We don't need no education....

[Steve]

In another thread, the subject of education was brought up. What do you think primary education is for? What's the purpose? And, if applicable, what do you think the purpose SHOULD be?

I tend to think that primary education really is about training young people and giving them the skills they will need in order to be well adjusted and successful contributors to society. Is that brainwashing? Well... I guess you could say that it is, in a way. In a perfect situation, the educators and the parents partner with each other to mold young people over time until they are ready to leave the nest.

I think schools should teach students about civics, and think it's perfectly appropriate to instill some sense of civic pride in the kids.

While I think that it's important to teach kids to think critically and to challenge the status quo, this is, in my opinion, NOT the primary goal of a primary education.

What do you think?

 

[oaktree]

Mark twain said " I never let my schooling interfere with
My education. "
A famous comedian once said about the pink Floyd song
" we don't need no education uh ya you do if you had an education you would know
That is a double negative. "

 

[Makalakumu]

The fundamental question, IMO, is who controls the child's mind. If society controls the child's mind, they can instill whatever they see fit and call it education. If parents control the child's mind, they can instill whatever they see fit and call it education. If the child controls it's own mind, the child can actually be educated. In another thread I wrote that the root of the word education means "to draw out". Therefore, the intent of education is to draw out the child's talents and interests and help them grow.

I also wrote that "schooling" was the opposite of this because schooling seeks to put in information for the benefit of others. This was called "brainwashing" by some, but I called it training.

Trained children are not educated, IMO, if the training is forced. Forced training is training only.

 

[Tgace]

IMO...the big 3. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic should be the core.

Primary schools are spending too much time on "Social Studies"...it's not even called "History" because even troglodyte Conservatives like me can see that Social Studies is not History or Civics.

I'm starting to loose count of how many kids I see being passed through 12 years of the system who can't write an acceptable paragraph, name the branches of their own Government or hell...tell you who fought in the Civil War.... but they know that Columbus was a European invader and how to use birth control.

 

[Makalakumu]

IMO...the big 3. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic should be the core.

Primary schools are spending too much time on "Social Studies"...it's not even called "History" because even troglodyte Conservatives like me can see that Social Studies is not History or Civics.

I'm starting to loose count of how many kids I see being passed through 12 years of the system who can't write an acceptable paragraph, name the branches of their own Government or hell...tell you who fought in the Civil War.... but they know that Columbus was a European invader and how to use birth control.

The agendas are crowding out the effectiveness of the learning.

 

[arnisador]

Teach them the basics--fundamental skills. When they get to college, I'll teach them to think. They aren't ready until they have enough facts. "Philosophy is the study of its own history." You need to know some stuff first.

The Faulty Logic of the ‘Math Wars’

At stake in the math wars is the value of a “reform” strategy for teaching math that, over the past 25 years, has taken American schools by storm. Today the emphasis of most math instruction is on — to use the new lingo — numerical reasoning. This is in contrast with a more traditional focus on understanding and mastery of the most efficient mathematical algorithms.

A mathematical algorithm is a procedure for performing a computation. At the heart of the discipline of mathematics is a set of the most efficient — and most elegant and powerful — algorithms for specific operations. The most efficient algorithm for addition, for instance, involves stacking numbers to be added with their place values aligned, successively adding single digits beginning with the ones place column, and “carrying” any extra place values leftward.

What is striking about reform math is that the standard algorithms are either de-emphasized to students or withheld from them entirely. In one widely used and very representative math program — TERC Investigations — second grade students are repeatedly given specific addition problems and asked to explore a variety of procedures for arriving at a solution. The standard algorithm is absent from the procedures they are offered. Students in this program don’t encounter the standard algorithm until fourth grade, and even then they are not asked to regard it as a privileged method.

 

[Makalakumu]

Teach them the basics--fundamental skills. When they get to college, I'll teach them to think. They aren't ready until they have enough facts. "Philosophy is the study of its own history." You need to know some stuff first.

The Faulty Logic of the ‘Math Wars’

The problem with this approach is that the fundamental skills drive kids away from math. It's drill and kill boring most of the time in most places. The traditional way math is taught is not popular or paticularly effective.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

When you have schools turning out students by the thousands who are incapable of reading, writing, or balancing a check book, you've failed as educators.

