From the Business Insider

Nearly Half Of Detroiters Can't Read

John Ellis
May 5, 2011, 3:07 PM
Detroit was once the . It is now everybody's emblem of decline. The data about Detroit grow more depressing by the month. http://cbsdetroit.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/basicskillsreport_final.pdf may be the most depressing thing you'll read all year.

In a nutshell, it says that roughly half of all the people who live in Detroit are illiterate. They can't read the back of a cereal box. They can't read a weather report. They can't read at all.

As Andrew Coulson notes in his blog at Cato: "Virtually the entire illiterate population has completed elementary school, the level at which reading is theoretically taught. That’s seven years of schooling (k-6), at a cost of roughly $100,000, for… nothing."

By way of epitaph, last month every teacher in the Detroit public school system was laid off.