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[GoombaGeek]

Form a citizen's militia to oust their evil oppressive forces!

[sluissa]

Actually, can anyone actually find any decent sources for those literacy numbers? I'm finding stuff that varies wildly - from the low 20s to the high 90s for the 1700-1800 period.

The David McCulloch seems to be a pop historian with an agenda - although I can't actually find how where or how he came to that conclusion. (I don't have his book, it might just be in there and not on the web)

I'll keep looking though.

I believe I've got his 1776 hanging around from an old uni class. I can take a skim of it if there's anything specific you're looking for.

[GlyphGryph]

If it mentions literacy numbers, could you find a bit about the methodology and the actual numbers? What it measures, who, and where?

[Reelya]

It looks like there was a National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) survey done in 1992, and again in 2003. There are relevant results obtainable from that.

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

14% fall in the "below basic prose literacy" level, but this doesn't mean all 14% fall in the same category as the 1900 "illiteracy" category which was defined as people who cannot read or write even a simple sentence. It's notable that only 12% fall in the "below basic document literacy", which is the category for reading things like bills and labels etc.

These surveys certainly put a question mark on the literacy article posted a couple of pages ago that claims 20% of Adult Americans couldn't even read or write a simple sentence in any language in 1993.

One interesting note is that people over 65 are heavily over-represented in the lowest category of "Below Basic Prose Literacy", they made up 15% of the sample, but 26% of the "below basic"s in 2003. And this data shows over 65's improved from 1992 to 2003, rather than declined:

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69

If a 65+ year old in 2003 (someone born before 1938) is twice as likely to be functionally illiterate as the population average, and people born before 1927 (the 65+ people in 1992) score even lower then that really puts a dent in those magical 1950's literacy rates. I don't think people "forget" how to be basically literate, but plenty of adults obtain literacy later in life, given the chance. I'd have to assume that a larger percentage of those age groups were actually illiterate in their younger years than now.

Notable is that there was some average slippage from 1992 to 2003, but ALL of it was due to "Hispanics", every other racial demographic improved from 1992 - 2003. This implies it's the influx of young hispanic immigrants with lower educational attainment, which is affecting the overall statistics, rather than a slippage in education standards as a whole.

[sluissa]

If it mentions literacy numbers, could you find a bit about the methodology and the actual numbers? What it measures, who, and where?

Short of doing a thorough cover to cover reading, I've given it a going over and I can't find anything about literacy or education except for specific people, which doesn't help. He seems to mostly draw from diaries and personal writings. The whole book seems to be a long series of anecdotes told by various people and whether any specific section is cited or not is hard to tell without doing a ton of page flipping.(Nothing is cited within the text, you just have to go back to the sources section to see if what you just read is listed back there.) There seems to be some serious bias as well and small chunks of what I read seem to if not contradict, at least sound at odds to what I've heard from other sources. He does seem to put a lot of emphasis on papers such as "Common Sense" as reason for the push for independence though, so I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to argue that literacy was somewhat high.

Still, no idea about the literacy numbers you were looking for. Might be in one of his other books, but I wouldn't have any idea which to look in. His books seem to be all over US history going as far as Truman based on the advertisements stuck in my copy.

Sorry.

[sluissa]

It looks like there was a National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) survey done in 1992, and again in 2003. There are relevant results obtainable from that.

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

14% fall in the "below basic prose literacy" level, but this doesn't mean all 14% fall in the same category as the 1900 "illiteracy" category which was defined as people who cannot read or write even a simple sentence. It's notable that only 12% fall in the "below basic document literacy", which is the category for reading things like bills and labels etc.

These surveys certainly put a question mark on the literacy article posted a couple of pages ago that claims 20% of Adult Americans couldn't even read or write a simple sentence in any language in 1993.

One interesting note is that people over 65 are heavily over-represented in the lowest category of "Below Basic Prose Literacy", they made up 15% of the sample, but 26% of the "below basic"s in 2003. And this data shows over 65's improved from 1992 to 2003, rather than declined:

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69

If a 65+ year old in 2003 (someone born before 1938) is twice as likely to be functionally illiterate as the population average, and people born before 1927 (the 65+ people in 1992) score even lower then that really puts a dent in those magical 1950's literacy rates. I don't think people "forget" how to be basically literate, but plenty of adults obtain literacy later in life, given the chance. I'd have to assume that a larger percentage of those age groups were actually illiterate in their younger years than now.

