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Are you seriously trying to argue that literacy is not a requirement for functioning in society?

• pessimizer 5y ago
  That's simply a fact that doesn't need to be argued. Lots of English speakers can't read or write well, because English orthography is bad and hard, or because of dyslexia or blindness. They function in society. They can't do everything, but people who aren't plumbers, programmers, or are terrible at math can't do everything either. They work around it. edit: I think the functional illiteracy number in the US is something like 1 out of 6. R. Kelly famously can't read.
• dheera 5y ago
  No, I never said that. I said that literacy has a very arbitrary definition. Rather, the act of drawing a hard line between literate and non-literate is a very Western way of analyzing language learning and doesn't scale well past a certain set of languages. By drawing such a hard line you end up with ridiculous conclusions such as that a child needs 12 years to be literate in Japanese. Sure, if you go by your arbitrary definition. You can say that the average kid in an English speaking country needs 18 years before they know what "erudite" and "ostentation" mean if you draw the line there.