"It's not that kids suddenly became illiterate in the past two years".
By the early sixth century, Western Europe had become largely illiterate, its teachers dead, its students on the run, its libraries turned into kindling.
Citizenship teachers fear their popular subject will cease to be compulsory in the new curriuculum and warn that England will become politically illiterate as a consequence.
The finding that the cohort effect is of large magnitude in practice has significant implications for research on and design of literacy policies: relying on an indicator that conflates two distinct goals, namely of increasing the share of literate adults and of helping illiterate adults become literate, results in misleading policy conclusions.
Take Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann who said, according to the Washington Post that "the immigrants given new protections by the president could become 'illiterate' Democratic voters".
In the absence of a decent education, points out Javed Ashraf Qazi, the education minister, "illiterate masses become ready recruits for all sorts of unhealthy activities".
About four years ago, Ms. Blay, who describes herself as a "computer illiterate," became friends online with a young, depressed woman who had entered into a suicide pact.
Mobile phones can "break the pattern of marital isolation," she writes, allowing illiterate women to become competitive entrepreneurs, and the phones can help provide better health care for pregnant women.
A related problem that looks minor until you consider social feedback is the persistent mantra that sci-fi has been forced willy-nilly to become inward-gazing and science-illiterate because... reality moves too fast, thereby instantly dating predictive fiction.
