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One in 20 U.S. adults not literate in English

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 1/22/2006

Despite remarkable efforts by the Government of America to uplift the status of its adult’s English literary rate, a federal study shows that about one in 20 adults in the U.S. are not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the basic skills to handle many simple day to day tasks.

Nevertheless, the adults estimated illiterate in English include people who may be fluent in another language but cannot comprehend English text at its most simple level.

"Eleven million people is an awful large number of folks who are not literate in English, and therefore are prevented access to what America offers," said Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department, according to the report published in the CNN.

This is hard to believe. Isn’t it? But most amazingly to the surprise of the whole world, it has been reported that from 1992 to 2003, American adults made no progress in their ability to read sentences and paragraphs or understand other printed material such as bus schedules or prescription labels.

Leave aside, for the moment, the most amazing verity revealed by the Federal study. Take a look at this more somber truth. It has been furthermore stated that in every level of education, adult literacy has dropped, and so even as more people get a formal education, the literary rate is not rising. Completely perplexed, Federal officials say this trend is puzzling and worthy of research.

Moreover, the study further stated that some 30 million adults have "below basic" skills in prose. Their ability is so limited that they may not be able to make sense of a simple pamphlet, for example. This total includes 7 million adults considered not to be literate in English but with enough knowledge of the language at least to be tested.

The remaining 4 million considered illiterate did not have enough English skills to be tested. On the other hand, 95 million adults, or 44 percent of the population, have intermediate prose skills; with means they can execute moderately challenging activities.

No wonder, black adults are improving, on each type of task tested but white adults made no major changes except in computing numbers, where they have improved significantly. However, Hispanics showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and documents.

To be precise, the background of U.S. adults has changed dramatically since 1992, when the test was last given; fewer people in 2003 had spoken English before they started school.

We can no longer afford to ignore the unique needs this population has demonstrated for years," said Jose Velazquez, director of the Hispanic Family Learning Institute at the National Center for Family Literacy, according to the report published in the CNN.

After this latest revelation, it has been reported that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pledged to coordinate adult education programs across the government. She also promoted the Bush administration's campaign to increase testing and specialized reading help in high school.

The study represents a population of 222 million adults. The results are based on a sample of more than 19,000 adults, age 16 or older, living in homes, college housing or prisons.