DLG_GroupProject

In math, reading and problem-solving using technology - all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength - American adults scored below the international average on a global test

"Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary," Greenfield said. "Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades."

anecdotal

There are 759 million      adults–approximately 16 percent of the world’s population–who have only  basic or below basic literacy levels in their native languages. Two-thirds of the world’s lowest literate adults are women. In the U.S., 63 million adults — 29      percent of the country’s adult population —over age 16 don’t read well  enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level. An additional 30 million — 14      percent of the country’s adult population — can only read at a fifth grade level or lower. Forty-three percent of adults with the lowest literacy rates      in the United States live in poverty. The United States ranks fifth on      adult literacy skills when compared to other industrialized nations. Adult low literacy can be connected to      almost every socio-economic issue in the United States: More than 65 percent of all state       and federal corrections inmates can be classified as low literate. Low health literacy costs between $106       billion and $236 billion each year in the U.S. Seventy-seven million Americans have only a 2-in-3 chance of correctly       reading an over-the-counter drug label or understanding their child’s       vaccination chart. Low literacy’s effects cost the U.S. $225       billion or more each year in non-productivity in the workforce,  crime, and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.

Globally, illiteracy can be linked to: Gender abuse, including female infanticide and female circumcision Extreme poverty (earning less than $1/day) High infant mortality and the spread of HIV/Aids, malaria, and other preventable infectious diseases.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

a national task force dedicated to increasing access and adoption of broadband communication.

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