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The Logic of English

Keeping Up with China: It All Begins with Reading

In the past sixty years China has successfully reversed the literacy crisis that ravaged their nation going from less than 20% of the public being able to read prior to 1950 to 93% literate in 2002 (UNESCO). In addition, China is continually raising the standard for calling their citizens literate. In the meantime the U.S. has continued to ignore the most fundamental skill needed to compete in the new economy - reading.

In the same time frame, reading scores in the U.S. have remained the same. According to the National Adult Literacy Assessment, only 13% of adults are proficient while 43% read at the lowest levels of literacy or are illiterate. The same is true of literacy rates for 17 year olds (NAEP). Today only 39% of 17 year olds can read and understand complicated information and only 6% read at the level necessary to learn from specialized documents such as scientific texts.

With labor and manufacturing jobs disappearing, the U.S. is failing to keep up in the world economy that we built. The economic success of nations is now being defined by the educational levels of its citizens and China has understood that literacy is the foundation. Rather than making excuses that the literacy problems stemmed from poverty or the fact they have arguably the most complicated writing system in the world, China determined to teach its citizens, young and old, to read.

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