If you were giving a speech on illiteracy in the united states, which of the following points would you discuss last?

 a billion people, two-thirds of them women, will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or write their names,” warns UNICEF in a new report, “The State of the World’s Children 1999.”

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, points out that the illiterate “live in more desperate poverty and poorer health” than those who can read and write. The shocking number — 1 billion people illiterate — generated frightening headlines in major newspapers.

Poverty in the poorest countries is indeed something that ought to concern all of us, especially in a season when we pause to remember the less fortunate. But as usual, there’s more to this striking statistic than UNICEF tells us. Consider three points.

The Good News. Bad news sells, news watchers tell us. And 1 billion people unable to read and write — about 16 percent of world population — is certainly bad news. But let’s deconstruct the news.

First, UNICEF’s actual number is 855 million, a figure that did not appear in major newspapers. That’s still a large number, but it is 15 percent less than 1 billion.

amy tan

explanation: