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2007-04-28 India-Pakistan
50m people in Pakistan illiterate: UNESCO official
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Posted by Fred 2007-04-28 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 What's there for them to read?
Posted by Jackal">Jackal  2007-04-28 00:24|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2007-04-28 00:24|| Front Page Top

#2 WAFF.com Poster > What about BANGLADESH? Belabeled as INDIA/SOUTH ASIA's "AFRICA" for its dire problems. *KOREAN HERALD/WORLDNEWS/
STRATEGYPAGE > I6Milyuuuhn NORTH KOREANS IMMUNIZED FOR MEASLES OUTBREAK. More anticipated becuz Pyongyang may NOT be aware of true magnitude of epidemic, + possible related = follow-on [non-Measles]epidemics.
Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-04-28 00:40||   2007-04-28 00:40|| Front Page Top

#3 All Pakistan really needs is Islam. And they need it good & hard.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-04-28 04:00||   2007-04-28 04:00|| Front Page Top

#4 Meanwhile in Afghanistan, 64% are illiterate.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-04-28 04:49||   2007-04-28 04:49|| Front Page Top

#5 No wonder between Pakistan and Afghanistan the Islamic madrassas are operating full steam ahead, brainwashing the younger generation to the terrorist ways of jihad.
Posted by Mark Espinola 2007-04-28 05:14||   2007-04-28 05:14|| Front Page Top

#6 I was wondering what was the break down between male and female if this was the total literacy rate. According to the CIA factbook, literacy defined as those age 15 and over who can read and write, is:
Pakistan
total population: 48.7%
male: 61.7%
female: 35.2% (2004 est.)

Afghanistan
total population: 36%
male: 51%
female: 21% (1999 est.)
I'm surprised that, thanks to the Taleban, a quarter of the women can read. Now I'm left wondering why census takers, in both cases, had to estimate the number of literate women.
Posted by GK 2007-04-28 06:49||   2007-04-28 06:49|| Front Page Top

#7 But they have the koooran memorized. That's gotta count for something!
Posted by jds 2007-04-28 08:54||   2007-04-28 08:54|| Front Page Top

#8 What do you call it in America where most of the population can't read - Al Qaeda in Iraq?
Posted by Procopius2k 2007-04-28 10:37||   2007-04-28 10:37|| Front Page Top

#9 Get down on your hands and knees, assume the position and get ready for what islam has to give you.
Posted by Glasing Sforza7069 2007-04-28 11:19||   2007-04-28 11:19|| Front Page Top

#10 I wonder what percentage of them can't count either.
Posted by wxjames 2007-04-28 12:45||   2007-04-28 12:45|| Front Page Top

#11 I don't know the stats here in the states, but I think it would be rather scary to learn them;

I work in a hospital, and hardly any of the patients understand English where I work. They don't read in their own language either, some don't know how to write their names, or seem not to understand what a signature is. Not just illegals, but folks here from Somalia, Ethiopia et all. After having their American baby, they go to sign up for benefits, and not being able to read they have the paperwork done for them. We are allowing folks to get by without being educated it seems.
Our United States is fast becoming a third world country with the high drop out rate in our schools among other programs. Our representatives by trying to do the right thing here are turning a blind eye to what's actually happening and it's disasterous. We are being laughed at and taken advantage of ridiculously so.
I see this as a major corrosive attacking us from within.
Soon we'll be seeing folks with flies on their faces here in America.
Posted by Jan 2007-04-28 14:03||   2007-04-28 14:03|| Front Page Top

#12 #11 -- consequences of "anything goes" immigration and border policies, which the electorate seems to strongly oppose, and which our Ruling Class seems to be pushing for very strongly. Qualifying only the literate to be eligible to apply for citizenship or permanent residency would be a step in the right direction.
I don't know what to do about a population (that of the US) which is losing interest in literacy and its benefits.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-04-28 14:32||   2007-04-28 14:32|| Front Page Top

#13 Notice how endemic illiteracy seems to accompany a near total lack of industrial development. Especially repugnant is the Islamic practice of keeping women illiterate. In light of how women raise the children, a vast opportunity for home schooling is lost. This affects all children, male and female alike. Such is the subtle punishment that Islam brings upon itself. Although I'm confident that clerics find an illiterate flock much easier to control, much like serfs of the Middle Ages.

Research has already been done showing that reading stimulates regions of the brain which are used to execute the most complex tasks. Illiteracy directly impoverishes this faculty. Consider how badly synaptic and dendritic growth can be inhibited by a near-total lack of stimulation. While the impact is most dramatic in pestholes like Islamic countries, the effects are being seen in America as well.

Lack of literary tradition is rapidly becoming a de facto standard. I know more than one person who has not read a single book in years, if not decades. Many people I know limit their perusal to a specific genre. While they still receive some of the neurochemical benefits conferred by reading, the scope of information content that they encounter is extremely limited.

Voracious reading is one of the healthiest mental excercises there is. It encourages intellectual synthesis, critical analysis and a host of other high order mental activities. Doing crossword puzzles — another occupation of mine — is one of the few other pastimes that reinforces similar faculties. Both pasttimes are widely recognized as promoting an "evergreen mind" which will exhibit the greatest resistance to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-04-28 20:40||   2007-04-28 20:40|| Front Page Top

#14 I wonder what percentage of them can't count either.

This is referred to as "innumeracy" and resulted in cash registers with pictures on the keys. Many modern children are unable to read time from an analog clock's dial. Most people I know are unable to perform simple four function math in their heads. I have often been called "computer brain" for my ability to closely calculate or guess three and four figure sums and so forth.

Hand held calculators have played a big role in diminishing this faculty and it affects a person's ability to estimate quantities or rapidly count groups of objects. This translates into less effective pattern recognition and generates a cascade effect of increasingly diminished high order mental functions. The end result is adults with a grade school level of functionality.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-04-28 20:46||   2007-04-28 20:46|| Front Page Top

#15 Sounds like the inner city Tucson school at which I teach...
Posted by borgboy2001 2007-04-28 22:32||   2007-04-28 22:32|| Front Page Top

#16 Mr. Wife used to be a voracious reader -- we introduced each other to to the non-intersecting sets of our libraries, such as they then were, although I never managed to appreciate the Russian authors properly. But he reads so much for his job -- memos, articles, technical books -- that he has little desire to do more of the same on his own time. I can't imagine he is unusual in this. We both look forward to him resuming pleasure reading when he retires.

Basic counting and arithmetic skills are more easily absorbed than reading -- a child can buy a candy bar out of its allowance long before it can read the label. So long as there is the earning and spending of money, or for the women accumulating ingredients and cooking them, counting, addition and subtraction will be mastered. That's what fingers and toes are for, after all. But it seems to me that any mathematical understanding beyond that takes the same kind of ability to imagine beyond immediate reality and distill pattern out of a mass of information as understanding a work of literature.
Posted by trailing wife 2007-04-28 23:26||   2007-04-28 23:26|| Front Page Top

23:56 Zenster
23:45 Old Patriot
23:26 trailing wife
23:20 newc
23:14 Pappy
23:12 RWV
23:00 Pappy
23:00 trailing wife
22:36 Mike
22:32 borgboy2001
22:25 Zenster
22:25 Pappy
22:24 FOTSGreg
22:22 FOTSGreg
22:21 Zenster
22:19 FOTSGreg
22:12 Zenster
22:10 Zenster
22:01 Helmuth, Speaking for N guard
21:59 Zenster
21:55 3dc
21:44 Zenster
21:39 Zenster
21:33 gromgoru









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