I read statistics like those which follow over ten years ago. It seems that the situation has not changed.
– 28% of adult Louisianians surveyed were not literate enough to find an intersection on a road map, or two stated facts in a sports article. Rates of illiteracy at this level in some parishes are as high as 41%.
– Of every 100 students who begin high school in Louisiana, only 56 finish within four years.
– We also have one of the very lowest six year college graduation rates in the nation, and we are ten percentage points below the average Southern college graduation rate.
I like hearing these statistics because they articulate what I see darkly. The primary defect of my graduate school education, for instance, was that I did not learn how to teach basic reading. It has always been evident that I needed to know.
I am not still not sure how to handle the residue of illiteracy in college courses, but I am prepared for it out on the streets because I lived in northern Brazil where the illiteracy rate was about half. Everyone had “forgotten their glasses” and would ask you to read things to them, or fill out forms for them. I was impressed with how forthcoming people were with discreet, non-condescending help in these situations, and I learned to do it that way.
Recently on a flight to San Salvador, my seat mate asked me to fill out his immigration card for him. Here it does not happen, probably because I am not in enough of the right sorts of public places often enough. Yet reading is a far more foreign activity for many people than it is for me and I see evidence of this in a penumbral way.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Hot Damn!
You are a kindred spirit.
Since I taught little German mechanical grease monkeys that came from farms, spoke only Swaebishe Dialekte (the variation from the area going Northeast away from the Neckar River and the Swaebische Alb . . . a very specific dialect, within a dialect), and were somewhat culturally illiterate concerning their own German culture (only the immigrants and the fascist had an understanding of Wagner) I totally identify. But I must say I loved my students.
My new job will deal with that situation, but in NYC. But, I was astonished to find that many people are not literate in their native language let alone English.
Check out:
The Swabian Alb — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_Alb
OMG it sounds fantastic. Sort of like rural Louisiana, sort of like the Faroe Islands – and Tubingen is the metropolis of the area, it seems. Let’s go! 🙂
Yeah. Tuebingen is the capital of the the Alb. I lived there for a year. But Stuttgart is the metropolis of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The area I was in, Schwieberdingen was going towards Heilbronn, and right after Zuffenhausen (Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen) where they make Porsche.
Here is a great dictionary my principal gave me.
http://www.schwaebisch-englisch.de/
Check out the Swaebisch curse words. So long and impossible to say, but when I here them I freeze in my tracks.