't follow its meaning once it gets beyond a single phrase. (I was watching _Good Night and Good Luck_ last night and wondering how many Americans today would be able to follow the debate style of the 1950s.)

I've heard this blamed on the education system, on the rise of non-literate technologies, and on students in general. I don't know what the cause is. But reading and being able to interpret sentences accurately is not just an academic exercise. Witness the problems people have with Prescription Bottles".

Comments

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Based on that article, it doesn't look like hyper-sophisticated medical jargon that involves snobbishly big words is the problem. At least I don't see any big words or words with more than two syllables, except for "teaspoon" mentioned anywhere in that article.

If someone can't sort out "take one teaspoon twice a day for seven days" just how exactly would you suggest that sentence be simplified? Pictograms, maybe?

I think you're spot on with regard to the need to make things even more simple for the elderly and those who may have special needs due to side effects. Perhaps dispensing medications in daily packets (or morning/evening packets with days printed on them) would be useful in such cases, or right into parcelled boxes like day-of-the-week pill sorters.

Nevertheless, the point that is being made still strikes me as relevant. If people of "ordinary" intelligence and "ordinary" literacy (let's say an IQ which doesn't require you to be put into special ed as a child and a fifth grade reading level) can't wrap their heads around "take two pills twice a day" I'd say that there's certainly a problem. I'd say that it's not with literacy, personally (I mean, how simple can you make a sentence?) but with basic reasoning skills.

Do people deserve to die because they're puddingheads? No. But it does make you wonder if they weren't given an extra dose of ethanol before being decanted and raised in a nursery where they hear "I'm so glad I'm not an Alpha. Alphas have to work so hard..." played on a tape recorder 24x7.