Well, to be fair... I think literacy education refers more to teaching people who can't read (immigrants, mentally challenged adults?), not children. I think teaching children to read would be part of the much larger (I hope) education budget.

BROADBAND. Japan on average is 60mbps. 60 AVERAGE!! I just need to move.

i would say that alot less money needs to be spent on the digital cable thing but i dont know how many people still do analog stuff but i think broadband needs to go faster but litiracy needs to have much more money spent on it

Literacy:

An educated, literate society (one that places a high value on media literacy, not just attaining some base level of it) will push itself to be aware of sea changes in TV and Broadband.

WE NEEDZ MORE INTERNETZ!!!!!

Mostly because our children isn't learning good enuff.

Frankly, I'm a little miffed that one of the choices in this poll isn't "FuzzyWuzzyModo Animal Prosthetics".

What we need to do is raise the level of education, not just spend more money.

Thinking that spending more money is going to yield results is thinking on the same level as the idiots who are sitting in their elected seats waisting our money as I we type.

Since the federal government effectively controls the public waves, it makes sense to spend the money to inform (and assist) as many people as possible about the upcoming switch.

Education (yes, even adult literacy) is a responsibility of each state, and that's why states have their own education budget. It's not like we're 'stealing money from the precious snowflakes' to pay for TV.

Lastly, note that virtually everyone has a TV in the home. Not everyone has a computer, or the skills/knowledge to use one, so insuring that they don't lose access to TV broadcasts is much more important than broadband (emergency alerts, anyone?).

I meant to delete the "I" at the end. I wish giz would through more money into their comment code so I can edit my mistake(s).

Most of America is literate. The problem is that after learning to read, people are getting crap-shit educations.
(and we are fat, and take away rights).

What the hell is literary education? The government spends countless billions on public schools, yet somehow you're claiming that we only spend half a billion on literacy education. Free broadband would probably do more to promote literacy than some congressman's pork products.

@mdawg4624:

My TW Cable connection keeps falling. As Adelphia, I had 3MbPS for a short time just before they wre turned over to TW.
When TW took over it immediatly dropped to 1.5 MbPS, then slid slowly to 1. Today it was it was only some 800KbPS.
Shameful, it's no wonder the Chinese are beating us.

panem et circenses
"Bread and circuses"- Juvenal, written ≈ 1 CE.

@dMo: and thinking that the problem will fix itself or that Magical Fairy Millionaires will solve all are problems is just as idiotic.

Its all the damn FCC's fault, they are the reason we have slow "broadband", they have regulated fiber optics and all other networks to death, thats why South Korea, with 1/6th of the population of the US pulls in close to the same bandwidith. Its ridiculous, its why the satelite radio merger is the longest merger in US history, which is saying a lot cause ole duba was handin out mergers left and right to any damn oil companies that pleased. Welcome to the democratic United States of America run by corporations and lobbyists.

Ahem. All our problems, I meant. See, that's why we need literacy education!

Like few here have pointed out, the real problem swings back to how the U.S. educational system seems to be on the decline (or is already near the bottom of the pit).

According to the CIA factbook, literacy is those "age 15 and over" that "can read and write." Apparently, this is 99% of the population.

UNESCO, on the other hand, defines literacy as "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." This seems to speak more to education overall-if the factbook used this definition, I doubt that 99% of the population would be literate.

So, yeah: I think the government needs to adjust their priorities. What we really need to do is find a way to bring more skilled, educated and enthusiastic educators into the grade schools. Increasing funding is only one piece of the puzzle...

The majority of public school funding comes from property taxes. Which is to say, local and state government, not federal. The federal government may not spend that much on this nebulous "literacy education" but $1.5 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to what is spent teaching our kids to read.

It takes a pretty purposeful distortion (or worse, a pretty poor grasp of US public schooling) to even put the DTV campaign and education spending in the same discussion.

Well at least the government has been fiscally responsible other than this... oh wait...

I have to say that was hard to vote. There was a strong force leading me to broadband but all joking aside, of course our government is completely fucked up on this issue. If the U.S. does not do something to beging to better educate the kids of this country in math and science (and that means that we need to read to be able to do those functions) then we are going to rapidly become a dinosaur. We have fallen behind dramatically in the field of invention as our patents are at their lowest levels (ever?). The good news is the typical response to this comments is look at what we have accomplished, America is great. That is true, America HAS BEEN great, we lead the world in industry, invention, care, etc. BUT, the key words are HAS BEEN and we need to start to take this seriously. When places like Singapore are attracting Ivy League professors to run their research and development labs that they are building there is a problem. We created state of the art and now everyone else is taking advantage of it. Not that this is a bad thing, but American's are not use to being second best. We can no longer rest on our laurels and we need to start to think about rebuilding schools in American, not in Ira....hey, who took my soap box... :(

Media companies should be footing the $1.5 billion to inform us on how to tune into their mostly lame but soon to be digital broadcasts... Thank you very much.

Why is this article on Gizmodo? I'm just sayin'...

People seem to be forgetting a rather key point, the Digital TV Transition is sort of a one time thing. It's going to be a major expenditure for a couple of years, at the most... literacy, that's sort of an ongoing thing.

