Can you read this?

If seven adults picked up this edition of the paper, only six of them could read it.
That’s because, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Education, one in seven adults in the United States is illiterate. That’s nearly 32 million Americans. And while the most recent figures are from 2003, one could imagine that the literacy among adults hasn’t gotten much better over the past five years.

Obviously, in a country this large, it’s expected – albeit depressing – that some adults would not be able to read. But 32 million is an extraordinarily large number that most people probably would not believe if randomly told.

This report is just another example of how the United States, the supposed major power in the world, is far behind in educating its people in comparison to other influential countries. The report presents conflicting figures on educational information: The literacy rates for both men and women are said to be near 99 percent, yet facts like the one above – and that only about 70 percent of the American students who start ninth grade each year make it all the way through high school – paint a different picture. That information seems fairly conflicting, don’t you think?

Moreover, in a time with economic land mines going off on a daily basis and workers getting laid off all the time, this new information proves we have a much larger problem than a weak stock market.

A significant number of the unemployed workers in this country might in fact lack the proper tools such as the ability to read and write at an expected level. At the same time, many of those individuals are also from low-income families and areas that prevent them from having the resources to improve their education, and therefore keep them from making their lives better. Even if the new administration creates loads of jobs, if there are not enough people qualified for them, what’s the real point? How is this not troubling?

Though President-elect Barack Obama has consistently placed education reform such as altering No Child Left Behind and making college more affordable at the top of his to-do list, it looks as though the struggling economy will take up more of his attention and force the continued slashing of education budgets at the state level. This might mean that he won’t get to his education platform for a while, and the horrendous economic climate might stall those plans flat-out.

It might be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s pretty clear that there’s an education problem in the United States. We’re all easily swerved when we read information that touts 99 percent literacy rates, but those figures deserve an asterisk.

If 32 million adults couldn’t read in 2003 and education budgets continue to be cut while our supposedly education-friendly president-elect worries about the economy, the education of our people is only going to get worse.