Third-grade level

36 million adults in the U.S. read below third-grade level.

Third grade level.

Never mind reading Jane Austen or John Steinbeck or even Danielle Steele or the NYPost (written at 4th grade level).

There are 36 million adults in the U.S. who can’t read a restaurant menu. Or subway directions. Or street signs. Or a job application. Or their own mail.

They are dependent on spouses, bosses, siblings, friends, and sometimes strangers to interpret the world for them.

What happens when a marriage goes bad and the reading spouse stops helping the non-reading spouse? What happens when a boss decides to intimidate or manipulate a non-reading employee? When the siblings can’t read either?

In the years I have been working with adults who can’t read, I have heard all of these scenarios. There was a woman whose ex-husband used her lack of reading skills to get the upper hand in a custody battle. A woman whose boss manipulated her into signing a resignation letter. So many stories of bosses using the employees’ low reading skills to manipulate or humiliate them.

It is impossible not to think of how literacy historically has been denied intentionally to certain groups of people – black people, women, servants, laborers.

What are we doing? Why is this still happening?