The Shameful hidden of Illiteracy in America

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The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. - Don Miguel Ruiz

One New Jersey woman, "Maria," read at a third grade level. She held a Job and fudged her way through daily tasks without reading. When she would go to a restaurant, she would order what she knew was on the Menu - a hamburger, salad or grilled chicken - or point to someone else's plate at the next table and ask "for what he's having." Maria even went so far as to keep her illiteracy a incommunicable even from her husband of ten years. Because she could not read the mail, she would pretend that she forgot her glasses at work or say that she had been too busy to open the mail and ask her husband to do it. One day, they were walking past a shop window with a sign in it. As they looked at the display, the husband suddenly realized that his wife could not read. Maria was embarrassed and humiliated. But she sought help and now reads, works on a Computer and teaches others to read.

American Stories

In 2002, before the Subcommittee on instruction Reform Committee on instruction and the Workforce, United States House of Representatives, actor James Earl Jones testified: "92 million Americans have low or very low literacy skills - they cannot read above the 6th grade level. To be illiterate in America - or in any place for that matter - is to be unsafe, uncomfortable and unprotected. For the illiterate, despAir and defeat serve as daily fare. Can any of us who do know how to read absolutely understand the sadness that is associated with the inability to read? Can we truly retell to the silent humiliation, the quiet desperation that can't be expressed, the hundreds of ways that those who cannot read struggle in shame to keep their secret? The struggle out of illiteracy ... Is still a part of the story of America."

How to The Shameful hidden of Illiteracy in America

Today, our nation faces an epidemic that is destructive to our future. The disease is functional illiteracy. Agreeing to the most recent National estimation of Educational progress (Naep), it has overtaken one-third of America's children by the fourth grade - along with two-thirds of African-American students and almost half of all children in the inner cities.

The basic definition of literacy is the capability to read and write. So the basic definition of illiteracy is the inability to read and write.

Beyond the basic definitions, there is significance in the shocking statistics about the functionally illiterate. What illiteracy means is that millions may not be able to understand the directions on a rehabilitation bottle, or be able to read their telephone bill, make precise convert at a store, find and keep a Job, or read to a child.

Illiteracy has long been viewed as a group and educational issue - someone else's problem. However, more recently we have come to understand the economic consequences of the lack of literacy skills for America and American business.

Illiteracy has a requisite impact on the economy. Agreeing to Nation's company magazine, 15 million adults keeping jobs today are functionally illiterate. The American Council of Life insurance reports that three quarters of the Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for their workers. And, a study done by the Northeast Midwest construct and The town for Regional policy found that company losses attribute to basic skill deficiencies run into the hundreds of millions of Dollars because of low productivity, errors and accidents.

In addition, as reported in the 1986 publication entitled making Literacy Programs Work: A Practical Guide for Correctional Educators (for the U.S. Division of Justice, National construct of Corrections), one-half of all adults in federal and state correctional institutions cannot read or write at all. Only about one-third of those in prison have completed high school.

Evidence indicates that the qoute begins at home. A National Governors' association Task Force on Adult Literacy reported that illiteracy is an inter-generational problem, following a parent-child pattern. Poor school achieveMent and dropping out before completing school are lowly among children of illiterate parents.

The reasons for illiteracy are as various as the whole of non-readers. The adult non-reader may have left school early, may have had a corporeal or emotional disability, may have had ineffectual teachers or naturally may have been unready to learn at the time reading instruction began.

Because they are unable to help their children learn, parents who can't read often perpetuate the inter-generational cycle of illiteracy. Without books, newspapers or magazines in the home and a parent who reads to serve as a role model, many children grow up with severe literacy deficiencies. Clearly, there is no singular cause of illiteracy.

Adults have many reasons for requesting reading help. Many are prompted by the need for increased levels of literacy in their jobs. Others may wish to read to a child, read the Bible or write to a house member for the first time. All express a hope for a best capability of life through higher levels of literacy.

According to Barbara Bush, "It suddenly occurred to me that every singular thing I worry about - the breakup of families, drugs, Aids, the homeless - all things would be best if more habitancy could read, write and understand."

Let us all do what we can to make illiteracy not a part of the story of American today but a part of America's past.

The Shameful hidden of Illiteracy in America

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