Illiteracy in American Society

Imagine for a minute that one day you wake from a nights sleep to find nothing as it was, you don’t know where you are, the people around you, or any aspect of your life that you were so sure of the night before. Imagine the feeling of confusion and uncertainty that a situation of that sort would have. This chaos is not far from what millions of illiterates feel on a daily basis.

The phrase “illiteracy” applies to more than a simple inability to read or write. There is also “functional illiteracy”. Functional illiterates can read words but they cannot comprehend their meanings, synthesize information or make decision based on what they read. Illiteracy could also be defined as restriction or confinement due to the simple fact that, that’s the type of life many non-readers lead. Illiterates choices are restricted in just about every aspect of their lives from where they travel to, to what they eat to how informed they are. Kozol mentions in his story The Human cost of an Illiterate Society, that

“illiterates can not read the menu in a restaurant yet alone the cost of items on the menu in the window of the restaurant before entering.” (Kozol 231) Instead, of going to a restaurant and saving them embarrassment that they would just eat at home, but when having to go to the grocery store they are still not able to read prices and to read what they are buying. Illiterate run in to problems everyday and everywhere. They always have to depend on how the picture looks and take that chance in thinking that, that is what they are buying.

One of the scariest things would have to be when you are in a situation and your life is in danger or at risk and there is nothing you can do to help yourself. “ This panic is not so different from the misery that millions of adults experience each day within the course of their routine existence in the U.S.A..” ( Kozol 231) Not being able to read a warning sign on medicine bottles or the directions in taking the medicine is a dangerous situation. When having to take medications, it is a very risky chance because they may have an allergic reaction to the medication because they couldn’t read the part where is says if you are allergic to acetaminophen. A recent study showed that “ thirty percent of 2,659 people had a inadequate functional health illiteracy