Author: David

BES

Nah. You’d never guess my search terms.

🙂

Montage-a-Google is either a monumental time-waster or a cool tool for searching the web for images. You choose.

The NALS was distressing when I first read the report in 1993…

…and it’s no more encouraging today. (Relax. You only think you know where I’m going. 🙂

Private correspondence with Rich (The English Guy) stemming from the bibliophilic meme* led me to think on literacy in general again.

I have what some might consider an idiosyncratic view of literacy. Perhaps I should define terms before going any further. Here’s a spectrum of definitions for the word “literate” as offered by the Random house Unabridged Dictionary:

1. able to read and write.
2. having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.; literary; well-read.
3. characterized by skill, lucidity, polish, or the like: His writing is literate but cold and clinical.
4. having knowledge or skill in a specified field: literate in computer usage.
5. having an education; educated

OK. When most people talk about being literate, it’s my experience that they center in only on the first definition given. Well and good. That a person be able to decode the printed page and write words themselves is no mean accomplishment when set against most of human history of the past seven thousand years or so. (Or against the 80% to 90% illiteracy—in the sense of the first meaning—of today’s Muslim societies.)

The next step, it seems to me is for the person who is able to decode/encode printed words to actually be able to understand what is encoded/decoded. And it is at that stage that the 1992 NALS begins to reveal a disturbing set of information about America society.

A simple (all-too-brief) digest of the survey can be found here, and reveals, among other things that

• 21 to 23% – or some 40 to 44 million of the 191 million adults in the United States – demonstrated skills in the lowest level of prose, document, and quantitative literacy proficiencies (NALS literacy Level 1). For example, they were able to total an entry on a deposit slip, locate the time and place of a meeting on a form, and identify a piece of specific information in a brief news article. Others were unable to perform these types of tasks, and some had such limited skills that they were unable to respond to much of the survey.
• 25 to 28% of NALS respondents, representing about 50 million adults nationwide, demonstrated skills in proficiency Level 2 on each of the literacy scales. For example, adults in this level were able to calculate the cost of a purchase or determine the difference between two items. They could also locate a particular intersection on a street map and enter background information on a simple form.
• Nearly one-third of NALS respondents, or about 61 million adults nationwide, demonstrated performance in Level 3 on each of the literacy scales. Respondents performing in this level were able to integrate information from relatively long or dense text or from documents, to determine appropriate arithmetic operation based on information contained in the directive, and to identify the quantities needed to perform the operation.
• 18 to 21% of NALS respondents, or 34 to 40 million adults, performed in the two highest levels of prose, document, and quantitative literacy (Levels 4 and 5). These adults demonstrated proficiencies associated with the most challenging tasks in this assessment, many of which involved long and complex documents and text passages.

Now, that’s disturbing. Nearly a quarter of the survey sample of adult Americansdunction at a level of “literacy” so low as to make the word “literacy” apply turns the word into a contranym. What makes this brief precis even more disturbing is that the “Nearly one-third of NALS respondents, or about 61 million adults nationwide [who] demonstrated performance in Level 3 on each of the literacy scales” were actually offered word problems in maths, etc., that would have been child’s play for a third grader during my elementary school years. Simple addition and subtraction. Simple multiplication and division (what? You didn’t learn your multiplication tables in third grade? Blame a teacher… or an administrator.. ). Simple stuff. Early gradeschool stuff.

And that qualified as being “able to integrate information from relatively long or dense text or from documents, to determine appropriate arithmetic operation based on information contained in the directive, and to identify the quantities needed to perform the operation.” “…relatively long and dense” compared to what?!?!?

Oh, there’s more. Much more. And it’s almost all bad news.

And the terrible thing is, the survey does not even consider the kind of literacy that’s important to the survival of America as, well, America.

