Re: R: Re: CHAT (POLITICS!!!): Putting the duh in Florida

Irina wrote:

> On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > > Hmm.  What *is* the literacy rate in the U.S., anyway?  <looking
around>
> >
> > About 89%, scandalously low for a First World nation.
>
> That's really scandalously low. The last figure I read for the
> Netherlands was 98%, not counting those 5-7% of people over fifteen
> who are functionally illiterate (nominally literate, but at the
> approximate level of an eight-year-old; they can *read* all right,
> but don't expect them to *understand* anything). Our almost
> seven-year-old is better than that :-)
>
Well, we have to say what literacy rate is: if we consider it only reading
skill, then here the rate would be as that Irina mentioned about
Netherlands, at least among Italian people (my mother last year had an
immigrant from Santo Domingo who was 13 yrs old and couldn't read, but
that's another thing...). If we consider literacy a good knowledge of
literature, history and so on, the rate would surely be lower.

Luca