[gela]

heres some more disturbing info:

41.6% of American patients could not comprehend directions for taking medication on an empty stomach 26% were unable to understand information regarding when their next appointment was scheduled 50.5% could not understand a standard informed consent form About 20% of the US population are functionally illiterate; for some subsets of our population, that rises to 40%.

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For whoever said it was probly the same it all developed coutries:

The National Geographic–Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States. Sweden scored highest; Mexico, lowest. The U.S. was next to last. About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent. Particularly humiliating was that all countries were better able to identify the U.S. population than many young U.S. citizens. Within the U.S., almost one-third said that population was between one billion and two billion; the answer is 289 million. "It gives the sense that there is this Americentric thing going on—that we are big and powerful and have all these people in our country," said John Fahey, President and CEO of the National Geographic Society.

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# The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004). # The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). # Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005). # "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78). # "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32). # Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).

Source <- this site has alot of other interesting facts too.

* 46% to 51% of adult Americans either cannot read at all, or cannot read well enough to understand simple printed instructions, read a newspaper, fill out a job application or understand a bus schedule! (National Institute for Literacy, 1998)

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argue!