Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
those in power; to contemplate - with the best teachers - the
insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds
that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our
history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads.
Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we
are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many
times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are
key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic
society.
By some standards, African-Americans have made enormous
strides in literacy since Emancipation. In 1860, it is estimated,
only about five per cent of African-Americans could read and
write. By 1890, 39 per cent were judged literate by the US census;
and by 1969, 96 per cent. Between 1940 and 1992, the fraction of
African-Americans who had completed high school soared from
seven per cent to 82 per cent. But fair questions can be asked
about the quality of that education, and the standards of literacy
tested. These questions apply to every ethnic group.
A national survey done for the US Department of Education
paints a picture of a country with more than 40 million barely
literate adults. Other estimates are much worse. The literacy of
young adults has slipped dramatically in the last decade. Only
three to four per cent of the population scores at the highest of
five reading levels (essentially everybody in this group has gone to
college). The vast majority have no idea how bad their reading is.
Only four per cent of those at the highest reading level are in
poverty, but 43 per cent of those at the lowest reading level are.
Although it's not the only factor, of course, in general the better
you read, the more you make - an average of about $12,000 a year
at the lowest of these reading levels, and about $34,000 a year at
the highest. It looks to be a necessary if not a sufficient condition
for making money. And you're much more likely to be in prison if
you're illiterate or barely literate. (In evaluating these facts, we
must be careful not to improperly deduce causation from correlation.)
Also, marginally literate poorer people tend not to understand
ballot initiatives that might help them and their children, and in
stunningly disproportionate numbers fail to vote at all. This works
336