Notable is that there was some average slippage from 1992 to 2003, but ALL of it was due to "Hispanics", every other racial demographic improved from 1992 - 2003. This implies it's the influx of young hispanic immigrants with lower educational attainment, which is affecting the overall statistics, rather than a slippage in education standards as a whole.

That article also quotes Mike Huckabee saying that: "Two years later, in 1998, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in his book, Kids Who Kill, stated that as many as 90 million American adults are illiterate and another 35 million can only read simple material with difficulty."

That's saying that between 27 and 30% of adults are completely illiterate and another 10-11% can only read simple things. EDIT: My numbers are wrong here, they should actually be higher, since I was basing that off of total population, not just adult. Still, ignore it because it's not right. Non-proportional numbers are still in the quote.

I'd say that whole article is questionable, to be honest. It's also written by a group that seems to have a strong privatization angle in it's educational commentary. So it's in their best interest to say that public schools are doing things wrong. http://www.freedomfoundation.us/education_

[Reelya]

It also presumes that about 1 in 3 American parents who were fully literate themselves just never gave a crap that their children couldn't read AT ALL. I really don't buy that one.

seriously, even TV has writing on it, are we supposed to believe that about 1/3 Americans can't even read the captions on FOX News and just like looking at the "pretty pictures". How do these people all dial on a mobile phone or send text messages?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Indeed. There are almost no Americans who are unable to read at all. Literacy rates in the modern day are all about competency, not yes/no.

[palsch]

Gary McKinnon won't be extradited to the USA.

This was pretty unexpected, although always a possibility.

What might be more significant in the future is that this is the last extradition decision to be made by ministers. In the future it will be judges who get the final say in the process. This is, to my mind, a good idea. Already there have been accusations that this decision was politically motivated, comparing it to (arguably) comparable terrorism cases where suspects were extradited despite health claims.

[Leafsnail]

They can't say it in their decision but the charges the US courts are attempting to bring against him are trumped up and ridiculous.  I understand they need to set a precedent against foreign "cyber terrorists", but there really isn't anything to suggest that Gary McKinnon was intentionally trying to cause damage to the US military.

[palsch]

They can't say it in their decision but the charges the US courts are attempting to bring against him are trumped up and ridiculous.  I understand they need to set a precedent against foreign "cyber terrorists", but there really isn't anything to suggest that Gary McKinnon was intentionally trying to cause damage to the US military.

Erm...

    "US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels … "

That's a statement he left on a hacked military computer that he admitted to in court.

He noted that as part of a defence that his actions were political in nature and would expose him to political discrimination if he were extradited to the US. That defence failed.

[Leafsnail]

Fair enough I guess.  Strange that they wouldn't treat the other man with a similar condition in the same way - is it a matter of severity of the disability?

[Dutchling]

Gary McKinnon won't be extradited to the USA.

"That is why I have decided to introduce a forum bar. ''

Once I read that, all I could think of was this bar for Bay12 forumites, called the 'Forum Bar'. 't Would be awesome.

[palsch]

Fair enough I guess.  Strange that they wouldn't treat the other man with a similar condition in the same way - is it a matter of severity of the disability?

Pretty much universal agreement is that this is political, and well timed at that.

As I noted, it's the last time the Home Secretary will have the power to make such a decision, so this doesn't set any precedent for future extradition cases. Add into that the absolutely huge and popular Free Gary campaign and you have the perfect time to make a grand liberal gesture, regardless of the details of the case.

Not to mention it was something of a zombie case. The original plea bargain offered in 2003 would have limited the sentence to only a couple-few years as opposed to the 60 maximum for the proposed charges (which his first extradition defence effectively admitted to). It also suggested he could spend the sentence in an English jail as opposed to an American one after the trial. His rejection of that plea bargain is what set up the last nine years of legal battles, his entire health-based defence (based around his suicide risk, not his Asperger's) and everything else. The US kinda created the situation by waiting for the new US-UK extradition treaty before seeking his extradition, but at the same time they waited in the hope of an easy and fast extradition and conviction. No-one wanted the eventual outcome here. I doubt that the US are all that broken up about this, although I wouldn't be surprised to see it feature in a House floor rant and maybe some rhetoric about trying to pass a cybersecurity bill in the Senate.

[GlyphGryph]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer

Just thinking of treating people like this makes me throw up a little in my mouth.