Here are three examples of how you might evaluate some of Chris Hedges’ evidence in “America the Illiterate.”
- In paragraph 2 he states 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.” However, buying a book is only one sign of literacy. You can read books without buying them (libraries, borrowing from friends, etc.), and you can read a lot without reading books (newspapers, magazines and journals, websites, encyclopedia articles, scientific reports, etc.). Therefore, these statistics are not representative of the true state of American literacy.
- In paragraph 7 he cites evidence from several Presidential debates, including the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, to show that reading levels of the American public have declined. However, the comparison between Lincoln-Douglas and more recent debates is not valid, because Lincoln and Douglas were speaking to a much smaller portion of the American public—the white, male, land-owning segment that was allowed to vote. This group also had more access to formal education than the population as a whole. Therefore, the Lincoln-Douglas debates are not representative of the level of literacy in America in the 1800s.
- The debates are also not sufficient evidence to prove his point that literacy is declining. There is a gap of over one hundred years between the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Kennedy-Nixon debate. We are not told what the literacy levels were in the Presidential debates during that time. They might have risen and then declined again, or they might have declined and then risen. Either would be evidence against his claim of a consistent trend. Without this data we simply cannot know whether the trend he claims is real.
