I agree slightly with Kozol, that widespread illiteracy may undermine democracy in the United States. Kozol says that illiteracy undermines democracy in the US since most illiterates do not vote. He claims that even when they do vote, illiterates are almost certain to vote not by ideology or political platform, but for whomever they can remember from a street sign or television ad. Kozol also claims that since 60 million people in the US are illiterate, about one third of the population at the time of his publication, that our own US government is "neither of, nor for, nor by, the people," which is the very basis of American democracy (p. 207). Illiteracy works hard here to undermine our political democracy.

There are many things that I think can

Kozol describes many challenges that the average illiterate would have to face on an almost daily basis. I think that Kozol does a good job in describing how illiteracy can impact someone's life so relentlessly, but at times I felt that Kozol might have been exaggerating exactly how much illiteracy would have caused problems. Kozol may have several motives for exaggerating. I think he was attempting to evoke sympathy by showing what the extremist illiterate must face. He shows what the most acute problems could be for an illiterate. He does this so that people may realize that illiteracy is a legitimate problem in today's society. This way, he may sway people onto his side of the issue. I think a large reason for his writing was to show the problems that illiterates face to the society en masse, thus

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 547
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)