Altivo

The quality of public education in the US has been declining for years. One has only to look at literacy levels in the general population or among high school graduates to see this. As a retired librarian I can tell you that requests from high school and college students for audio or video formats of their basic textbooks and assigned readings were increasing rapidly even twenty years ago.

The average literacy level of our adult voters is somewhere between grades five and six, which I find appalling. Surveys after the recent election revealed the fact that voters in general had no understanding of what a tariff is. Queries online asking "How can I change my vote?" were amazingly frequent in the week after November 5th.

Yet the GOP wants to abolish public school funding and the entire Department of Education? (Seems that they fare better with ignorant voters than with those who can read?) I urge you to contact your congress critters now and tell them in no uncertain terms that the Department of Education and its budget that aids in particular schools in rural areas and low income neighborhoods must NOT be cut back or eliminated.

So it begins.

Today's word count: 1753, slightly more than the minimum daily quota of 1667.


I've actually acquired some sponsors. OMG, now I'm really going to have to stick with it.

Sponsor me! ...and I'll be your slave forever... well, maybe not. But you get to feel all virtuous and stuff.

Draft version online here.

About that literacy business: It's serious. The results of AYP testing (yes, the infamous "No Child Left Behind" program) on the schools in this area are out, and the vast majority of them, including even high schools, have failed to pass the reading requirement. This year they only needed to get a 77% pass rate in reading, yet they failed to do so. As I've been saying for a while now, literacy is on the decline in the US. This can't be a good thing. Literacy goes hand in hand with deeper analytic thought, planning, and general comprehension. It is essential to an informed electorate. You can't have good and careful elections if the voters only know what they got from television. Believe me, that isn't nearly enough, nor is it ever unbiased.

Hence the Office of Letters and Light, the charity to which I urge you to make a small donation by clicking the link above. Promoting literacy is their mission, and in the end that's a good thing for all of us.