> Poor reading, writing and numeracy skills in adults make up a literacy gap... the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not require t

> Poor reading, writing and numeracy skills in adults make up a literacy gap... the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not require the daily use of reading comprehension and information synthesis skills. The problem is identifying children with learning disabilities and/or low IQ early enough and steering them into effective programs tailored to core literacy/numeracy. This is a non-trivial problem in rural and remote communities. Our disdain of IQ style tests, assumed to be associated with marginalization, has probably backfired. The key question is what level of literacy/numeracy is expected for a given IQ and then identifying individuals that fall below this range of expectations. If you don’t recognize the natural distribution to begin with it is hard to improve outcomes. A second problem not addressed in the article is individuals with above average IQs that are functionally innumerate and lack "information synthesis skills”. Journalists generally fall into this category. We need quality information filters especially during a pandemic.