Earlier this month, I visited a hilly corner of North Carolina to spend time with family friends. As we sat around the kitchen table, a former musician whom I shall call Dave revealed that he had recently started an entrepreneurial sideline to supplement his meagre family income. During part of the week, he works in a local pawnshop but he does not lend out cash. Instead, Dave fills out application forms for people who want to buy firearms — but cannot read or write. He only charges a few dollars for this but the service is so popular that it provides a steady income. “Lots of people round here can’t read and write,” Dave told me with a rueful laugh. “But they all want guns. So they pay me to do that — I use their driving licences to get all the details.”

本月早些时候，我去了美国北卡莱罗纳州一个多山的地方探访亲友。就在我们围坐在厨房桌子边时，一位曾经的音乐人（姑且叫他戴夫(Dave)吧）说，为了贴补微薄的家庭收入，他最近开创了一项副业。每周部分时间里，他在当地一家当铺工作，不过并不是在那出借现金，而是帮那些想购买枪支却不能读写的人填写申请表格。他每单只收几美元，不过由于该服务大受欢迎，这项业务为他带来了稳定的收入。戴夫苦笑着对我说：“这里许多人都不会读写。不过他们都想买枪。因此，他们付钱给我让我做这事——我用他们的驾照得到所需的所有具体信息。”

Welcome to an oft-ignored feature of America in 2015 — and I am not just talking about firearms. These days, there is hand-wringing aplenty, particularly on the political left, about income inequality. As a Financial Times series indicated last week, the gap between rich and poor is yawning ever wider as the middle class shrinks.

欢迎您见识2015年美国一个时常被人忽视的特征——我说的并不仅仅是枪支。最近一段时间，人们对收入不平等简直绝望了，尤其是在政治上偏左的人士当中。正如不久前英国《金融时报》一个系列报道所指出的，在中产阶级不断萎缩之际，贫富差距正在越拉越大。

But what is often forgotten is that this income inequality reflects and reinforces other pernicious cultural chasms. Today, millions of Americans are enjoying the bonanza of an information boom, with once unimaginable power at their fingertips or, more specifically, on the buttons of their tablets and smartphones. They are “haves”, in the sense of having access to the 21st-century economy. But there is also an underbelly of “have-nots”, who lack access to this economic and information engine, sometimes for the most basic reason of not being able to read or write.

然而，人们往往忘记的是，这种收入不平等反映并强化了文化上的其他有害鸿沟。如今，数以百万计的美国人正在享受信息爆炸的丰硕成果，他们的指尖——或者更具体地说，他们的平板电脑和智能手机屏幕上的按钮——赋予他们一度无法想象的力量。他们可以触摸到21世纪的经济，从这个意义上说，他们是“拥有者”。然而，整个社会还存在一个由“没有者”构成的薄弱环节，他们无法触摸到这种推动经济发展和信息传播的动力，这有的时候是出于一个最简单的原因——他们没有读写的能力。

Much of the time this underbelly is concealed; at least from people like me, fortunate to live among information-blessed urban elites who take reading skills for granted. But the issue is surprisingly widespread. And it is not just a problem of rural communities or non-white groups — indeed, many of Dave’s North Carolina clients are white.

多数时候，这个薄弱环节是隐藏起来的；至少对于像我这样，生活在享有信息、将阅读能力视为理所当然的城市精英圈子中的幸运儿而言是如此。然而，其实这个问题普遍得惊人。而且，这个问题并不仅仅存在于乡村社区或非白人群体中——事实上，戴夫的许多北卡莱罗纳客户都是白人。

According to a 2013 survey by the US Department of Education and National Institute of Literacy, 14 per cent of the adult population (or 32 million people) cannot read properly, while 21 per cent read below a level required in the fifth grade. And 19 per cent of high-school graduates cannot read. In the north-east, illiteracy is lower; in some southern states, such as Mississippi, it is higher. North Carolina is in the middle. This rate has been remarkably stable in recent decades, and it puts the US in 12th place among major industrialised countries (the UK fares only slightly better).

