The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society

In Jonathan Kozol’s informative essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society”(1985), he asserts that illiterate members of society are neglected by the government which causes not only problems for the individual but problems as a country. Kozol uses experiences from those who are illiterate and shows how they are damaging themselves and society. Kozol's purpose is to highlight these problems to society and to the government in order for something to be done to fix it. Kozol appeals to essentially everyone, ones who are illiterate, ones who have met and illiterate person and people who have the power to doing something about it.

Johnathan Kozol brings many examples to question. It is appalling how true these accusations are in real life. I imagine myself as an illiterate person, not being able to do simple tasks by myself such as knowing where I am or what food I am buying. Hearing the personal accounts of some of these illiterate people makes my really question how they even got this way. How can the United States school system allow these people to fall through the cracks? How does the greatest country in the world allow people to be cheated and left hopelessly to figure life out when they don't even know how to survive. Although these people shouldn't of gave up in school, I believe the government has some responsibility to these citizens to make sure they can at least have a basic vocabulary to function in everyday life. I think the biggest thing that Kozol brings up is that " The number of illiterate adults exceeds by 16 million the entire vote cast for the winner of the 1980 presidential contest." This just shows that illiterate people are casting a vote based not off of knowledge but from appearances. This is a very scary thought that the people that run this country were voted for by illiterate people based on how they look and not how qualified they are. Since this is one of the biggest issues I think it is in the governments best interest to do something about this problem.