Connect: A report published this week found no improvement in overall Irish literacy standards in the last six years. The largest survey of reading carried out in primary schools reveals that, despite the economic boom and hugely increased Department of Education funding, literacy standards have not improved. So, the economy flourishes while literacy flounders.
Like the health service, it's clearly not just a simple (albeit expensive) matter of lavishing money on the problem. There must be deeper cultural factors at play: media - especially television - competing with print; books being read by a shrinking proportion of the population; the quality and rigour of the teaching of reading and writing. The most striking factor of all, however, is poverty.
The report, based on tests of 8,000 pupils in first and fifth class, says 30 per cent of children from poorer backgrounds have serious reading difficulties. This is three times the national average. So not only are poorer people denied - as they are by definition - economic opportunities, but too many are also suffering from persistently alienating literacy difficulties.
Consider how difficult it must be to feel part of this society when you can neither read nor write. Yet that is only the extreme end of the problem. The overall trajectory, though many continue to achieve satisfactory levels of literacy, is discouraging. It's not that recent generations are any less intelligent than their predecessors. It's just that, popularly, literacy counts for less than it used to.
But clear, plain, lucid prose can save fortunes for government bodies and commercial companies. In an era characterised by managements attempting to boost "productivity" by shearing costs, few appear to realise just how much time and money can be saved by improving literacy. It's a contentious topic, of course, and is not always amenable to accounting procedures.
Still, Britain's Royal Mail rewrote one form, which had had an 87 per cent error rate when people completed it, and saved £500,000 (€729,000) in nine months. British Aerospace redrafted a 150-page leasing agreement into 50 pages. The first time the new document was used, a £120 million (€175 million) deal took three weeks to complete. The previous average was six months.
Britain's Plain English Campaign estimates it has saved the British government £500 million (€729 million) in the last 20 years. The figure remains debatable but it's clear even to detractors that savings have been substantial. Thus links between the economy and literacy - though current emphasis is disproportionately on computer literacy - are vital even on economic grounds.
It's increasingly recognised that clear communication can lead to huge savings. Because of this, US corporations, according to the New York Times, are now spending more than $3 billion (€2.45 billion) a year teaching employees how to write clearly. Concise language, free of jargon and elementary mistakes, even US business acknowledges, is worth its weight in gold.
According to Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, an article by Michigan law professor Joseph Kimble, the US navy has estimated that good English could save it up to $300 million (€245 million) annually. Furthermore, Kimble states that merely by redrafting manuals into plain English, General Electric saved $275,000 (€225,000) in one year.
Literacy standards in the US and Britain declined earlier than they did in this country. But this week's report suggests that standards in the Republic too are waning. The problem is not simply that in poor areas illiteracy is creating and further alienating a lumpen "underclass". That is the acute, headline-grabbing difficulty, but there is a deeper, cross-class malaise.
Try the following press release: "Deutsche Bank Global Markets' London-based Product Innovation Group has implemented Prediction Dynamics' Crucible as a platform for researching and deploying innovative quantitative trading strategies. The quantitative trading infrastructure software will enable the bank to very quickly implement sophisticated non-parametric financial trading strategies for its growing client base." Phew! It's ugly and it's gobbledygook. It's also practically incomprehensible, but sadly it's typical of contemporary business-ese. This is the problem: the person who, eh, "constructed" the above press release could not be classed as illiterate. But it is infinitely more off-putting - depressing, really - than a properly written document.
It's the sort of writing that has persuaded David Quin, former director of the MA in journalism at DIT, to found SwiftEditing. His company provides a rapid and excellent editing and proofreading service, which ranges from checking for errors and improving writing to full rewriting of reports, speeches and newsletters. It's desperately needed.
Meanwhile, as the economy powers ahead, the waste of time and money caused by declining literacy is likely to grow. Standards in Ireland are not what they were, and unless the deterioration is addressed many accountants risk becoming increasingly cent-wise and euro-foolish. Economically, as well as culturally, the drop in literacy standards is costing us all dearly.