When I run the world everyone will be able to read, write, and cipher. Everyone will also eat vegetables and sweep their front walks. What I would like to see happen, seriously, is an independent commission to find the illiterate in the United States. I believe that millions are profoundly illiterate. Meaning they can't read a printed two digit number, or read even the alphabet. Tens of millions may be what is usually called "functionally illiterate"--which means they read so poorly that anything in print is useless to them. We can begin with the prison and probation population, as crime is one of the major symptoms of illiteracy. People who have never been to school have learned to make a living--often through crime. Prisons seem to do a lot of "consciousness raising" and group therapy exercises, but they obviously are not effectively intervening in the problem of illiteracy.
I suggest a trained army of literacy teachers--to beat this in one generation, before another generation is raised without any education at all.
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