Many (most?) people consider illiteracy – the inability to read – a binary problem: Either you can read or you can’t, they think. However, there is a far more insidious issue that passes largely unnoticed in modern societies. That is functional illiteracy, or the inability to read beyond a superficial level.
To give a somewhat simple example (I’ll show you more structured cases in this post), someone who is functionally illiterate may be able to read a basic headline and a blurb conveying the simple description of a traffic accident, but will not understand the piece itself that, say, analyzes the problematic design of the traffic junction or the political aspects of lack of funds etc.
Of course, the reason that functional illiteracy passes unnoticed is a sort of Dunning-Kruger phenomenon: People who can’t read complex texts – and only seek simple answers – are very unlikely to be aware of their own shortcomings. This creates a dangerously volatile mix with unpredictable consequences.
