The Decline of Literacy
By almost every indicator, Americans fare poorly in literacy — defined as competence or knowledge in a specified area, whether measured by linguistic, scientific, historic, economic, geographic, or legal aptitude. We have become a ‘sound-bite’ culture. As a consequence, many Americans cannot distinguish between a fact and an opinion or distinguish myth from reality.
On an individual level, many lack basic skills in reading, writing, and comprehension to use language to communicate effectively or coherently. Few can read a newspaper such as The New York Times with good comprehension; fewer still read any newspapers or books at all. Ungrammatical, vulgar, and vernacular expressions are commonplace, and reliance upon often unverified and false information conveyed by social media has exploded. Even across the class divides, one detects a decline in literacy.
That decline among large segments of the American population has been widely documented, quantified, and continues to be chronicled. According to a 2020 study from the Department of Education, approximately half of U.S. adults aged sixteen to seventy-four years old — 54% or 130 million people — lack literacy proficiency.
The misuse of words impairs our ability to reason and to understand social reality. Without attention to the meaning of words and the manner in which words are expressed, our thoughts become unfocused, and our ability to distinguish between that which is true and that which is untrue becomes untethered.
Deliberately misleading words and phrases are the essence of successful propaganda. During the past six decades, the words ‘liberal’, ‘government’, and a panoply of related synonyms such as ‘tax and spend’, ‘death tax’, and ‘government mandates’ have been repeatedly employed by right-wing politicians and media outlets to convey something sinister, while slogans such as ‘free enterprise’, ‘individual rights’ and the ‘American way’ have been invoked to convey something wonderful and patriotic.
When language is used imprecisely — or to try to create, through deliberate misinformation, an ‘alternative reality’ — the underlying quality of thought is similarly compromised. When one loses the capacity to use words correctly, one loses the capacity to think; when one loses the capacity to think, the ability to rebel or to imagine alternatives to the status quo is irrevocably extinguished.
The calculated use of emotionally charged words by right-wing opportunists has been to inure citizens to the roll-back of government regulations and programs that promote and protect the public interest and to stymie efforts to regulate heretofore unregulated entities such as monopolies, hedge funds, and financial instruments .
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The above is an excerpt from the author’s current book, Private Affluence and Public Squalor: Social Injustice and Economic Misery in America (December, 2023).
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Attended Makerere University
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