what are you talking about? illiteracy rates were lower before public education started. You can make claims about differences in population if you want, but purely on a percent basis you're wrong.
> But a hundred years ago we could easily have the same conversation about simply reading and writing - they (the poor, women, or "lower class" ) luke not be taught to read. But it turns out that if you start young enough, and put enough effort in, 99% of everyone can learn
There is a thing called functional illiteracy [1], where people can write and read but mostly only their name and some very basic things like grocery lists. They also cannot comprehend texts even if they can read most words. It's more or less equivalent to being able to add numbers, maybe multiply numbers 1-10 but very far from algebra.
No first world country can claim a 99% literacy rate unless you count in these people, which would stretch things quite a bit.
In 1900 the literacy rate of the US was roughly 20%. Over the next century states and the federal government introduced mandatory educational requirements and expanded access to public education. By 2000 literacy is north of 80%.
Do you think literate citizens are less free to make choices than illiterate ones?
> The study, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 giving trend data. It involved lengthy interviews of over 90,700 adults statistically balanced[clarification needed] for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
The illiteracy rate in the US is really quite incredible, with the federal government reporting something like 20% of the population to be "low literacy"
I would like to point out that in our current world it would be very very difficult to end up illiterate under just about any circumstance. Reading and writing don’t need to be explicitly taught unless you are under extreme time pressure (like the need to get the pupils to be able to read their texts on their own so you can increase class sizes and decrease the cost of schooling).
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