Readers have been e-mailing me a report stating that one-third of DC adults are functionally illiterate. In fact, I've never received so many e-mails on one subject (save for maybe Laura Sessions Stepp sightings). DCist and Wonkette, blogs that obviously have a far greater reach than anything on Blogspot, already covered the story. Anything I have to say about it would be redundant.
Except for one thing: No fucking duh.
You mean to tell me a city with such extreme poverty issues and with notoriously shitty schools is having problems with functional illiteracy? Really? That is shocking.
3.20.2007
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But we'll have a great baseball stadium.
ReplyDeleteI hope they spell everything at the stadium phonetically.
ReplyDeleteOUCH. or they could just have signs with pictures!
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Ralph Wiggam:
ReplyDelete"Me fail English? Unimpossible!"
Mayor Fenty can show up in his Totes Fedora and lead each section in hooked-on-phonics exercises between innings.
ReplyDeleteOh, on another note, I saw how your boy Jack-whats-his-name on City Council wants to raise the tax on stuff sold at the Verizon center to fund Abe Polin's new scoreboard and luxury box updates...."because 60% of people who use the facility live in the suburbs."
Well F___ YOU COUNCILMAN JACK!
If you want to fix up your fat-cat luxury skyboxes (the facility reverts to DC ownership in the future) TAX THE FAT CATS. Don't tax me just because I'm from the suburbs, jackass.
What is it about modern government and soaking the little people to fund the rich people????
Five or six years ago when I was living in DC for a summer I came across a hilarious sign in the Union Station food court. I swear to God, it was a poster promoting DC public schools and it had a pretty obvious grammatical error. I wish I could remember what it was, but it was definitely there.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good indication of why former Mayor Williams described DC's demographics as being like a woman's bossoms. On one end, you have a lot of wealthy yuppies. In the middle, hardly any middle class. THen on the other end, a large impoverished class. So DC is a tramp with too big tits...
Speaking of LSS, she was featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with her humdinger of a book. Nice picture.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.postgazette.com/pg/07079/770833-44.stm
And the city votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Coincidence?
ReplyDeleteReepublickans gest want 2 keeep thu peeple ignrant.
ReplyDeletemaybe we've discovered the hidden truth behind why DC will never be a state or get senators.
ReplyDeleteRusty,
ReplyDeleteFunktional Eliterate! Not to worry. It may common in DC, but you're okay. Your Mom and I got married!
III
Sorry, old joke resulting from a parents' night at the tech school.
hrm. literacy jokes. damn. too easy. my ? is this; shouldn't a child have received at least a small portion of book time with mommy or daddy upon enrollment in *shudder* public school of all things? the govt. is always gonna be corrupt and the schools are always gonna be shitty. anyone who reproduces without taking this heavily into consideration is asking for a societal beat-down. what we need is more new forms of birth control ***hpv is the new aids*** because, frankly, by the time public school gets its grubby paws on the wee ones, they're already well on their way to utter uselessness... if we're gonna point fingers..
ReplyDeleteGive a man an audience and he'll squander it in one day.
ReplyDeleteTeach a man to blog and he'll entertain himself.
The biggest segment of people who are functionally illiterate are those over the age of 60.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not to say that no one can help them, just that the currently crappy schools are likely not to blame.
I know. I'm assuming that the schools here have been shitty for a while.
ReplyDelete~Rusty