On the subject of time series for literacy rates:
Sorry Mike. You objected to Pat's sources of data and pointed to other
sources. You then compared the recent statistics in your preferred sources
to the earlier statistics in Pat's, and claimed that that showed the trend
you believed. If his oranges aren't any good, you can't prove anything by
comparing your apples to them.
I didn't look for very long, but I didn't find time series at the URLs you
posted. Can you say where the time series are buried, so we can tell
according to this (you claim) more objective standard what has happened
over time? The interesting question is what has happened to levels of
literacy according to any unchanging standard of what it means to be
literate. If some unvarying standards show improvement and others show
degradation, we can argue about the merits of the different standards, but
until we see a series that shows the same standard being applied at
different times, we haven't learned much about changes in literacy.
Chris
---
C. J. Cherryh, "Invader", on why we visit very old buildings:
"A sense of age, of profound truths. Respect for
Chris Hibbert something hands made, that's stood through storms and
hibbert@netcom.com wars and time. It persuades us that things we do may
last and matter."
http://discuss.foresight.org/~hibbert/home.html
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