The Human Cost Of An Illiterate Society

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Illiteracy Crisis Have you ever been in a foreign country where you couldn’t read or write the language? Step into the mind of an adult who is illiterate against their own language. In The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society, Jonathan Kozol states, “Illiteracy has many cost; few are so irreversible.” According to the essay, there are one-third of adults who are illiterate in America. Every day, adults who don’t have the ability to read or write must face difficult challenges. These challenges can range from traveling, their rights, and communication for those who are illiterate. One difficult struggle is how illiterate adults travel. Usually illiterate people go by images to recognize road signs such as a stop signs. They know a red sign…show more content…
As an adult there are many contracts to sign. Contracts are very important to read before signing because then people will know what exactly they are agreeing to instead of the contractors telling people what they want to hear. Illiterates go by what the contractors say or have a person they trust that can read or explain the contract to them. For example, an illiterate adult would like to purchase a car but have no knowledge on a car and go by what they heard or seen on TV. They decide on a car and don’t realize that it could be only leased or interest could be high. The probability of an honest salesman is highly unlikely to be honest on a product only protecting the rights of the consumer rather than commission and profit. Also, it is very unlikely for illiterates to vote. Even if a person who is illiterate is registered to vote, they will not vote for the right reasons. They will vote based on how nice they seem or how they dress instead of by their own beliefs. Illiterate adults would most likely put something down because they simply cannot recognize the names. They couldn’t read the ballot and would have to go by how the name looks if it is familiar to them. Overall, they wouldn’t know that there opinion counted when it comes to…show more content…
Illiterate adults struggle with communicating through letters or emails. How can anyone possibly get information from a school or business if he or she cannot read? This is one of the biggest problems with people who cannot read or write because not only can they not read the text in a letter or an email but it is also hard for illiterate adults to comprehend what the text says verbally with the help of a person who can read. Often, illiterate adults would have to remember the phone number that was giving to them or they would just be stuck with no information that they might’ve needed. Illiterate adults cannot read a phone book in order to get a number. For example, an illiterate adult may need to speak with someone who can fix their plumbing. They need a way to get a phone number to a plumbing service but aren’t capable of looking up numbers in a phone directory. In these cases with illiterate adults, the only way to get by in communicating is having someone they trust to help them read text to get

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