Graduating from High School without Reading

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The recent statistics that the education system could be producing high school graduates who are functionally illiterate is very worrying. Researchers interested in investigating whether the high school education system is producing illiterate graduates investigate the issue by exploring three types of illiteracies; functional, cultural and moral literacy. The most disturbing news is that the level of functional literacy among high school graduates is wanting. Functional literacy “is the inability to read or write well enough to accomplish everyday tasks in modern society” (Sweet Par. 2). According to Lederman, 14 percent of American adults are “functionally illiterate’’. In addition, 29 percent of American adults just have literacy level of a fifth to seventh grade graduate, while 25 percent of high school graduates just have an eighth grade level or below (Lederman par.2-4). From the above information, it is unfortunate that a huge number of students graduate from graduate from high school successfully regardless of the alarming level of functional illiteracy. Fundamentally, something need to be done to reduce the high number of illiterateness among high school graduate, by considering the factors behind the reality that some high school students graduate from high school without adequate reading skills. Reading John Corcoran book “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read” shows that there is hope for improving the situation but the fundamental step is to identify the reasons why and how functionally illiterate students are allowed to advance to the next grade. This research paper discusses three factors, social promotion, the use of movies instead of book assignments, and cheating in academic tasks.
Firstly, social promotion has be...

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...not read. This implies that despite having gone through the education system, these graduates lack the ability for to perform advanced tasks in reading and writing such as filling out a job application and tax form. The reason identified in this research paper include the practice of social promotion, the use of too many movie assignments and cheating in academic tests and assignments. Obviously, the high level of functional illiteracy among high school graduates is alarming and calls for immediate intervention to prevent the statistics from rising to uncontrolled levels. A literate society is a successful society, thus it is high time that the school administrators and other stakeholders came up with effective measures to prevent cheating, which has been identified as the worst factor that is promoting the level of functional illiteracy among high school graduates.

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