San Diego Blogger Syntax of Things points out a study about America’s cities:
A recent study has ranked San Diego in the middle of the pack when it comes to literacy.
This study ranks cities with a population of 200,000 or more on factors such as newspaper buying and library use.
Disappointingly mediocre, people. Get thee to thy local lie-barry and find something to read!
well, that study is obviously flawed, since it assumes that everybody who is literate actually likes to read (books). me? i’m literate. i have a pretty decent sized vocabulary. i can spell, and i’m pretty good with grammar. but i hate hate HATE reading books.
And actually, book read-age is I think not a bad indicator of literacy. It also looked at other factors as well - education, newspapers, magazines, bookstores, etc. So I doubt the study can be dismissed just because some smart people hate books.
This study demostrates that warm weather = low literacy.
All the low ranking cities tended to be in CA, TX, and FL.
If I was living in Seattle or Cincy, I’d probably be reading
more books. Probably books about people that live in warm
climates.
A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read. - Mark Twain
ah, but twain lived in an age where books were the only way of learning. we have TV and the internet, now. and i didn’t say that the study should be dismissed, i was just pointing out that it was flawed. and like MAS pointed out, perhaps there are other factors involved? i mean, otherwise, one might deduce that nicer weather makes you less literate…
Another thing I noticed with the study was cities that had higher Hispanic
populations were considered less literate. Did they examine Spanish language
media in the study? If you only speak Spanish, you probably won’t be reading
the Union-Tribune or visiting libraries where the books are 99.99% in English.
San Diego (44) is 23.9% Hispanic, Minneapolis (1) is less than 1%.
Well, I can’t speak for the library system, but I know that the city’s libraries have excellent and extensive spanish language books, magazines, videos, etc. It’s part of their mandate to serve the community. But no, I’ve no idea what the literacy rate would be apropos of Spanish.
Reminds me of the MLA’s study: see: Maps of Languages which says that we have 244,000 “Spanish or Spanish Creole” speakers in the county — out of a population of 1.1 million.
Good questions MAS and mikey!
Speaking of population, Radio and Records has the San Diego metro at 2.5 million. This
study has our population at half that. This leads me to believe that us folks in North
County were left out. I’m sure we could have boosted the average.