From CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

Apparently figuring out a tip is hard for them to do as well. Granted, I'm not very good at calculating exact tips, but I don't have any problem calculating 20% of $30, for example. If you cannot look at a $30 and realize that 15% of that is $4.50 pretty quickly after getting the bill, you're... well... dumb. That's coming from someone who has spent the past six years dealing with one hell of a learning disability in math that was developed in no small part to the abysmal quality of the math teachers he had growing up. Understanding credit card offers is not exactly a hard thing to do, and if the average person genuinely cannot understand them, that's a horrible statement about the quality of education in America!

I'm willing to stick my neck out a little bit here and suggest that the average American is barely more educated when they have left most public schools than the average third worlder who has been educated in a quasi-European curriculum. If they cannot read and comprehend the average credit card offer, then what other conclusion can we possibly draw about their level of education? I'm no accountant, but the terms are usually pretty explicit.

Our country is now being split into two fundamental classes: the producer and consumer classes. We maintain sufficient rigor in the educational processes for the former that they are forced to acquire the skills necessary to continue to be productive, however the former are educated only to the extent that is necessary to make them able to assist the producer class. I don't like it, in fact it scares the hell out of me for the future of our country, but sadly, it is becoming the reality of America at a terrifying speed. The only trend that seems to be countering this is the rise of homeschooling, but given how detached most parents are from their kids' education, it's unlikely that this will really ever be a viable alternative for the masses so the only thing that may be able to save our educational system is a voucher system.

It's one thing to forget things about the technical parts of speech, it's quite another to forget entire chunks of one's native language or to never learn them altogether. Most people have no need to ever know Calculus, but to have little functional skill in basic algebra is, quite frankly, pathetic. To not be able to read editorials and fully grasp the arguments that they put forward is a very worrying sign for the future of our republic. If people cannot read and understand small editorials, there is no way that they can be trusted to participate in a democratic system as even a semi-rational voter. Rather, they would be nothing more than fodder for demagogues to use and abuse freely and without consequence. This study is a greater condemnation of the "state of our democracy" than any political action taken by any elected leader in the past fifty years in this country.