If You Can Read This, You're Pretty Damned Lucky.

Inquiry:

Do you want to hear a frightening statistic? 27% of today's high school graduates in America are "functionally illiterate," according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That means that at least 1 out of every 4 new young adults lacks the ability to grasp the meaning of what you are currently reading. And recall that we are only speaking of graduates. When one factors in the growing number of students who drop out, the implications become more dire.

Compare this with Western Europe. Norway has a 100% literacy rate. So does Luxembourg. And Denmark. Most of the nations of Europe have rates that hover at or only slightly below 100%. Canada's in the same league. So is Japan. In fact, compare the United States with almost any other developed nation, and the troubles with our system are obvious.

All of these uneducated masses are being unleashed in a sagging, struggling economy. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is growing, and this is partially due to the fact that these people lack the skills necessary for not just one specific job, but to adapt to changing conditions, to manage money, and so on. They also lack basic argumentative and negotiation skills - so that even though they have voices, they are powerless to use them properly.

In the end, this drags our entire infrastructure down. We throw money at welfare programs, educational measures, and all manner of other patch-ups at the overall expense of everybody, and the numbers continue to sag.

Don't get too comfortable when considering all of this. America may have an inordinate amount of power in the world right now, but mere might has never kept an empire afloat, and the kinds of phenomena we are currently witnessing have historically preceded the downfalls of most major powers. Stability is always more important than brute force, and with America's cracking institutions, it is not inconceivable that we could follow the Greeks, the Romans, or the Soviet Russians.

You and I have a stake in this. Even people who live in other nations have a stake in it. Cynicism and disenchantment with the system may be natural given the current climate of our nation, but that will not solve these still-fixable problems. It takes a village to raise a child, and it will take a global village to bring our nation and its youth into a functional maturity.So do something, and do it intelligently. It's your fate, too.