Let me back up a step and give an illustration of the kind of literacy I mean. My paternal grandfather is my model of what E.D. Hirsch has called cultural literacy. He grew up on a ranch in west Texas that his parents had established as emigrants from Virginia in the 1880s. His primary and secondary schooling amounted to part-time schooling in a one-room schoolhouse mostly six months out of the year. He was the first of his family of 9 brothers and three (?) sisters to attend college. He could quote from memory whole plays, epic poems, etc. His knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare, the historyof Western Civilization, etc., was almost encyclopedic.

He could rope a steer, shoot a deer, drive a straight nail, saw a clean kerf, sharpen his own tools, and hold his own in intelligent converation on any subject.

It was just the way he was raised.

By the standard my paternal gransfather set, I am subliterate.

And so, most likely, are you.

We are in a boat that’s leaking and I fear we lack the tools to bail it out quickly enough to keep it afloat. Or rather, I fear we lack enough people who have the tools to both bail it out and make repairs so that it can stay afloat.

That boat is the civilization that gave us its highest achievement in the American State Papers—the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederacy and the Constitution. The tools are the cultural literacy that is necessary to appreciate and understand and protect and preserve the liberties those documents were written to proclaim and preserve.

When we have a man as smart as Antonin Scalia who is unable or unwilling (along with five others on the SCOTUS) to protect and defend the Constitution against corruption (utter vitiation, actually) of the 10th Amendment (ref: the “marijuana” decision so much in the buzz of late), then we may well have reached a tipping point where understanding of whence we came is so weak in the face of the growing assault on our essential liberties that we may be unable to prevent the ultimate demise of the United States along the lines of the demise of the Roman republic.

We need an army of Americans who will read. Read history; read literature until that army of readers understands the liberties that are ours by right and what the assaults upon them truly are. Then they will be able to write and speak and stand for those much maligned and neglected words from a passé world:

Truth

Justice

and

The American Way

No, we don’t need some yahoo in a blue suit and a red cape. We need real soldiers for the truth to stand against the Army of Darkness found in the unholy alliances of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, the Loony Left Moonbat brigade and all members of the Federal, State and local governments—legislative, executive and judiciary—who seek power for the collective over rights and powers residing in the People.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Addendum: peripherally related—some good sense about ability to function, as opposed to LLMB doctrine:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/intel/index.html

h/t Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor in Perspective

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What’s that funny clickin’ noise?
Originally uploaded by mnmus.

*CLICK*

What the? He wasn’t in that pose when the shutter snapped!

I’m beginning to think that all these folks posting pics of their cats sitting still for a portrait are just using stuffed animals.

Some people just don’t know when to quit… (uhm, that’d be me, I guess 🙂

“Aw, Mom, what’d you bring that book I don’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”

The Songstress hosts this week’s Carnival of the Recipes

Yeh, I’m late getting a link up. *sigh* Couldn’t read the darn thing! Must be the Microsoft-friendly “collapsable outlines” thing.

Oh. well. It reads as an RSS feed just fine. Fine by me. Just the text, ma’am.

Great recipes, though and a great job plugging other folks’ blogs for content other than just this week’s recipes. Good on the Songstress! Too many recipes to mention, but I have to mention one. Really (well, besides my own absolutely fantastic Chicken Santa Fe. heh. Indeed–are you listening, Puppy Blender? Flattery! Flattery! Gee, you’d think the guy’d pay attention or something… 🙂

Oh, that’s right, THE recipe to mention:

Pineapple Spotted Dick with Toffee Sauce, over at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea. You really have to check that one out! No, I mean you have to. Really. Report back in comments for 10 points of your final grade in this course.

heh.

Indeed.

[Note: “heh” and “indeed” have been appropriated by The Puppy Blender as “signature expressions” even though I have been using them since before he was outa diapers [ed.—that was, of course, before The Puppy Blender was making the world unsafe for puppies]. Yielding to the tide, I am simply using them as often as possible, now, in hopes that The Puppy Blender will mistake such use for “the sincerest form of flattery” and commit the biggest boo-boo of his Bogospheric Career… give a nod to the gnat buzzing in his ear. heh. Indeed. ]

Donna’s Cell Phone question is number 5. Come on, folks! You can do better than that!

