Talk:Functional illiteracy

message: Also not addressed here is the association of functional illiteracy with learning disabilities in the individual. It may be tempting to think that all of these people in the United States have somehow not been taught to read. This is rather unlikely. More likely, their particular learning disabilities were not identified in school, or were not adequately addressed in special education. Of course, there is also an economic (and thus also racial) component, which also needs to be addressed. A few statistics on this issue:
From the International Dyslexia Association:
"15-20% of the population have a language-based learning disability.
Of the students with specific learning disabilities receiving special education services, 70-80% have deficits in reading."
From the Learning Disabilities Association of America:
"Among children who struggle with basic reading and language skills—the most common learning problems—75% of those who do not receive help until the third grade will struggle with reading throughout their lives. 
But if those same kids receive appropriate help by the first grade, fully 90% of them will achieve normal reading ability."
From the National Center for Learning Disabilities:
"Studies show that learning disabilities do not fall evenly across racial and ethnic groups. For instance, in 2001, 1% of white children and 2.6% of non-hispanic black children were receiving LD-related special education services*. The same studies suggest that this has to do with economic status and not ethnic background. LD is not caused by economic disadvantage, but the increased risk of exposure to harmful toxins (lead, tobacco, alcohol, etc.) at early stages of development are prevalent in low-income communities."
Regards, --Taitcha 03:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correlation with learning disabilities 

message: :For example, a functionally illiterate adult is unable to fill out an employment application, follow written instructions, read a newspaper, read traffic signs, or understand a school bus schedule, among many other daily functions
I think the sign one is inaccurate; an illiterate adult would learn to recognize words like "OPEN," "CLOSED," "STOP," and the like, much as Americans in China would quickly learn relevant hanzi without necessarily being able to reproduce or pronounce them.  —Casey J. Morris 21:05, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
:I can imagine that higway signs can be difficult to comprehend for functionally illiterate people. Not only do you have to read and interpret them quickly, there are arrows and numbers on them too. I think everyone at least needs to concentrate to even read the whole sign in one pass, at least I do. That's why they are repeated a couple of times.83.118.38.37 14:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recognizing Words 

message: "The correlation between crime and functional illiteracy is well known to criminologists and sociologists throughout the world. It is estimated that 60 percent of adults in prisons are functionally or marginally illiterate and 85 percent of juvenile offenders have problems associated with reading, writing and basic math." Any idea whether this applies just to the U.S., another country or worldwide? -Estrellador* 18:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced statistics 

message: I added OR to the links with crime section.  While it makes intuitive sense to me that illiterate people will be more likely to turn to crime, I'd rather see facts backing it up than one editor's theorizing on the matter. Mbarbier (talk) 21:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  OR Template 

message: According to the Canadian Council on Learning, the statistics in Canada put illiteracy (level 2 or lower) at 48%, this is much higher than in the U.S.A and Britain it seems.  http://www.ccl-cca.ca/cclflash/proseliteracy/map_canada_e.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2009/09/half_of_all_adults_in_canada_h.html
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.184.34.88 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canadian statistics 

message: I have removed the following claim about prisoner reoffending because it was not sourced and seems unlikely to be true; please return it if a valid source can be found.
*Adult inmates who received educational services while in prison had a 16% chance of returning to prison, as opposed to 70% for those who received no instruction.
A cut in the rate of reoffending from 70% to 16% by simple literacy training seems more hopeful than truthful. There appears to be some political bias in this article, of which this line was indicative. I'm adding a POV check tag for the time being. Michael Heseltin (talk) 19:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of unsourced prisoner reoffending statistic 

message: I've added the neutral point of view tag because Wikipedia is not a place to advocate anything, which this article does now due to the recent edits. I don't know where to start in fixing it. Also, Wikipedia should not be used as a source. Graham87 03:39, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral point of view tag 

message: I stumbled onto this article and to say that it suffers from NPOV and encyclopedic tone problems is a massive understatement. Unfortunately as others before me have noted, in its current state it does not seem salvageable. Rather than an encyclopedia article it currently reads like an impassioned plea for action on what its main contributor obviously considers to be a major social ill.
To that end I would suggest that we roll the article back to the last version before User:Bob C. Cleckler began reworking the article. That version (which you can see here) is deficient in many ways. It already had NPOV problems, was woefully US and English-centric, and was in need of sourcing. Some of these problems had been tagged on the article since 2012. But as a starting point for editing it is much more manageable.
I want to make it absolutely clear to Bob that this is not to say that his participation is unwelcome. The problems with his prose are almost entirely related to a) its style, which is not encyclopedic and b) his use of Wikipedia's voice to identify problems and propose solutions, which violates NPOV, one of the project's core principles.
What do others think of the rollback idea? We can keep a copy of Bob's edits in a sandbox and reintroduce them progressively, working to manage the tone and keep each section NPOV. Eniagrom (talk) 12:19, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have done so per apparent consensus. Eniagrom (talk) 19:04, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rollback? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I believe the external links for this article are, for lack of a better phrase, pretty useless. Both of the links are clearly designed to sell products that help parents teach their young children to read, which doesn't really pertain to adult functional illiteracy. I think it'd be a good idea to start this section from scratch. I know hardly anything about links to put in its place, unfortunately. Maybe links to papers on the Laubach Way to Reading (LWR) or the Wilson Reading System (WRS) would be more useful? I'd offer some examples here but I haven't found a great piece on these methods that wasn't designed for teachers specializing in adult education or trying to sell something. ⁂ (talk) 05:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving External Links tab 

message: This article mainly focuses on the United States and to some extent other developed countries. If functional literacy is primarily used as a concept in the U.S./Russia/U.K., then state this, but if it's an international standard then countries of varying developements should be covered in more detail to eliminate bias in what is discussed. Also, it may help to add some historical background. It may be difficult to retroactively apply the 1978 standard, though.Sechumanist (talk) 02:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add a More Diversified Look at the World