Amercia the Illiterate

In his article, “America the Illiterate”, Chris Hedges shows his discontentment to the America government. He writes a severe situation faced by America: there are still many illiterates in America, but the government does not make any effective efforts on it. They only try to make a false appearance when they enter into an election contest, when they need those illiterate and semi-illiterate. After the campaigns, they remain powerless. The politicians are now evading this question; they don’t help these people to improve the existing situation; they just change the nation from a print-based to an image- based. To be honest, I feel very shocked after I read this article. I always think America is the most developed country in the world, and its education is also the greatest one.  I never heard a voice to describe America from this point. Even the word “illiterate” the author use is not the same meaning as I use.

Actually, we always admire American politicians’ power as a speaker.  We advocate that they can use very simple words and sentence to make a speech. But from the author’s opinion, it is not seems like a good thing. He thinks it represents and aggravates culture gap. He thinks only the America that functions in a print-based, literate world, can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. Americans can’t make their culture and future rely on “image”. I think this situation can be understood, in this information generation, people become blundering than before. Just like Carr’s worries, we now use more quick information source, and we can hardly to sit down to read a book. It may be is the negative part that bring by the modern technology.  So even Hedges shows an example that a third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book, it never means what they read is less than the former people. Maybe they just take another form. So in my opinion, everything has its positive and negative parts, whether our culture problem is too big to bear is still need time to check.