"In New England, the literacy rate was over 50 percent during the first half of the 17th century, and it rose to 70 percent by 1710. By the time of the American Revolution, it was around 90 percent. This is seen by some as a side effect of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading." - Wikipedia

Today, the nation's literacy rates haven't changed much. We're only about 1 or 2 percent higher than that, without counting the homeless and illegal citizens. Even the Ms. Teen America competition has a hard time finding an exceptional representative. This poor girl completely choked up on her public speaking competition.



Canada, Oh Poor Canada, isn't doing much better either. What's going on here?

Public and private school registrations have stayed relatively stable, so there's no great huge influx of public school students. In fact spending in both public and private education[pdf] has gone up a great deal.

Maybe the No Child Left Behind legislation wasn't such a great idea. Maybe, just maybe, government regulation to enforce social responsibility is not the solution. Then again, I've been saying that for months.

It's not called "government responsibility," it's social responsbility - which means the company should be held accountable by the public, not regulated by the government.