This weekend there was an article in the local paper about the literacy rate in our county. Based on the 2000 Census, one quarter of the adults here cannot read, or are considered “functionally illiterate.” The secondary headline for the article claims this costs the state of Texas $20 billion a year.
The writer interviewed a 27-year-old high school graduate “who can’t fill out a job application, read a brief news article, or take a driver’s written exam.” He graduated in 1996 from a local high school, which means he was probably 19 at the time.
I did a quick Google search on “functional literacy” and found no definitive explanation of the term. Drawing conclusions from the article and census numbers, the best I can come up with is that anyone who cannot “total a deposit slip, locate a meeting time on a form, [or] identify specific information in a brief news article” is functionally illiterate.
I could do this before I entered the first grade. I was fortunate to have a mother who gave me the gift of reading. One of the first things I’ve always done when moving to a new town is locate the public library. I can learn just about anything on my own by using the library. One thing I can’t learn to do on my own at the library is read.
The ability to read is the basis for all future learning. Yes, you can learn some skills in the monkey-see monkey-do fashion, but you cannot develop those skills for practical use without being literate; 100 years ago you could, but not today. Jobs require more than simple hand work.
Texas adults with reading deficiencies report median weekly earnings of $204 to $219, reports the Texas Adult Literacy Survey. Seventy-five percent of the 21 million U.S. adults on welfare are illiterate and 34 percent of applicants looking for employment lack the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.
As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” Earning potential is directly related to education. Who’da thunk it?
Teachers today have some real issues to deal with. First, they have children in their classrooms who have parents who do nothing, or very little, to prepare or encourage children to learn. Teachers must also deal with administrators who view standardized test scores and graduation rates as the only measures of quality. If a student looks like he has no chance to pass a standardized test, put him in special education so he doesn’t count against your totals. Then they must deal with state education boards which determine the textbooks they must use. Along with all this, they have parents, administrators, and interest groups telling them that the most important thing they can teach is self-esteem.
The “literacy advocates” (I don’t know what else to call them) believe employers should be doing more to help their employees learn to read. Remember that $20 billion I mentioned earlier? I’m sure that was cited in hopes that people would insist the government increase spending on literacy programs. That’s the [il]logic that gets all social programs started, and why none ever go away. $20 billion would line a lot of pockets in the name of non-standard education programs.
No. What we need to do is give teachers in the first, second, and third grade the freedom to teach the three Rs. All the rest of the education system is worth nothing if that isn’t done. Liberate these teachers from requirements to teach self-esteem, gender equity, environmental science, and race relations. Let them teach the core knowledge necessary to get by in this world and learn those other things along the way. The man in the article was placed in special education classes where he was taught “life skills.” I can’t think of a more important life skill than reading, so what were they teaching him?
Computer literacy is an important issue in education these days. Educators are insistent that all students be taught computer skills. I wish they were only this enthusiastic about reading skills which would make the computer skills valuable. But reading education doesn’t merit spending because it doesn’t cost money, it costs effort and time. And, yes, there are some teachers out there who like computers in the classroom because they can use them as baby-sitters to get a break during the day.
Money will not eliminate illiteracy. It takes teachers and parents and students working together to accomplish it. You can take teachers or parents out of the equation, but the student must still take a share of the responsibility. This man didn’t, and has now, at age 27, realized he must. He is now learning along with his daughter. Had he been encouraged by his parents, given a solid foundation of reading in the first three years of school, and built on that himself, he could be teaching his own daughter to read, rather than trying to learn with her.