3. Why We Do Not See the Extent of the Problem Why the Size of the Problem Is Unrecognized Many readers may have difficulty believing the extent of the problem of illiteracy. Although these readers may not be able directly to dispute the figures, they can quote the clichés, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics" and "Figures don't lie, but liars figure." More charitably they may simply say, "You can prove almost anything if you quote only part of the figures and quote them in a certain way. There is probably some sort of trick to the figures." There is one "trick" to the figures, if you can call it that: the figures refer to functional illiteracy. If, however, people read so poorly that they cannot get by in life as well as they should, their reading ability is of little value. Besides this explanation of functional literacy, there are six more major reasons why the extent of illiteracy is not widely known. The Hidden Illiterates Among Us Today there are many who pass as literate, although they aren't. These people are known as "passers." We might be surprised, for example, at how many businessmen and others carry a newspaper only to make people believe they can read. Illiterates seldom look any different. Also, you can't identify an illiterate person by talking with one. Many illiterates are knowledgeable and eloquent speakers. They just didn't gain their knowledge or eloquence through reading. Passers are significantly helped by real estate zoning laws which essentially keep lower income illiterates separated from higher paid literate workers and by the natural economic and cultural separation that occurs in any group of people. Those who can read are more likely to be close associates with others who can read and vice versa. Passing can even occur within closely knit families. Many parents can conceal their inability to read from their children, especially if their spouse can read and will cover for them. Spouses often help their non-reading mates with reading tasks necessary for employment, beginning with the employment application form. If something occurs in the workplace which threatens to expose them as non-readers, they often simply disappear. They dread the embarrassment of being "found out." Anyone who doubts these conclusions should read Tom Harkin's 1998 book, The Millionaire's Secret (he could not read until many years after becoming a millionaire) or John Corcoran's book, The Teacher Who Couldn't Read. Mr. Corcoran graduated from Texas Western College in 1961 with a degree in education. He admits that he cheated on tests in college — although he states in his book, "I am not advocating cheating." He had gotten into college without taking entrance exams because he had an athletic scholarship. Amazingly, he became a teacher of tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades in California, where he taught for eighteen years, without being able to read! He taught social studies, typing, history, physical education, and one year he even taught English. Although his wife thought for twenty-five years that he could read, even if he couldn't read well, she didn't know that he could hardly read at all until she overheard him trying to read a simple child's story to their three-year-old. It was not until then that she came to understand the emotional pain he had been living with all those years. He suffered emotional pain caused by feeling there was something wrong with him which prevented him from learning, by having to develop so many coping methods to hide his illiteracy, and by feeling alienated from his associates who could read. Mr. Corcoran told of how all through grade school and high school his teachers never once heard him read or spell a word correctly, and yet they continued to call on him to read and spell as if they hadn't noticed. Throughout his public school years, not one teacher ever offered the one-on-one help that he so desperately needed, perhaps out of fear that, like so many of his previous teachers, they would be unable to help him, or because they were busy with other tasks. He explained that the U.S. is in denial — the public in general and teachers in particular are too embarrassed to admit the scope of our illiteracy problem. Mr. Corcoran said that, to hide his embarrassment over being unable to read, he became the class clown "having too much fun to waste time on learning to read." He said that other nonreaders he knew were just as disruptive. As testimonial letters for i.t.a. (initial teaching alphabet) in Sir James Pitman's book, Alphabets and Reading, point out, the frustration of feeling stupid or inferior usually results in discipline problems. Students would rather be considered a tough troublemaker not interested in reading than be seen as trying and failing to learn. Mr. Corcoran explained that being unable to read causes very low self- esteem, and the only way to build up the nonreaders' self-esteem is to teach them to read! As he stated it, "A crying child begs, 'Tell them not to hurt us anymore — teach us to read!' " Mr. Corcoran said he feels strongly that every American who can read — in particular, every teacher — has a moral obligation to help their fellow citizens learn to read. When Mr. Corcoran was forty-eight years old he finally decided to try, once more, to learn to read. It took a little over one year of one-on-one tutoring to bring him to the equivalent of an eighth grade education. He then went through four years of self study and then another hundred hours of intensive training to bring him to a college level of skill. The Grade-Level Completion Deception Many people assume that if someone has completed high school, or even grade school, they must have learned to read and learned other things they were taught. Teachers and education experts know that this is not always true. Having sat it out for twelve years of schooling does not guarantee that students learn even a small portion of what they are exposed to. A January 9, 1998 report in The Salt Lake Tribune verifies this: Grammar and spelling problems top the list of complaints that employers and college professors have about recent high school graduates.
Next on the gripe list, according to a poll released Thursday by Public Agenda, is the grads' inability to write clearly. . . . Seventy-six percent of professors and 63 percent of employers say a diploma is no guarantee a student has learned the basics. . . .
