Imagine if we included selective illiteracy in the metrics as well. Any :reddit-logo: or Hacker News thread will be full of people who have developed very strong opinions about a topic despite never reading about it, often staking everything on a claim that's directly refuted by the article on which they're commenting.
Using more selective methods like that, only about 50% of American adults are fully literate - level "3" on this literacy scale which is defined as
Texts at this level are often dense or lengthy, and include continuous, non-continuous, mixed, or multiple pages of text. Understanding text and rhetorical structures become more central to successfully completing tasks, especially navigating complex digital texts. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information, and often require varying levels of inference. Many tasks require the respondent to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. Often tasks also demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate content to answer accurately. Competing information is often present, but it is not more prominent than the correct information.
And based on that last line, technically someone might have to be Level 4 or 5 to not "stake everything on a claim that’s directly refuted by the article on which they’re commenting". Only 13% of US adults are Level 4 or 5.
That's the minimum level to be able to read something and actually pick out useful information, without someone tailoring the text for your exact situation. Which is the entire point of books, and reading in general.
I'd argue if you can't read something and make use of the information in the text, you are functionally illiterate. You may be able to read signs, you may be able to read basic instructions with guidance, but you can't actually read without assistance. Being unable to actually make use of a text and learn from it is illiteracy.
Imagine if we included selective illiteracy in the metrics as well. Any :reddit-logo: or Hacker News thread will be full of people who have developed very strong opinions about a topic despite never reading about it, often staking everything on a claim that's directly refuted by the article on which they're commenting.
Using more selective methods like that, only about 50% of American adults are fully literate - level "3" on this literacy scale which is defined as
And based on that last line, technically someone might have to be Level 4 or 5 to not "stake everything on a claim that’s directly refuted by the article on which they’re commenting". Only 13% of US adults are Level 4 or 5.
That's the minimum level to be able to read something and actually pick out useful information, without someone tailoring the text for your exact situation. Which is the entire point of books, and reading in general.
I'd argue if you can't read something and make use of the information in the text, you are functionally illiterate. You may be able to read signs, you may be able to read basic instructions with guidance, but you can't actually read without assistance. Being unable to actually make use of a text and learn from it is illiteracy.