Ho0k’d oN Fonixs

A hundred years ago you could get a job simply based on race, social status and even gender. In today’s world, however, with a growing international trade of goods, technology and culture, a person’s educational status is becoming more prominent, in particular their literacy level. For instance, Top business will not hire particular employees without a degree. Countries are measured by their people’s literacy level. With that being said it is hard to believe that America, one of the top developed nations, ranks 26 in a 2006 literacy poll. American literacy levels must be improved through the increase of reading levels in newspapers, magazines, etc; mandatory literacy levels in the workplace; and literacy reform in the educational institutions.
The drop in American literacy levels didn’t just happen recently, it’s been on a slow and steady decline since the 1800. People have been reading less and less because: “The truth is, many newspapers have become too difficult for most to read” (Flesch and Gunning). This decline continued until around the 1940’s, when a “miracle” happened. Rudolph Flesch and Robert Gunning worked to make the readability of newspapers more manageable to the common people. They lowered many reading levels by 4 or 5 levels, causing a boost in reading material sales, which, at that point was a “miracle”. Now the downfall to this “miracle” is that since that time, those levels have not gone up with the educational implements throughout the years. Meaning that a college graduate who prides him/her self on understanding the newspaper is really only reading at a 9th grade level. That is the normal reading level for most of the nations reading material. Two prime examples are the TV Guide and Readers Digest, two magazines with large circulations, are written at the 9th grade level. Even the Sun, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the country, is written at the 9th grade level, while USA Today is written at the 10th grade level. It does not stop there; most of our popular authors are popular not only because of their great stories, but because of their easy readability to all ages. Authors like Tom Clancy, Stephen King and John Grisham all write at a 7th grade reading level (The Blockbusters). These implementations were done to make them more readable and digestible to people without college degrees but has in fact caused damage by making it acceptable to read at that level.
One simple way to help promote the increase of America’s literacy levels would be to slowly increase the reading levels of our newspapers, magazines and tabloids. This will temporarily cause people to read less and probably cause a decline in the productivity department, but in order to improve America’s literacy levels, the people, as a nation must push for improvement? The process should take place over a certain set of years, say 5 years with a yearly level increase. Get people to slowly challenge themselves. A great example of this slow educational process would be China. The UNESCO Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy brought to the table a nine-year compulsory education plan that took china roughly 50 years to perfect. In this time China went from an 80 percent illiteracy rate in 1949 to 4 percent in 2005 (Peoples Daily Online). The process in America would only take 5 years to accomplish its goal of setting its literacy levels back to its 1990’s level of 12th grade. The only cost to this improvement would be to the writers education because in order for America’s literacy levels to be raised, w must first raise our writing level. No other costs would be necessary.
Another problem to the U.S. literacy level is worker literacy levels. The 2001 American Management Association Survey on Workplace Testing found the following:
- 34.1% of applicants tested by respondent firms lacked the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.
- 3.5% hired skill deficient applicants and assigned them to obligatory remedial training.
- 3% hired them and offered voluntary remedial training (National Institute for Literacy)
These facts, to me, are outrageous. Roughly 34 percent of job applicants in the nation don’t have the necessary qualifications to flip a burger. Although this may be an exaggerating, doesn’t it seem odd? When those 6.5% are hired, they are only offered remedial training! This should be fixed to a mandatory training program that would bring them on par with the national level. Nothing extremely out there, but a literacy level of a 12th grader is not too much to ask? Granted the workforce will have to take a financial hit of some sort, but it wouldn’t be enough to cause major panic, and as a matter of fact would actually return dividends in the long run. The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce Testing found the following:
- A 10% increase in the average education of all workers is associated with an increase of 8.6% in productivity.
- A 10% increase in hours worked results in an increase of 5.6% in productivity.
- And a 10% increase in capital stock results in an increase of 3.4% productivity.
Now those are some pretty promising numbers when the nation’s workforce numbers in the millions.
Now comes the most radical part of the solution to this problem; literacy reform in the educational institution. We all know that our educational system is not the best, with reforms and acts happening left and right, and let’s not forget the attendance rates between high schools and colleges. These problems could easily be solved by focusing on literacy at a younger age, which by the way, we have already started to do. Our percentages of K-5 literacy learning rates are relatively high; however they begin to level out as the child hits 8 and 9 grade. Strange coincidence with our nation’s newspapers readability? The 2000 Program for International Student Assessment stated that on a combined reading literacy scale, U.S. 15 year olds performed “about as well on average as most” of the 27 participating OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Further investigation actually shows that students in Finland, Canada (our own neighbor), and New Zealand outperformed U.S. students while the U.S. students really only perform at the same levels as students in 19 other OECD countries.
This doesn’t fit a country that is putting forth a helping hand to many developing nations, especially when they look to us for educational reform help. If we were to focus on continuing the improvement of our educational literacy until 12th grade, the two above stated solutions would cost less and be easier to implement. If students were taught to read and write and at certain level, they will demand material that is written at the same level. Thus it all comes back to the educational reform. I propose that the NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act) be abolished and the money be put into something that focuses on helping kids improve on their literacy levels throughout the years. Any teacher, faculty member and educated student can tell you that the NCLB act really hinders kids from learning a valuable lesson and sometimes even causes the extremity of some school closures for failure to meet the acts guidelines. Now the brunt of the financial cost, if not all would be paid for by the money that funded the NCLB act. Granted the act needs to be abolished before we implement this new focus.
These are just three implementations that would help improve the nation’s literacy levels. We can continue and state how a literacy improvement in our prisons helps lower the rates of people being put back in prisons, but the first three are not only easier steps to take, but also more economically helpful. Without a change we will only continue to lower the reading levels of our national material until sooner or later we will lose our “Top Nation” priority and become the nation that’s asking for help. And since we, as Americans can’t let that happen, lets strive for a challenge and improve our nations literacy levels before the damage is to severe to fix.


Works Cited

1. Plain Language At Work Newsletter. Pub. by Impact Information Plain-Language
Services. 2, May 2005. – www.impact-information.com
2. Facts Sheet Review. 2003 The National Assessment of Adult Literacy(NAAL), Pub. by National Institute for Literacy – www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts
3. www.mrdowling.com/800literacy.html
4. “China’s literacy work sets example for developing countries, says UNESCO.” August 01, 2007. Xinhua. People’s Daily Online. 5 Nov.2007
english.people.com/90001/90777/6228607.html