Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.
I’d argue that math is way less important to take part in society than reading/understanding at least one language that is written around you.
But learning math, in my opinion, plays an important part in developing logic and critical thinking skills
I absolutely agree. However, being able to multiply numbers does not really help you much with that.
My parents (born in 60s) were taught multiplication mostly be memorizing it by heart. In my school (90s), we were taught mostly the principles. My parents are faster (better?) at multiplication, but struggle to do it on larger numbers.
So I’d say that it is not a good measure for deducing a persons logical skills.
I suspect the stats are skewed by immigration and English as a second language households. Sounds like it’s talking specifically about English literacy. I think people tend to underestimate the complexity in standard grade level reading. Think taking Shakespeare in high school and most of the class not really being able to follow. Also consider that a lot of things people read regularly, instruction manuals, news media, billboards, etc. are all designed to target low reading levels to maximize their potential audience.