Illiteracy In America

ILLITERACY IN AMERICA
Your ability to read and comprehend the words printed on this paper already sets you apart from 14% of adults living in America. This means that more than 32 million Americans today are considered illiterate and live with a tremendous disadvantage. That is a big chunk of the US population, but the worst part is that illiteracy is not getting any better from how it was a decade ago. According to the most recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy in 2003, 14% of adult Americans exhibited a below basic level of literacy (U.S. Department of Education 2015). The fact that the population has grown significantly since 2003 and the adult illiteracy rate remains at 14% means that the number of illiterate adult Americans is only
Macioni’s book “Social Problems” (2015:2), a social problem can be defined as a condition that undermines the well being of some or all members of a society and is usually a matter of public controversy. Illiteracy definitely falls under the category since it affects 14% of the American adult population as previously stated, and it most definitely is a matter of public controversy. Modern debates on educational reform have the modern day problem of illiteracy in the American population at the heart. The book also highlights that in the study of Sociology, there are three main theoretical approaches that sociologists use to study social problems of any sort: Functionalism, Conflict, and Symbolic Interactionism. Each one of them has a different approach on handling illiteracy and any other social problem. The theory of Functionalism views society from a large-scale perspective as interconnected and balanced set of moving parts. Society is basically like a set of gears in motion, and in a Functionalist’s eyes, a social problem would be something that causes one of the gears to rust and malfunction, causing the whole system to suffer one way or another. Functionalists would approach illiteracy from a general oversight and try to pinpoint which part of institutions or spheres of social life are causing it. Most likely the main target of a Functionalist would be the government and the education system, since its main function is to provide the population from
This method focuses on smaller scale social interactions by individuals in different situations. Its principles see how individuals act in society depending on their experiences. Symbolic Interactionism says that different people appreciate things differently, and it all depends on the meaning they give to them. For example, looking at illiteracy, one person who suffers from extreme poverty and never had the opportunity to go to school may never give any importance to being literate as long as they can live without it. Where as a person belonging to the middle or high class will take literacy and education very seriously since, from past experiences, they know that being able to read, write and speak well give you the proper tools to progress in