[_6khi]

Literacy is essential to living in society without getting scammed or taken advantage of.

There's a scene in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person, where a grandmother tells a mother to save enough money over time and make sure the granddaughter can read. An excerpt follows:

--

"Will it work, this saving?"

"I swear by the Holy Mother it will."

"Then why haven't you ever saved enough money to buy land?"

"I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language; 'This is thine!' He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man's to sell. It was ... how do you say it in the English ... a schwindle."

"Swindle."

"Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will read on the paper that the land is yours. Only then will you pay."

--

Yes, you can certainly be relatively more educated than you started by going to school, even if you are not literate by the end. But reading comprehension and literacy is a crucial skill that has practical value for living a better life.

[9rx]

> that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person

Does it? In practice, the average person, even the above average person, hell, even the greatest minds, will typically seek the services of a lawyer when buying land exactly because they lack the comprehension necessary to avoid the tale you tell. And once you are outsourcing comprehension, literacy doesn't really buy you anything.

[vundercind]

> will typically seek the services of a lawyer when buying land

I've seen a state where this is required by law, and I've seen a state where it wasn't. Very few people retained a lawyer when buying or selling land, in the latter.

I've bought property in both, and my state-required redistributional tax paid to a lawyer added zero to my confidence level. The extra middleman actually made me a tad more wary.

(I take your broader point, but reject the idea that lawyers are an especially useful element of a normal real estate transaction, for most people, at least in the US—I mean, on some level a lawyer drafted some form-documents and maybe some institution involved had a lawyer quickly glance at something at some point even in the rarely-using-lawyers state, but as a buyer or seller, directly interacting with a lawyer? IDK, maybe if you're involved in a FSBO transaction with no agents involved and also no financing)

[redundantly]

> The average person, even the above average person

So, people who are likely to be literate will seek out assistance when they realise they don't understand something? One might wonder if their literacy has anything to do with that...