Said Deborah Wadsworth of Public Agenda: ". . . If parents, teachers, and students don't grasp what the outside world expects of them, we are witnessing a communications gap of enormous and potentially devastating consequences."
Percent of employers and professors who rated recent high school graduates as 'poor' or 'fair' on the following: Grammar and spelling: Employers 77%, Professors 77%
Ability to write clearly: Employers 73%, Professors 81%
Basic math skills: Employers 62%, Professors 65%
Speaking English well: Employers 50%, Professors 45%
(Gannett News Service, "New High School Grads Can't Write, Say Profs," The Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 1998, p. A12, col. 1-2.)
The Silent Minority Illiterates are a silent minority. They do not write to their legislators. They can't. Out of embarrassment they do not lobby in their behalf. They don't want to be known as a part of the illiterate minority. Community and cultural leaders of groups with large proportions of non-readers do not like to call attention to these members' illiteracy. They fear this will give their "enemies" (racists, the "elitist" wealthy, or other class-conscious persons) ammunition to use against them. Since they are silent, they (like the reading majority) do not realize that millions of others are in the same condition. If they knew, they might be less embarrassed to stand up for what is best for them. Self-Esteem Teaching in Public Schools Perhaps the most successful teaching imparted to present-day students concerns self-esteem. Despite the true performance, U.S. adults and children tend to overestimate their scholastic abilities. The 1993 U.S. Department of Education Adult Literacy in America report stated that among the forty to forty-four million adults with the most limited skills, roughly fourteen million admitted they could not read or write well, and only about six million admitted to needing help with any tasks requiring literacy. In short, they felt good about what is actually very poor performance. (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf) An earlier report by the U.S. Department of Education quoted students who were asked to rate their abilities in math and science; 68 percent said they were "good at math." (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, International Assessment of Educational Progress, A World of Differences, 1989) These were students who had just ranked near the bottom in international scholastic testing in science and math. The U.S. Census Reports Many believe that the U.S. is a highly literate society because of the official U.S. Census Bureau reports. The 1970 and 1980 census reports showed America to be 99 percent and 99.5 percent literate, respectively. In the interest of national pride, our governmental leaders like to present us as highly literate. Also, it is in the short-term interest of teachers and education officials to believe and promote belief in these figures. Conscious deception may not be taking place, but let's look at exactly how the Census Bureau obtained these figures. The Census Bureau included questions about literacy in each census from 1840 to 1930. Many of those most knowledgeable about U.S. literacy believe that literacy began to drop in 1963 and has been declining ever since. The Census Bureau reintroduced questions about literacy in 1970 at the insistence of the military. In the 1970 census the only question asked about literacy was on grade completion. The Census Bureau considered those with fifth-grade completion or higher to be literate. A little more than 5 percent reported less than a fifth-grade education. For some reason, the Census Bureau decided that 80 percent of these could read, so they reported 99 percent literacy. In 1980 the Census Bureau mailed out forms and based most of their calculations upon written responses to questions about grade completion. In addition they used a small sample of home visits and telephone interviews. They asked people what grade they had completed. If the answer was "Less than fifth grade," they asked if the person could read and write. They then added the unsubstantiated answer to their record as a fact. This technique of determining literacy is quite certain to underestimate illiteracy for the following reasons: 1. Illiterates would not respond to written forms, and their family members — likely also to be illiterate — would not either. 2. Because of unemployment or low-paying jobs, fewer illiterates have telephones. 3. The underprivileged poor, and especially illiterates, may feel they are being singled out like criminals. They therefore have cause to distrust salespersons, bill collectors, or strangers knocking on their door seeking information — especially if the answers to the questions would be embarrassing. Home visits by Census Bureau officials who are not known by the person answering the door cannot be expected to yield accurate information under such circumstances. 4. Grade-level completion does not equal grade-level competence in many cases. 5. Those who have no permanent address, no phone number, no post office box, or no regular job — a condition shared by almost six million people, most of whom are functionally illiterate — often are not counted. They can't be found by the Census Bureau in time for the census. (Jonathan Kozol, Illiterate America, 1985, pp. 37-39) Sensory Overload Finally, this is an age in which we see one kind of crisis or another on TV nearly every day. As a result, we have a tendency to suffer from sensory overload. We learn to ignore or disbelieve much of the bad news because the world goes on with little visible effect. Also, far too often a radio or TV report we hear will dispute the seriousness or the truth of the previous day's report. However, the extreme seriousness of our illiteracy problem should prevent us from letting other crises dull our senses to this one. We can't afford to ignore the facts. We need to ask ourselves, "Can we, as a nation, keep ignoring a problem affecting our competitiveness in world markets and the health and well-being of over one-third of our people?" For comments, go to the bottom of the home page. | 