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I am presenting on the future of small business in the context of Future of Jobs on the 28th July at the Indian Professionals Association in Adelaide.
Thinking about this keynote, I am concerned about where we are on functional literacy.
The Wikipedia says:
Functional illiteracy is reading and writing skills that are inadequate “to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level”.❲1❳ Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.
And this is the shocking statistic
“Forty-seven per cent of the Australian population are functionally illiterate,” Ms Richards says. “That means they can’t read the instructions on a medicine bottle, they can’t read a map, they can’t read a recipe.”
My first reaction is How can this be true?
My second reaction what future do we have if this is true?
My third How might we turn this around?