Then you have the fact that buying a digital broadcast setup costs more than it does to pay a College student (majoring in education) to teach a class of 30 adults to read. Hell some of them pay to do that (for credit).

Is the state of education in this country laughable? Yes, yes it is. I'm not going to deny that. But the fact of the mater is that throwing more money at it isn't going to solve the problem. The highschools in my town are basically drug markets, if you built brand new schools, they'd be drug markets in a nice building. Until you address the issue that is the student, no amount of money is going to change anything.

its important to realize that this figure is likely for the federal spending on a particular sector of education, whereas the taxes you pay to your local government will provide the primary funding for the scholastic system. So arguing federal spending on literacy vs. TV is really a moot point because it is not the job of the federal government to provide money for schools.

Since when has the US government ever allocated its budget wisely? Or since when have they done so and told people about it?

What are you talking about, I saw an ad for literacy in last weeks readers digest. It said, to order a literacy package, just write them a letter.

Education begins at home

I believe this is for adult education...

source:
[www.ed.gov]

There are too many kids (17 year olds) who can barely read in my school.

Sorry, HDTV, literacy gets my vote this time around.

The literacy money is probably being spent on illegal aliens and their children. When you look at the money we're spending on things like that the $1.5 Bil on the Digital TV transition pales in comparison.

What?

They're not against literacy. They're just not into analog books.

If the US was truly a capitalist society the government wouldn't give any subsidies to help these giant companies. Instead they would allow good companies to thrive in an open market. While the crappy companies stopped sucking on the teets of the tax payer. Seems like public schools are outside of this jurisdiction and should be shown some love.

Well what affects the most people?

@man_in_gauze: Possibly when some fatass redneck named Bill Clinton ruled this country. He loved McDonalds, and he balanced the damn budget. Let's vote for his wife.

That's the reason why you find people buying tanning beds for cats and dogs.

@dMo:

Absolutly correct; schools don't need money, they need better salaries so they can attract better educated teachers, up to date textbooks, better classroom facilities like science labs, school buildings that aren't falling apart, supplies, computers, etc.

Of course, all of that costs money.

"Throwing money at the problem," is no solution. Of course, neither is refusing to spend money where it IS needed.

Literacy is not something that really falls under the federal governments responsibilities. Education is run by the states and is funded by the states. Sounds to me like the funding sounds just about right.

considering that the constitution specifically bars the federal government from doing anything related to education (10th amendment - all powers not specifically given to the federal government in this document are the job of the states), i don't significantly give a shit that we're spending more on the TV switchover... because we shouldn't have the feds breaking the law by doing either of them.

As far as I know, it's the Feds who pushed for the transition to digital broadcasting SO THEY CAN RESELL THE BANDWIDTH originally occupied by analog channels. The 700MHz spectrum was auctioned for a total of $19B according to FCC. $1.5B for the transition may not be too bad for what it brings in.

Of course, it's still debatable why $1.5B is needed for informing 17 million people, about $90 per person. Maybe that figure includes the rebates for digital-analog converter?

To be fair, the feds are giving money to people to get digital converter boxes because the feds are forcing this change on people. Not that it isn't long overdue, but people tend to complain when other people break their stuff.

But do we need to spend more on literacy? I dunno. All the kids I knew in high school (I graduated two years ago) could read, even if it took them a while and they had to sound out the big words. Was the school underfunded in other areas, like modern textbooks (my history textbook talked about the "possible fall of the Berlin Wall"-- no joke) or science lab equipment? Yeah, undoubtedly. But straight-up literacy wasn't a problem. Though if you ask me, the best thing Congress could do for our schools would be to repeal No Child Left Behind.

You're wrong if you think the government hasn't set its priorities. It has, and the point is to slowly widdle away at the middle class.

They're obviously trying to dumb down the masses - you're fine if you one of the few with money and power, who send their offspring to elite private schools and have the influence over real leaders to ensure that they keep their intellectual advantage.

Sorry had to say it since no other conspiracy nuts have yet.

Most everything I have to say has been said (literacy!=education, selling 700 Mhz spectrum).

Not sure if anyone mentioned the television is by far the most important communication tool of the 20th century and remains so today (though the internet is rapidly displacing it). It is actually more than American Idol.

Illiteracy in the US is just bad parenting. I can't remember school doing much to teach me how to read or spell. My first toys were...surprise-Books! (Huh, wonder if that was punctuated correctly.)

Seriously though, children are illiterate and "hungry" by their parent's choices alone in this country. No one needs to starve in the US, as we have WIC and food stamps. Besides, if a homeless person walks into a grocery store and helps himself to the cheesecake sampler, he's not going to jail; the cop will just drop him off at a shelter.

Same works for illiteracy. Parents need to feed their kids knowledge and it needs to be important to them. If they'd rather spend their money on "grills" and a fake Louis Vuitton handbag than their kids' enrichment, that's their problem.

It is normal that the US spends more on wars and entertainment than on literacy and the health system. Open your eyes! There is a movie that explains why the US do that. The movie is called Zeitgeist. you can get the FREE AND LEGAL torrent or watch it online here: www.zeitgeistmovie.com
Download the movie asap as this post might be deleted soon.