US Continues to SLIP and FAIL in Adult Literacy Competencies

InsideHigherEd reports on a study just published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It's not good for the US, especially since it reveals a serious decline in actual literacy skills for all adults regardless of educational credentials. What makes these findings even grimmer is that a previous study published in 2005 had already documented this demoralizing
trend.

The Survey of Adult Skills by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that despite having higher than average levels of educational attainment, adults in the United States have below-average basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Studies like this are essential but are also used by certain elements in our idiot elite to intensify well-financed efforts to undermine our already hard battered mass educational systems. Since every level of the teaching profession and its leadership is influenced by a constant barrage of corporate class propaganda that has persisted for many generations, we will just have to do our best to make sense of things, keeping in mind that we are (all of us) victims of the forces of "dumb down".

I tend to wonder to what extent historical "dumb down" based on formal education in the US is real - and to what extent it's an artifact of comparing the results of today's educational systems (with all their multicultural challenges) to an older system that specialized in preparing the (mostly male) offspring of the privileged and professional classes - along with a liberal sprinkling of talented "scholarship boys." I, like certain apologists for Christianity and Socialism, tend to view mass education as a good idea if it could ever be seriously attempted.

What does seem very real is that other countries are leaving us in the dust.

It will be important for serious and thoughtful people to remember that this is not just an economic issue. It is a political one with crucial consequences for the viability of democracy and human dignity.

To me, it remains a matter of always resisting the not so subtle bigotry of low expectations that tends to undermine almost every effort to empower disadvantaged learners. But studies like this show us how we are all being disadvantaged. And knowing that, it cannot continue - unless the fault is with us.