A FOLLOW-UP AND COMPARISON OF THREE GROUPS OF NAVY ENLISTED MEN: MARGINAL-AND-ILLITERATE, MARGINAL-BUT-LITERATE, AND TYPICAL RECRUITS

摘要

The United States prides itself on the educational opportunity afforded its citizens. Theoretically, every person living in the United States has the opportunity to go to school. In fact, every state has enacted laws making school attendance compulsory through certain grade or age levels, commonly grade eight or age 16. There seems to be no doubt, then, that the United States gives more educational opportunity to more people than almost any other nation in the world.n Knowing this to be true, many have believed that illiteracy is a problem of other lands, that the United States has no such problem. Such, however, is not the case here are, in fact, around sixteen million functionally illiterate adults and youths in the United States (44). Although most of these people have gone to school through grade eight, and even higher, they lack the literacy skills achieved by the average child upon completion of the fourth grade and have been found to be functionally illiterate.