ILLITERATE VOTERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19783, 5 March 1927, Page 3

ILLITERATE VOTERS

CANNOT READ OR WRITE BIG AMERICAN TOTAL. Illiteracy in the United States hftf reached such appalling dimensions that the National Council of Education ia asking Congress that a federal department of education be established, with a minister within the Presidential Cabinet. A nation-wide survey of education shows that in thc United States there are six illiterates, or people who cannot read or write, in every hundred rf the population, compared with two per hundred in England and Wales, and a similar proportion in Germany and Denmark. Fifteen million American voters cannot read or write. And this, despite the' fact that the country ie spending £500.000,000 a vear, employing 800.000 teachers to teach 26,000,000 children. It is found that h&lf tho teachers in the schools have not had normal school training. “Education in the United States has failed, in the opinion of the most prominent land most experienced educationists,” says Professor Clapp, New York. Of 5.000.000 illiterates in thfl South. 3.000.000 are white and 1.250,000 native-born whites. A survey made during the - wtir of 28 camps scattered over the whole of the United States showed that 25 per cent, could not read a newspaper or write a lettei home. How illiteracy is filling the prison/ is show by an analysis of the Ohin penitentiary, where. 42 per cent, could not road or write, and 34 pe'r cent, had only a third-rate education. Thus, 76 per cent, of the inmates wore uneducated. Although there were now 2,000,000 at high school, half of the boys in the' country between the ages of 14 and 18 have no contact with high school. An analysis of the training and experience of boys brought into the criminal courts showed that, in the main, these boys were not specifically trained ta earn an honest livelihood.