根据美国教育部(Department of Education)和美国国家识字研究所(National Institute of Literacy) 2013年开展的一项调查，14%的成年人口（也就是3200万人）不怎么识字，21%的人阅读能力低于5年级要求的水平。19%的高中毕业生不识字。美国东北部文盲率较低，而在密西西比州等南部一些州，文盲率则较高。北卡莱罗纳州的文盲率处于中间水平。最近几十年，这一比例一直非常稳定，它令美国在主要发达国家中排第12位（英国的成绩也只是略好一点）。

But what is truly startling — and tragic — is the degree to which “the link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is welded to reading failure”, as a report from the Department of Justice states. Apparently 85 per cent of juvenile delinquents and 70 per cent of the prison population struggles to read. Indeed, the link is so well established that pro-literacy groups claim that some states can predict their need for future prison beds by looking at the literacy rates in schools. And, unsurprisingly, half of adults with poor literacy live in poverty, shut out of most 21st-century jobs. As Juli Willeman, head of the Pi Beta Phi group, which runs literacy campaigns, observes: “Reading proficiency predicts future success.” Or the lack of it.

但正如美国司法部的一份报告所指出，真正令人震惊（且可悲）的是，“学业失败与青少年犯罪、暴力和犯罪之间的关联（很大程度上）要归咎于不识字”。据称，85%的少年犯以及70%的在押犯不怎么识字。事实上，这种关联如此明确，以至于扫盲团体宣称，一些州可以通过观察学校学生的识字率来预测未来监狱所需的床位数。不意外的是，不怎么识字的成年人中，有一半生活窘迫，被21世纪的大部分工作拒之门外。开展扫盲活动的Pi Beta Phi组织负责人朱莉维勒曼(Juli Willeman)指出：“读写流利预示着未来的成功。”不会读写则预示着未来的失败。

The good news is that these statistics are so shocking that they are provoking some policy response. A host of philanthropic ventures, such as Pi Beta Phi, are waging pro-literacy campaigns for adults and children. Most prisons now feature intensive literacy courses, not least because prisoners who can read are far less likely to reoffend. The public education system is also (somewhat belatedly) getting involved. In North Carolina, for example, a “retention” policy was launched three years ago that keeps any third-grade child who cannot read properly in that class until they have mastered the basics. In October, North Carolina education officials revealed that 14 per cent of pupils were “retained” last year.

好消息是，这些统计数据如此令人震惊，以至于激起了一些政策回应。Pi Beta Phi等许多慈善机构正在开展面向成人和儿童的识字活动。如今，大多数监狱都开办了密集的识字课程，主要原因是识字的囚犯重新犯罪的可能性会大大降低。公共教育体系（虽然行动得有些迟）也在参与进来。例如，北卡罗来纳州3年前启动了一项“留级”政策，让所有没有真正掌握识字能力的三年级儿童留级，直至他们掌握基本读写能力。十月，北卡罗莱那州的教育官员透露，去年有14%的学生被要求“留级”。

But while these initiatives are laudable, they remain piecemeal compared with the scale of the problem. The chance of America changing that dismal ratio anytime soon, in other words, looks low; indeed, almost as low as changing the gun culture. So I would bet that my friend Dave will be peddling his services for a long while yet. Call it, if you like, a paradox of America’s modern economy; and a nasty rebuke to anyone who thinks we all live in the innovative, internet age.

虽然这些举措值得称赞，但相对这一问题的普遍程度，这些举措仍不够系统。换句话说，美国能很快改变这种可悲识字率的机会看起来很渺茫；实际上，其可能性与改变枪械文化的可能性一样低。因此，我敢打赌，我朋友戴夫还将在很长时间里继续兜售他的服务。如果喜欢，你可以称之为美国现代经济的一种悖论；或是对任何认为我们都生活在创新互联网时代的人的有力驳斥。