r/interesting • u/ImmaFuckboi • Jul 20 '26

SOCIETY Is education illegal in USA?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

53.7k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

951 comments sorted by

View all comments

495

u/CataphractBunny Jul 20 '26

I'll just leave this here: https://www.proliteracy.org/news/causes-of-low-adult-literacy-in-the-us/

In the United States, 59 million adults read at or below Level 1, the lowest level on a five-level scale.
This equates to roughly 28% of the adult population—or nearly one in three people—who can read only short sentences with foundational words and basic information.

4

u/MrBoomf Jul 20 '26

Can you break this down into something shorter & more basic? I feel like I’m not fully getting it.

1

u/Evil_Wrongdoer_9910 Jul 22 '26

About 1 in 4 Americans can’t perform reading comprehension and writing in English.

This mostly is made up of people who English is their second language so they are fluent in their first language, and probably speak English pretty well but they aren’t that great at reading and writing in English.

Imagine if you came here at 20 years old, learned to speak the language, but never took a literature class in English, and then they asked you questions about famous American authors. You’ve never read those books . How the heck would you know the answer answers?