London is swimming in illiterates. Yes, THAT London

[Bruce Wayne]

http://thesantosrepublic.com/2011/06/london-a-city-of-children-who-cannot-read/

LONDON: A city of children who cannot read

London is in the grip of a literacy crisis. One million people in this great city cannot read.

In London, the home of Charles Dickens, Shakespeare’s Globe, and T S Eliot, schools are, in 2011, churning out illiterate pupils at unacceptably high rates.

Years of government initiatives and investment have failed to solve the problem and has created a generation incapable of deciphering basic words on timetables, receipts or medicine labels.

One million adult Londoners – one in six – are functionally illiterate. Evidence shows they are more likely to end up on state benefits, in overcrowded housing, divorced, in poor health and in prison.

The scandal goes to the heart of the education system. One in four children is practically illiterate on leaving primary school.

Thank God for once it's not Americans being stupid!

[rug]

1. What was the literacy rate in the time of Dickens and Shakespeare?

[Bruce Wayne]

2. Both Dickens and Shakespeare were literate.

[AnneD]

3. Don't think so....

Neither one of them could spell worth a darn.

[geardaddy]

4. TS Eliot was American.

[SwissTony]

8. He was, but he took out British citizenship

and, I believe, spent most of his life in England.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. omg. what's going on?

[dimbear]

6. I blame the English place names. They would break the mind of any would be reader. n/t

[SwissTony]

9. Not just place names, Mr Cholmondley-Warner. nt.

[4th law of robotics]

7. But how many of them can text just fine?