The purpose of todays schools is to prepare students for the next grade. Little more.

Our teachers regularly dip into their own pockets to get supplies for their students. Meanwhile, the football team has new gear, new uniforms and even a tour bus. Something's wrong with that picture.

You can not teach the future while living in the past. A class equipped with bear skins and flint knives is not going to build a radio.

You don't teach communications when rule 1 is no talking.

Arni said "When they get to college, I'll teach them to think." That's too late for half of them. As to the other half, will you teach them to think, or to echo your positions? You become like that which you surround yourself. If a student comes to you, and other teachers, and all of you teachers hold some things to be true, it is highly likely that your student will come to echo you. If you have succeeded in your intent to teach them to think, they will understand why they hold those views, beyond "well my professor said". (Side note: The Hills company teaches most of the veterinary training in the US. Guess who's food is most recommended by vets?)

Teach them readin, writin and rithmatic when they are youngest. Teach them to take care of them selves when they are older. How to cook, how to clean, how to sew, how to hammer a nail and cut a plank. Teach them how to balance a check book, prepare a budget and the value of being responsible. Teach them history, and open the road for them to the future.

 

[Takai]

.... but they know that Columbus was a European invader and how to use birth control.

Yeah, they learned that watching cable.

[h=1]“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” - Robert Heinlein[/h]

 

[Tgace]

I would not pass HS today with the new math requirements ...was never good at it and was never taught to be competent with it. I remember having difficulty with my multiplication tables in 4th grade and it just continued from there.

IMO much of my problem was that it was never explained to me in a manner by which I could grasp the "point". It may as well have been metaphysics...

Even to this day I don't know how the graphs (sine, cosine, tangent) I was taught in HS are applied in what...engineering? Electronics? Communication? What are their practical uses?

If some teacher could have taken me to a gun range and explained ballistics as math class Id probably be a math teacher today.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

[Tgace]

Yeah, they learned that watching cable.

[h=1]“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” - Robert Heinlein[/h]

And many similar skills I possess were not learned in school...my father taught me how to repair a car...my uncle taught me how to kill and gut a deer...the Army taught me how to give and take orders..

Schooling is important but "education" is not restricted to the classroom......

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

[aedrasteia]

Noting that contributors to this thread, including OP, comment as though 'primary' education
occurs in a school. A revealing position.

By the time an official school enters the picture, a child has had 4-6 years of 24 hour education.
babies and small children are sponges - all they do every day is learn - every second of every day.
Their brains are developing and they can take in massive amounts of information through
every sensory mode. They are acutely immitative, with short but massively intense spans of
attention, alert to 'novelty' and difference in all sensory experiences.

Me? I had a 5-6 year old who would help me prep for catering lunches - and he was standing on a chair, safely
poaching vegetables over pots of boiling water, using a knife (age/size appropriate) etc. He learned to be safe
as I brought him thru skill levels, calculated to be at his competency level or just slightly over it, but with a big
safety factor built in. Yeah, he had a knife (very small w/no point and not sharp). The learning included just enough
discomfort (a drop of hot water, a small 'ouchie') to reinforce my words with sensory experience. Later his first real
job was in a restaurant where he was fast, sharp and accurate with the big knives.

Adults greatest weakness/mistake lies in either under estimating or grossly over-estimating what small children can manage physically/emotionally/psychologically.

Adult bias pushes people to NOT see what is actually in front of them.

I've had many a parent tell me that their
child is NOT affected by whatever home or media diet the kid is exposed to (movie, video, tv, even audio and books)
when the kid is obviously overwhelmed by noise, visual chaos, violence, aggression and hostility, cruelty, fear.
But that's inconvenient for the adults.

Those can come from what is actually happening in the kid's home, family, neighborhood or what comes in through the Big Media pipe. And it affects the child. Guaranteed 100%.

I know because we carried the responsibility to take in a family child from a chaotic, unstable, frightening
environment and see what would work. And then help the other children in our family also faced
with chaos, instability, fear. We made lots of dumb mistakes but most of those were small change.

what i learned was unsettling. Most adults (yep, guys) over-estimate kids emotional capacity and seriously
under-estimate the emotional/psychological effects on kids of exposure to anger, violence, uncertainty, instability
noise, chaos, especially in media, but also in their immediate environment.

