Fellow Nubliners, I'd like to alert all of you to a problem that affects millions of people in the United States everyday... a problem I thought we wouldn't have to deal with on our humble little website here, but recently it's become obvious that we do. This problem is illiteracy.
The 1992 and 2002 National Assessments of Adult Literacy use the following definition of literacy:
using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.
This definition goes beyond simply decoding and comprehending text to include a broad range of information-processing skills that adults use in accomplishing the range of tasks associated with work, home, and community contexts. This definition has been mostly accepted by the policy community. For example, the U.S. Congress incorporated a similar definition into the National Literacy Act of 1991, in which literacy was defined as "an individual's ability to read, write, and speak in English and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential."
If any of you would like more information on what you can do to support literacy, please p.m. me and I will be more than happy to give all the necessary information. Thank you.
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