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.
The connotative meaning of the word “trunk” in the poem is “a container”. In the poem “<em>Verses Upon the Burning of our House</em>” by Anne Bradstreet (1666), the author expresses the traumatic <u>loss of her home and her possessions</u>. After awakening to the tragic event, she goes outside and watches her house and possessions burning down. Once the fire has been put out, she mourns for the physical items destroyed: the <em>trunk </em>and the <em>chest</em>, everything she “<em>counted best</em>”; her “<em>pleasant things</em>”.
"<span>D. The love of his beloved is more valuable than wealth or power" is the best option from the list since this piece is essentially about appreciating the important things in life that are not of the "material" world. </span>
The correct answer to the question that is being stated above would be the phrase 'context clues'. Figuring out the definition by using the words used around 'malleable' is a very great example of using context clues to know what the word means.
