How do you view the literacy rate in the United States as only 79%?

https://www.zhihu.com/question/665901276/answer/3617819604

A literacy rate of 79% is not a problem at all. It at least means that 79% of the population is literate.

The truly terrifying thing is functional illiteracy, where you can read, write, and calculate, but if you are given even a slightly more complex text processing task (really, just slightly more complex), such as trying to understand the meaning of every sentence in a news article, functional illiteracy sets in. This is a characteristic of English, and if one wants to achieve more complex reading or writing, the required vocabulary base is simply too large for most Americans, let alone ordinary people, even among college-educated elites.

There are 32 million illiterate or 50 million functionally illiterate Americans (functional illiteracy is defined as "the ability to read, write, or calculate, but lacking the ability to use these skills to handle certain everyday tasks"). "Everyday tasks" refer to things like reading newspapers, using a dictionary, reading a bus schedule, understanding instructions, and filling out an application form.

In 1988, the United States conducted the "1988 National Adult Literacy Survey," which concluded that 21-23% of American adults had severe reading difficulties and could only reach or fall below Level 1 standards. (Level 1 standard: able to write your own name, find the country name in a paragraph, find the expiration date on a driver's license, and understand the total of your bank deposit)

In 1992, a study on "proficiency" reading comprehension (the ability to read and understand information provided in a passage) in the United States showed that only 51% of American college graduates could be considered "proficient".

In 2003, a similar study found that the proportion of "proficient" college graduates had dropped to just 41%. As society and the economy have developed, American college students' reading skills have actually declined.

In 2005, a regular survey conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), an agency under the US Department of Education, showed that 36% of US fourth graders had reading proficiency at the "basic" level.

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute for Literacy conducted a comprehensive and in-depth survey on the number of illiterate adults in the United States, which found that an alarming 14% of the adult population in the United States was functionally illiterate, or 32 million people. 21% of adults in the United States have reading difficulties and cannot read at the level of a fifth-grader. And 20% of high school graduates in the United States cannot even read the words on their own diploma. 】


On the internet, sometimes when people insult each other, they may compare the other person to a primary school student, and in many cases, it is actually primary school students and college students debating online. Although this may seem like a bad behavior, it actually shows that once you understand the structure of Chinese, it is very easy to overcome functional illiteracy, even for primary school students. There is no problem with them being able to recognize characters but not being able to compose advanced sentences. However, in English, it's not just primary school students who have reading problems, even college students do, let alone illiterate people.

But English also has one advantage, which is that it has a particularly strong filtering ability. The widespread use of Chinese has led to the fact that there is no gap in language cognitive ability between geniuses and common people, for example, the two topics that are commonly seen on Zhihu: traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and Western pseudohistory. We are not discussing which side is right, but you will find that as long as you have knowledge beyond high school, basic typing skills with pinyin, and internet search skills, you can participate in these more advanced topics. And this is something that is absolutely impossible in the English context, as high school level English vocabulary is not sufficient to support you in making a persuasive online answer.

That is to say, even if the topic is a common one in Chinese, if you put it in an English context, you will only get a lot of extremely exaggerated conspiracy theories, rather than a normal online debate. To be able to participate in a normal online debate, you must have at least a certain level of education and qualifications. The functional barriers of English make it particularly easy to separate geniuses from ordinary people, and the very nature of English is a powerful filter that ordinary people cannot cross.

That's why the divide between the public and the elite is particularly acute in English-speaking countries, and even Bill Gates, if he really went to Africa to promote vaccines (and actually stayed there instead of just making a quick visit), would be subjected to all sorts of vaccine conspiracy theories because, in the English-speaking system, ordinary people and the elite can even be considered two separate species. For example, we often say, "I recognize every word you're saying, but when you put them together, I don't understand what you're saying." In the English expression environment, it's like saying, "I don't recognize any of the words you're using, and when you put them together, I don't understand what you're saying at all."

This 50 million functional illiterates is an official statistic in the United States, while Hammon's report to the Ford Foundation in 1979 believed that half of the adult population over 25 years old in the United States were functionally illiterate.

You think that it doesn't matter which side one takes, and often things really are two-sided. Your ability to spread words is high, but your ability to filter information is low. After Chinese became popular, the elite's ability to filter information decreased. Therefore, China selects elites through math and English. English (or rather, these alphabet-based language systems) has a very low ability to spread, but a very high ability to filter. They don't need to emphasize the importance of math and foreign languages. Their own language is already very good at separating the elite from the common people, and then they can further filter within the elite.
Of course, it should be noted that the advantage of filtering elites mentioned here refers to the natural sciences, and the isolation of elites from the masses can lead to their social sciences becoming a pure elite game. This is where Chinese has a huge advantage, as the common people can say many words that only foreign elites can say, and understand their meanings, which greatly facilitates the flow of information up and down. Many times you will find that foreign democracies are getting messier and messier, and the essence of this is that the functional isolation between languages is uncrossable. The elite says many things that the common people don't understand at all, and they have to look up the meaning of words in the dictionary after the referendum. Pure speech cannot convey enough information to the common people for them to make a judgment, and in the end, it is the elite who benefits, but the responsibility is thrown to the common people.
In fact, it can even be said that Japanese introduced the syllabaries after World War II and also faced a similar situation. The elite likes to use syllabaries, the more they use, the more it shows their elite status. During the pandemic, why were many policies not implemented in foreign countries? Many people like to say that foreigners value freedom, which is one aspect, but the other may be that foreign common people simply cannot understand what the elite is saying.



An official speaks, and a separate program is needed to explain his words, which the common people cannot understand.

That's why Trump chooses simple words when he speaks, while the Democrats need to mobilize the elite. And Trump really needs to mobilize a lot of illiterate and functionally illiterate people. If he speaks too complex, these people may not understand anything.
Another piece of evidence is that the Chinese community has the highest level of political literacy and the most extensive participation in the world, and its offense and defense are also the most intense. Chinese long-text apps are unique in the world. The Zhihu community, which is highly concentrated on knowledge, politics, long texts, high popularity, high readership, and high vertical participation, is unique in the world. Many foreign knowledge-based forums really have a rule that undergraduates are not allowed to enter. Even if you go there, you won't understand it. For example, I really like Nihon Keizai CrossTech, but even in this area of kana, there are still very few.



You can imagine what a disaster the elite English forums are.