No, not my cell phone, Donna’s cell phone…

Founders and Framers to current feds: MYOB*

United States Constitution
Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This is an issue that has disturbed me for years. The ever-expanding grasp of government—especially the Federal Government—in assuming powers not even remotely within the scope of the Constitution is something that the electorate seems perfectly willing to allow (or in many cases, encourage, as long as the feds use those powers in ways that fit the agenda of some).

Indeed, it is the mark of statist socialism that control of the individual by the state (for ends that meet the desires of the statists in power) is a Very Good Thing, regardless of what some musty old piece of paper may actually say.

And that is why allowing statists of any stripe to wield power is a very bad thing. It results in situations like the ACLU strongarming school districts into eliminating invocations at graduations (“Don’t do it or we’ll institute a very expensive Establishment Clause suit—which the Feds will pay for on our end” etc.). It results in tax laws that reward those who spend their money where the statists want money spent… and pays unproductive members of society for their votes to keep the statists in power.

And it results in courts, including a SCOTUS, that will impose a Federal law where the Constitution gives the Federal government no power, such as in the case where the SCOTUS issued a fiat this week essentially nullifying the laws of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington concerning the private cultivation of and personal medical use of marijuana.

SIDEBAR: This post is not an argument for marijuana use, so don’t twist my words into a support for getting high.

The Framers—and the State Legislatures that ratified the Constitution with its first ten amendments understood clearly and unequivocally what James Madison articulated; that

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Our current Federal Government—in all branches and at all levels—just does not see it that way. And so we have this abortion of a ruling—a 6-3 ruling, at that!—illegitimately inserting the Federal Government into purely State matters… and there’s no “tea party” in Washington D.C. to echo the response of those who would make Declaration to a despot in earlier times that

…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Nah. Who cares, right?

The Tenth Amendment, along with the First and Second Amendments, was once seen as a bulwark against a Federal Government acreting undue power and becoming despotic. But these “guarantees” are only as good as the citizenry allows them to be.

“In Germany, they first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up.”–Martin Niemöller

I’m not ready to join some wacko cult or rebel “militia.” But I do recognize that the Founders and Framers of our nation “[threw] off such Government” and “provide[d] new Guards for their future security” over fewer abuses than Americans just consider a normal way of life today.

Free? Ask Martha. (Just scroll down a ways.)

*MYOB=Mind Your Own Business

Yeh, read the Lileks piece, but read the C.S. Lewis piece he invokes, too…

Lileks’ Screedblog today is a classic rant against the neutering of the American man.

“The world will not be better because men wear their suspenders backwards The day I ask French fashion consultants to help me dream is the day I start drinking so much coffee I never fall asleep. To paraphrase Bart Simpson: Can’t sleep. Clowns will dress me.”

That is a mere taste, a crumb from the table.
Go. Eat. Now, while the food’s hot.

And after the h’orderves, here’s the main course:

C.S. Lewis’ Men Without Chests.

Been tagged by Nancy for the bibliophile’s meme…

Yeh, I didn’t pay close enough attention. Let’s see… Oh yeh, “Book Tag” or something… Nancy and her tagger call it (very creatively–heck, they’re writers, for heaven’s sake!) “Meme! Pick Meme!” Just the image I’ve had as this one passed me by and passed me by again…

🙂

OK, here’s the thing. I’ll follow the rules, but I’m going to take a sidestep on this thing, a kinda Ozarkian line dance thingy. Rules:

How many books do I own?

Latest book purchased:

Last book read:

5 Books that mean a lot to me:

5 new “victims”

ADDITION:

Take the top name/link off the list below. Add your blog (with an embedded link) to the bottom of the list and paste the blognames/links into your post.

