You are correct literacy rates in india is 74%. He is incorrect, but my point is, more literates ought to know where to go when nature calls.
You really think that literacy is a conditioned reflex to public hygiene?
In China spitting isn't just acceptable outside, it is pretty much acceptable on any floor. I've seen it in the classroom, in restaurants, in malls, even in the hospital.
This tradition of spitting (really, they call it a tradition), comes out of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The idea being that phlegm is a manifestation of the illness inside you, so it must come out.
This may have wonderful curative effects for the spitter, but as the spittee it seems like a part of the reason that TB is a common disease here, and that diseases like SARS spread faster than the plague.
As an anthropology major I have tried to be open and understanding of this part of Chinese culture, but I have little patience left for it at this point.
You could read more of this at:
Can “Culture” be a Problem? | Seeing Red in China
You will notice many interesting aspects including an educate (literate, if you will) lady claiming that children's urine is clean and so they can urinate wherever they want!
Take Mao Tse Tung, the Great Helmsman.
He was literate.
He began work on his father's farm, but continued to read voraciously in his spare time.
One of the most influential texts that he read was Cheng Kuan-ying's Sheng-shih Wei-yen (Words of Warning to an Affluent Age), a political tract that lamented the deterioration of Chinese power in East Asia, arguing for technological, economic and political reform, modelling China on the representative democracies of the western world. Mao would later claim that he first developed a "political consciousness" from that booklet.
Another influential book which he read at the time was a translation of Great Heroes of the World, becoming inspired by the American revolutionary George Washington and French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, whose military prowess and nationalistic fervour greatly impressed him.
Mao Zedong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And yet...................
Mao reportedly never bathed, preferring instead to be rubbed down with a hot towel.
On Mao, Snow wrote, "Some people might have considered him coarse and vulgar" He then described how Mao liked to scratch himself and conduct meeting naked when it was hot. He also said Mao occasionally "absent-mindedly turned down the belt in his trousers and searched for some guest"—namely fleas and lice.
In 1972 Mao attended the funeral Marshal Chen Yo in his pajamas. In 1954 he met the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in pair of trousers that had their backside patched up. According to a biography by historian Chen Jin when Mao was asked why didn't wear a different pair of pants he replied, "It doesn't matter. Who will look at my bottom?" Mao had a spittoon at his feet when he met Nixon.
Mao was addicted to sleeping pills, and he rarely bathed or brushed his teeth (he rinsed his mouth with tea after he woke up and chewed on the leaves). "He resisted all attempts to get him to see a dentist," Li wrote. "One aide said 'the chairman's teeth looked as if they were painted with green paint'...Mao's teeth were indeed covered with a heavy greenish film. When I touched the gums, puss oozed out. An infection of that sort usually causes considerable pain. Mao hated doctors and illness so much that he often endured pain in silence." [Source: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Dr. Li Zhisui, excerpts reprinted U.S. News and World Report, October 10, 1994]
Li treated Mao for insomnia, dizziness, itchiness, and occasionally anxiety attacks. Wherever he went he had an aide next to him in case he lost his balance. Sometimes he would stay in bed for months, rising only to make an occasional speech. [Source: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Dr. Li Zhisui, excerpts reprinted U.S. News and World Report, October 10, 1994]
MAO'S PRIVATE LIFE - China | Facts and Details
Therefore, I would find it difficult to subscribe to the idea that literacy equates with civic sense (in the western manner of speaking).
