Americans Don’t Read… and that’s Affecting our Elections

Americans Don’t Read… and that’s Affecting our Elections | Intellectual Takeout:
In 2013, the Nation’s Report Card showed that only 38% of high school seniors were proficient in reading.
...the following U.S. literacy statistics are even more alarming:

• 14% of adults can’t read.
• Only 13% of adults can read at a proficient level.
• 28% of adults didn’t read a book in the last year.
• 50% of adults can’t a read book written at an 8th grade level.

But so what, right? In our enlightened digital age, what harm does it really bring if American literacy is tanking?
A lot of harm, according to John Adams, particularly when it comes to elections. In 1761, he noted:
“The very Ground of our Liberties, is the freedom of Elections. Every Man has in Politicks as well as Religion, a Right to think and speak and Act for himself. No man either King or Subject, Clergyman or Layman has any Right to dictate to me the Person I shall choose for my Legislator and Ruler. I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any Man judge, unless his Mind has been opened and enlarged by Reading. A Man who can read, will find in his Bible, in the common sermon Books that common People have by them and even in the Almanack and News Papers, Rules and observations, that will enlarge his Range of Thought, and enable him the better to judge who has and who has not that Integrity of Heart, and that Compass of Knowledge and Understanding, which form the Statesman.”
Considering the state of the 2016 election, would you say it’s high time for Americans to step up their literacy game?"