ILLITERACY IN U.S.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 March 1927, Page 4

ILLITERACY IN U.S.

I APPALLING DIMENSIONS. I j SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 24. ! Illiteracy in the United States has reached such appalling dimensions that the National Council of Education is asking Congress that a federal department of education he established, with a Minister within the Presidential Cabinet. A nation-wide survey of education shows that in the United States there are 6 illiterates, or people who cannot read nor write, in every hundred of the population, compared with two per hundred in England and AVales, and a similar proportion in Germany and Denmark. Fifteen million American voters cannot read or write.

And this, despite the fact that the country is spending £500,000,000 a year, employing 800.000 teachers to teach 20,000,000 children. It is estimated that half the. teachers in the schools have not had normal school training. “Education in the United States has failed, in the opinion of the most, prominent and most experienced education,” says Professor Clapp, Mew York. Of 5.000,000 illiterates in the south, 0,000,000 are white and 1,250,000 na-tive-horn whites. A survey made during the war of 28 camps scattered over the whole of the United States showed that 25 per cent, could not read a newspaper or write a letter homo. How ill item ov is filling the gaols is shown hv an analysis of the Ohio penitentiary. where 12 per coni, could not read or write, and ,'M per cent, had only a third-rate education. Thus. 70 per cent of the inmates were uneducated. Although there are now 2,000,000 at high school, half of the hoys in the country between, the ages of 1-1 and 18 have no contact- with high school. An analysis of the training; and experience of hoys brought into the criminal courts, showed that, in the main, those hoys were not specifically trained to earn an honest, livelihood.