Thanks to ed tech maven, Ian Jukes for bringing this article to our attention. How important will it be to be able to read?
“Literacy
experts and educators say they are stunned by the results of a recent
adult literacy assessment, which shows that the reading proficiency of
college graduates has declined in the past decade, with no obvious
explanation.“’It’s appalling — it’s really astounding,’ said Michael
Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian
at California State University at Fresno. ‘Only 31 percent of college
graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That’s not
saying much for the remainder.’‖The Washington Post, December 25, 2005
What is the worth of words? – The Practical Futurist – MSNBC.com
technorati tags:warlick, ianjukes, literacy, future
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I wonder whether the criteria for the test have changed in the last goodness knows how long. I remember doing tests in high school to have our reading ages tested – perhaps they’re still doing the same test.
A friend of mine spent the weekend with his elderly father and his 18 year old son. His father is able to read vast tomes, retain the information, quote from the book. But to him, reading off the screen is a challenge. His 18 year old son lacks the perseverance/patience to wade through a tome, but can spend hours reading from the screen, flitting from site to site, from blog to blog, aggregating the content as he goes. He found it interesting to watch these two intelligent people, two generations apart, each trying to persuade the another of the superiority of his method of reading.
Tom Peters says “It is not your father’s world” in his latest rant http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/freestuff/uploads/PSFIsEverything.pdf, so why you should it be my father’s literacy criteria?