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.
C. Not knowing that it was for the last time.
Basically, this bit is foreshadowing Daedalus' and Icarus' last moments together.
Yes, there is a meter to this line.
Given that there are 8 syllables in this line, that would mean this is a tetrameter. One meter consists of 2 syllables, so if there are 8 syllables in a line, that would mean there are 4 meters, which in literature is called a tetrameter.
Also, when you take into consideration the unstressed and stressed syllables, you see that here the sequence goes: unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, etc. which are qualities of iamb.
So, this line is written in<u> </u><u>iambic tetrameter. </u><u />
True. this is going to show what the paragraph will be about
Shakespeare perhaps could’ve said “The true question is “To be, or not to be?”