I found in the “Childhood Meme-ory Lane” thing that the linking helped me follow the tagline. I really enjoyed (and still and enjoying as it continues to spread) following that one. I think following this one may well lead me to some new books I will want to read and this will make following it easier.

So, here’s my answer to the above.

1. Mitchieville
2. The Glamazon Shoe Diaries
3. regurgitation
4. Soliloquy… one writer’s thoughts
5. third world county

How many books do I own?

Oh, man. A couple of thousand? Most are shuffled in and out of boxes, in various bookshelves, on tables, floors, nightstands, and hidden in various nooks and crannies. Many more, of course, have shuffled through my hands over the years. A friend and I once considered pooling our libraries and starting a used books store (back when I had even more books), but neither of us could bear to “cull” enough from our own shelves to make it happen, so…

Latest Book Purchased

An eBook (also available in print) by P.N. Elrod, Siege Perilous. Interesting conclusion (?) to his ethical vampire series. A light, entertaining read. Though well-written, probably a “read once” though well worth the $4 eBook price.

Last Book Read

The Man Who Knew Too Much, G.K. Chesterton. I’d actually looked for this from time to time in various libraries and bookstores. Have it as an etext from Gutenberg.org, now.

5 Books that mean a lot to me

• The two-volume dictionary set that I used to use (still do) for backup reading when I had devoured what was available. Dictionaries are good reads! The plots and characterizations are a little thin, but lotsa good words.
• The Bible. Where else can one find such a wealth and variety of reading? Cracking good stories. Villains, heroes, an ever-present God. Evil battling good. Failure become triumph. Mystery, romance, poetry, history, philosophy, law… Always fresh, always challenging. Just spare me some of the recent lame “translations,” please.
• The O.E.D. I used to spend literally hours and hours reading this work when I had access to a library that had it in its collection. What an engrossing tale of the development of the English language one can find in its pages! Wonderful reading!
• The Lord of the Rings I first read this more than 40 years ago. Reread it enough thereafter to wear out my first copies of the trilogy. I’m not a LOTR “fan” so much as I am a Tolkien “fan,” I suppose. His epic view and, well, bardic sensiblities are simply wonderful.
• Macbeth Yeh, not a “book” except in the sense that one talks of a play as a “book.” Actually, my two different “Collected Works of Shakespeare” might be a better statement of favs/mean-a-lots. But Macbeth is my fav of all the plays. I love mangling Act IV, scene 2, lines 91-92… (though some versions list the lines as 85-86).

Of course, I don’t know how I can not mention Departmental Ditties and Barrackroom Ballads (Kipling) or The Encyclopedia of Philospohy or Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais) or, or, or…

Too many really good reads. Too, too many.

Now, who am I gonna tag… hmmm…

• Kris, at Anywhere But Here, cos I just know she has sooooo much spare time on her hands. LOL
• Rich at The English Guy. I mean, this is one interesting guy. I wanna know what he reads.
• Diane of Diane’s Stuff cos I'[ve already had some hints of what might make her reading list and I want more. 🙂
• Christine of Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea. I know about Christine’s tastes in movies, chocolate, tea and coffee. How about books?
• Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, cos he’s tagged me twice and blown off a couple. ‘Bout time he ponied up— Big. 🙂

There ya bes. My list of favs/mean-a-lot-to-mes is terrible. To get it “right” I’d have to limit it to a hundred or so, and the priority ranking would never be the same from one moment to the next. Where’s Twain, today? Henlein? Aeschylus? Pournelle? (Strategy of Technology —written with Stefan Possony and Francis Xavier Kane is a must read for folks who want a poly-sci-techno grasp of the 70 Years’ War with the Soviet Union… and its aftermath.)

Addendum: I’ve had comments and email that spur me to note this link to the Baen Free Library. Folks who like reading sci-fi will find lots to love there. Here’s a snippet from the intro to the place:

Introducing the Baen Free Library
by Eric Flint

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We’re calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed.)…