Watching and helping a frightened and also resilient 6 year old cope with a desertion by one parent
and separation (thru prison) by the other parent made me intensly observent and focused. No predetermined
assumptions. No telling him/them that their emotions were unacceptable or frightening to us adults.
Behavior and emotions are not the same.

Anger/hurt/terror/guilt/lonliness because Mom is in jail and no word from Daddy since you were 3 are absolutely
accepted and understood. OK ways to express those emotions are available and we will find the ones that
work for you and don't do more harm. Comfort thru words, hugs, special time, kisses, play comes with no limits - 24/7. And we are not going away - you will not be abandoned. You are safe.
We will tell you that in words but you can believe it because thats how we behave.

Based on previousl posts, there are huge biases here @ MT. Can you see them?

I'd rather know what actually works, based on your own demonstrated experience: real life little kids,
your own or ones you have consistently connected with.

Less abstraction, less pontificating, please
thanks,

 

[arnisador]

If some teacher could have taken me to a gun range and explained ballistics as math class Id probably be a math teacher today.

Freshman physics and sophomore math. covers this--quadratic trajectories when air resistance is neglected (freshman), a more complicated scenario when air resistance and/or the curvature of the earth is included (sophomore). Napoleon funded a lot of research like this for his artillery--he was a great friend of mathematical physics.

 

[arnisador]

Schooling is important but "education" is not restricted to the classroom......

Even in college, I learned more in the dorms--maturity, social skills, etc.--that was of real use in my day to day life, including at work, than I did in the classrooms.

 

[granfire]

The purpose of todays schools is to prepare students for the next grade. Little more.

:lfao:

No, to pass a standardized test.

 

[Steve]

Noting that contributors to this thread, including OP, comment as though 'primary' education
occurs in a school. A revealing position.

By the time an official school enters the picture, a child has had 4-6 years of 24 hour education.
babies and small children are sponges - all they do every day is learn - every second of every day.
Their brains are developing and they can take in massive amounts of information through
every sensory mode. They are acutely immitative, with short but massively intense spans of
attention, alert to 'novelty' and difference in all sensory experiences.

Me? I had a 5-6 year old who would help me prep for catering lunches - and he was standing on a chair, safely
poaching vegetables over pots of boiling water, using a knife (age/size appropriate) etc. He learned to be safe
as I brought him thru skill levels, calculated to be at his competency level or just slightly over it, but with a big
safety factor built in. Yeah, he had a knife (very small w/no point and not sharp). The learning included just enough
discomfort (a drop of hot water, a small 'ouchie') to reinforce my words with sensory experience. Later his first real
job was in a restaurant where he was fast, sharp and accurate with the big knives.

Adults greatest weakness/mistake lies in either under estimating or grossly over-estimating what small children can manage physically/emotionally/psychologically.

Adult bias pushes people to NOT see what is actually in front of them.

I've had many a parent tell me that their
child is NOT affected by whatever home or media diet the kid is exposed to (movie, video, tv, even audio and books)
when the kid is obviously overwhelmed by noise, visual chaos, violence, aggression and hostility, cruelty, fear.
But that's inconvenient for the adults.

Those can come from what is actually happening in the kid's home, family, neighborhood or what comes in through the Big Media pipe. And it affects the child. Guaranteed 100%.

I know because we carried the responsibility to take in a family child from a chaotic, unstable, frightening
environment and see what would work. And then help the other children in our family also faced
with chaos, instability, fear. We made lots of dumb mistakes but most of those were small change.

what i learned was unsettling. Most adults (yep, guys) over-estimate kids emotional capacity and seriously
under-estimate the emotional/psychological effects on kids of exposure to anger, violence, uncertainty, instability
noise, chaos, especially in media, but also in their immediate environment.

Watching and helping a frightened and also resilient 6 year old cope with a desertion by one parent
and separation (thru prison) by the other parent made me intensly observent and focused. No predetermined
assumptions. No telling him/them that their emotions were unacceptable or frightening to us adults.
Behavior and emotions are not the same.

