Here’s a tidbit from a story I had in the paper today:
Men have also become less literate, while women’s English reading skills have improved, the Department of Education survey found.
“Women are doing better and men are doing worse,” said Mark Schneider, commissioner of the department’s National Center for Education Statistics. …
[M]en showed a significant decline in their ability to comprehend both prose and documents such as job applications, the study showed.
Women now have better average reading comprehension, and, while men remain more skilled at tasks such as balancing a checkbook, the gap is narrowing.
Other studies have shown similar declines in male performance, which could be related to reading habits, [deputy commissioner Peggy] Carr said. Many more women also are attending college.
I thought this should be the lede of the story, but the editors wanted to go with something about Hispanics. Hmm.
A transcript of an online chat with Peggy Carr can be found here, while the stody itself is here.
If men are getting less literate, clearly you’re one of the outliers. Excellent blog; thanks for sharing it. I look forward to reading more.
[…] She says — with good reason, I think — that this could be a harbinger things to come in society at large. Not that I think marriage is going to disappear or anything, but with fewer and fewer men proportionately graduating from college and men getting less and less literate, there are going to be consequences for women who want to marry an equal… […]