Anger/hurt/terror/guilt/lonliness because Mom is in jail and no word from Daddy since you were 3 are absolutely
accepted and understood. OK ways to express those emotions are available and we will find the ones that
work for you and don't do more harm. Comfort thru words, hugs, special time, kisses, play comes with no limits - 24/7. And we are not going away - you will not be abandoned. You are safe.
We will tell you that in words but you can believe it because thats how we behave.

Based on previousl posts, there are huge biases here @ MT. Can you see them?

I'd rather know what actually works, based on your own demonstrated experience: real life little kids,
your own or ones you have consistently connected with.

Less abstraction, less pontificating, please
thanks,

Okay. As the person who wrote the OP, I can tell you that this wasn't intended to be a discussion about how to be a good parent or early childhood development. I don't mind thread drift, but since I wrote the OP, I can tell you with 100% confidence that this WAS intended to be a discussion about what people think kids should learn in school and what purpose schools serve in society. So, while I appreciate a good discussion about specific parenting skills and strategies for positive, early childhood education, I think you've completely missed the boat here. Getting all judgy about people having a high level discussion about the purpose of schools is inappropriate in a thread about what kids learn and SHOULD learn in school.

You are obviously a passionate advocate for kids, and that's great. I'd love to hear more from you about what you believe "actually works, based on your own demonstrated experience: real life little kids, your own or ones you have consistently connected with." You can even do it in this thread, as far as I'm concerned. But the attitude is unwelcome, at least by me. We're talking about apples, and you're judging us because we're not talking about oranges. I don't see why we can't talk about both.

Lest there be any confusion, I used the term "primary education" several times in the OP. I was referring specifically to Primary Education as elementary/middle school in America. Secondary Education refers commonly to High School in America. I used the term Primary Education because we have people from other countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_education

 

[pgsmith]

In another thread, the subject of education was brought up. What do you think primary education is for? What's the purpose? And, if applicable, what do you think the purpose SHOULD be?

I tend to think that primary education really is about training young people and giving them the skills they will need in order to be well adjusted and successful contributors to society. Is that brainwashing? Well... I guess you could say that it is, in a way. In a perfect situation, the educators and the parents partner with each other to mold young people over time until they are ready to leave the nest.

I think schools should teach students about civics, and think it's perfectly appropriate to instill some sense of civic pride in the kids.

While I think that it's important to teach kids to think critically and to challenge the status quo, this is, in my opinion, NOT the primary goal of a primary education.

What do you think?

Saw this post this morning, and have had that song running through my head all day! Thanks for that.

I disagree with you Steve in that I think primary school education should be more about teaching facts, how to use and apply logic, and the scientific method rather than trying to impart life skills. The skills to deal with their lives and society should be delivered in secondary school, once the child is old enough to have been exposed to society somewhat. It is my belief that if you can teach a child how to learn, they'll embrace and enjoy learning their entire lives. It seems to me that lately, at least from what exposure I've had to kids and schools, they are no longer being taught how to learn. They are simply taught to regurgitate what they are given in order to pass tests. That's not learning in my book, that's reciting. Come to think of it, that's what most political extremists tend to do also. Maybe that's what our politicians are pushing for in order to have a more malleable society. Maybe I just tend to overthink these things.

Just my opinions though, others may vary.

 

[Makalakumu]

Here are some thoughts I wrote down a few years ago as I began to formulate my ideas on this matter.

No Room Schoolhouse

“The past is not past. The dead are not dead…”

As our modern society grapples with technology, I am reminded of the parable of the Red Queen from the children’s book Through the Looking Glass. In it, the Queen informs Alice that she must run as fast as she can just to stay in the same place. This metaphor inspired a theory of evolutionary competition between organisms and it describes many people’s experience with society. In schools, the Red Queen theory is an especially apt metaphor because the richness of the student’s experience outside of school can only be maintained inside of the building if the majority of teacher energy is devoted to its maintenance. In the world of standards, tests, learning challenges, extra-curricular activities, etc, it is no wonder why schools are falling behind. The answer to all of this may very well revive and old idea, and perhaps put a new spin on it.

In the pre-industrial western society, a common view of education was promoted by the leading thinkers of the day. Dale Schunk writes in Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective…

“The writings of educational philosophers and critics also helped to establish the scientific study of development and improvement of education. A number of European philosophers, including Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, wrote extensively about the nature of children. As their writings became better known in the United States, educators and others increasingly questioned whether U.S. education was appropriate for students. Rousseau (1712–1778) believed that children were basically good and that the purpose of education was to help develop this propensity. Teachers should establish one-to-one relationships with students (i.e., tutor/tutee) and consider their individual needs and talents in arranging learning activities. Above all, learning should be satisfying and self-directed; children should learn from hands-on experience and not be forced to learn. Pestalozzi (1746–1827) emphasized that education should be for everyone and that learning should be self-directed rather than rote—the dominant style of learning at the time in U.S. schools. Pestalozzi stressed the emotional development of students, which could be enhanced through close relationships between teachers and learners. Froebel (1782–1852) believed that children were basically good and needed to be nurtured starting at an early age. He founded the kindergarten (“garden for children”), which reflected his belief that children—like young plants—needed to be nurtured.”

This philosophic approach led to a dominant form of schooling in which small groups of children were taught in one room school houses by a teacher that was hired by the community to instruct students to whatever level of education that they desired to master. Most of the trappings of modern school were missing in those days. There were no age based grades, nor were there high stakes tests, or compulsory attendance laws, but there was a level of quality that far exceeds what we are able to generate now with modern school techniques.
Robert A Peterson writes in Education in Colonial America…

“Literacy rates were as high or higher than they are today. A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly. Various accounts from colonial America support these statistics. In 1772, Jacob Duche, the Chaplain of Congress, later turned Tory, wrote:

The poorest labourer upon the shore of Delaware thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar . . . . Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a reader; and by pronouncing sentence, right or wrong, upon the various publications that come in his way, puts himself upon a level, in point of knowledge, with their several authors.”

When compared to modern literacy rates among the various classes in the West, our modern schools have been failing our children for a long time. Then, when we consider the depth, breadth, liberty of information available to children outside of the school building because of technology, it has become apparent to this author that modern schooling, as we know it, is headed toward a Chixalubian event.

In July of 2010, an educational researcher named Dr. Sugata Mitra gave a TED talk that was posted in September. The link to the talk can be found at this link.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

In the talk, Dr. Mitra demonstrates the self organizing power of children when it comes to their own learning. He shows how a small group of children, using modern technology, teach themselves complex concepts like advanced biotechnology to a degree that is equal to or greater than the best institutions in the West. Further, he shows how the slightest bit of mentoring brings children to even higher levels of achievement. When this capability is available to us now, the persistence of the institution of school, as we know it, is tragic. An entire of generation of children is being withheld the opportunity to experience education in far more effective and efficient way by a Red Queen that has grown too old to run.

The one room school and the world created by our technology have many things in common. I believe they can be combined into a new concept that will become an effective model of schooling in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] Century. I call this model the No Room School. I will list many of the features of this school below:

1. Small groups – education in the future will be far more intimate then it is now. Students will rebel against the factory approach to schooling because their information life outside of school is so much more frenetic and exciting then the assembly line of curriculum. Teachers will need to know their students more intimately and have even stronger rapport with students in order to draw out those interests and bring out student achievement.
2. Mixed ages – The traditional system of age grading is a relic of the assembly line and it robs students of the chance to interact with students who are younger and older then they are. The kind of social skills that this interaction builds will be important in the future because the interface with technology is so impersonal at this moment. Having a chance to work with students of different ages, is going to develop skills in inter-personal communication that utilize empathy and role modeling.
3. Mentoring – the role of the teacher in this new type of school will be very different then a teacher in a traditional institution. Teachers will mentor a student their learning experience rather than dictate what that experience should be. This doesn’t mean that a student will never be taught anything in a systematic way. Perhaps the teacher or the proxy that the teacher arranges will instruct the student in some subject that they are passionate about.
4. Free access – to information, technology, and experience. Under the guidance of a trusted mentor, a student will have far greater access to resources then they would in a larger setting. Since technology is much easier to manage in small settings, students will have a far less structured and more intimate interface with everything. The student will learn how to develop the discernment they need for 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century learning.
5. A New Philosophy – No Room Schools are going to have to have a different philosophic approach when it comes to learning. Students will have to take principles and apply them broadly in their lives in order to fully embrace the freedom they will have. Principles like Non-Aggression Principles and the Principle of Self Ownership will create a peaceful and responsible climate within the school, preparing students to express themselves in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century society.
No Room Schools take the best parts of individual philosophy and combine them with the most modern technology available, creating the most dynamic learning environment in the world. They are unlimited in scope and can take place in physical and/or electronic space. They allow students more freedom to learn and explore their interests then students have had in over 150 years. No Room Schools transform the learning environment to the students needs and truly let the student evolve into the direction that is most inspiring to them. In the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century there is no room for artificial barriers to learning. Every new gadget breaks them down as fast as traditionalists try to build them. We can take the walls down ourselves, or the students will do it for us.

 

[K-man]

Here are some thoughts I wrote down a few years ago as I began to formulate my ideas on this matter.

“Literacy rates were as high or higher than they are today. A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly. Various accounts from colonial America support these statistics.

Illiteracy
Illiteracy statistics give an important indication of the education level of the adult population. Today, illiteracy is a different issue than in earlier years. The more recent focus on illiteracy has centered on functional literacy, which addresses the issue of whether a person's educational level is sufficient to function in a modern society. The earlier surveys of illiteracy examined a very fundamental level of reading and writing. The percent of illiteracy, according to earlier measurement methods, was less than 1 percent of persons 14 years old and over in 1979.
http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

I don't know where you get your figures from but there seems to be a huge discrepancy. Maybe the definition of literacy has changed but I find it hard to believe that functional literacy was the same in 1800 as it is today, yet in between it dropped to 80% in 1870.

For the later part of this century the illiteracy rates have been relatively low, registering only about 4 percent as early as 1930. However, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, illiteracy was very common. In 1870, 20 percent of the entire adult population was illiterate, and 80 percent of the black population was illiterate. By 1900 the situation had improved somewhat, but still 44 percent of blacks remained illiterate. The statistical data show significant improvements for black and other races in the early portion of the 20th century as the former slaves who had no educational opportunities in their youth were replaced by younger individuals who grew up in the post Civil War period and often had some chance to obtain a basic education. The gap in illiteracy between white and black adults continued to narrow through the 20th century, and in 1979 the rates were about the same.
http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

Perhaps things aren't as bad as you seem to think.

 

[Makalakumu]

I don't know where you get your figures from but there seems to be a huge discrepancy. Maybe the definition of literacy has changed but I find it hard to believe that functional literacy was the same in 1800 as it is today, yet in between it dropped to 80% in 1870.

The Civil War destroyed families and communities for generations after it ended. It also freed an entire population of people who had no access to the tools or the culture of literacy. At the same time, America was wiping out and integrating it's indigenous populations. The US would wipe out tribes, force the remnants onto reservations, and take the children and put them into boarding schools. When you couple this with the influx of immigrants who were learning English for the first time and trying to teach themselves how to read, it's remarkable that the rate only dropped that far.

Here is an interesting summation of a recent study on literacy rates.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-01-08-adult-literacy_N.htm

A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle.

The study itself is linked and gives a state by state breakdown.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-01-08-adult-literacy_N.htm

Location	FIPS code[SUP]0[/SUP]	Population size[SUP]1[/SUP]	Percent lacking basic prose literacy skills[SUP]2[/SUP]	95% credible interval[SUP]3[/SUP]
Lower bound	Upper bound
Hawaii	15000	944,472	16	11.5	22.2
Hawaii County	15001	118,659	13	6.1	22.0
Honolulu County	15003	675,356	17	11.7	25.0
Kalawao County	15005	127	20	9.4	36.0
Kauai County	15007	46,358	12	6.0	21.6
Maui County	15009	103,972	14	6.8	24.1

This is the breakdown for my state. Hawaii public schools are exceptionally poor at delivering services. 25% of the population either uses private schools or charter schools in the islands. This has created an interesting market in education that doesn't exist anywhere else. We actually have schools that tailor their methods to specific populations of students and these are very successful. For example, there are several private schools that specifically target learning disabled populations and with a combination of assistive technology, alternative reading strategies, and smaller class sizes, they are able to teach every child functional literacy skills.