Illiteracy in the United States

This is an essay exposing illiteracy as a weapon on a much larger scale than most people realize. This essay drives the facts home to prove that the writers here on Writers' Cafe` are truly blessed and highly favored.

     As a writer, student, teacher, or anyone in the business world, one can imagine how horrible one's life would become if he or she were to suddenly meet illiteracy, a terminal virus that directly attacks abilities in all aspects. Consider, though, that the bigger one is, the harder one falls; simulate, in your mind, the development of illiteracy as it grows into a global epidemic obviously affecting many more people than just one. The United States, not to mention the world, is stricken with this very illness, and this nation must quickly be about the business of curing itself, as it is the cause of many major problems. Illiteracy is a problem of colossal proportions and must be solved.
     The entire nation would benefit from the eradication of illiteracy in many ways, particularly the job market. Potentially, the chance of national success increases with each birth, because looking at that situation from the perspective of a heartless liberal or employer (the leaders of the wonderful country in which we live) allows one to simply view every new-born as a new, future worker. “Our success really depends, however, on the quality of education those new workers have received,” (The Importance of Investing in Literacy).  Good, early education for America’s preschooler would serve as a vaccination to preempt illiteracy’s viral spread throughout that generation of U.S. citizens; the loss of that generation to illiteracy, however, would be the equivalent of an organ failure within the national body. A nation lives and dies as one; view the United States of America as one person. A virus as lethal as illiteracy cannot only affect one area of the body; it has a mind of its own and is driven to spread. As it adapts to one area, it must soon multiply and, therefore, needs more room. Illiteracy is a cancerous terrorist that has finally departed from the brain of this magnificent body, the White House. Illiteracy has become an “Achilles heel” to America; this terrorist greatly exceeds those in the “war on terror.” This tragic flaw caused the brain to prioritize incorrectly by putting a large threat (someone else’s war) higher on the list than a larger threat (illiteracy) and making the body overstep its boundaries. “Illiteracy has been proven to cause children to drop out of school. Dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues,” (“Illiteracy: The Downfall of American Society”). It is far more damaging to our own body than the war that should not have involved us, yet we are losing money to illiteracy that we need to replace what we lose in war. If any mass of Americans is infected, the body will be unable to perform anywhere near its best.
     The National Institute for Literacy (NIL) has concluded that this cancer has already spread like wildfire, yet, like moths to a flame, we seem to subconsciously gravitate to it as a whole. “Over 90 million US adults, nearly one out of two, are functionally illiterate or near illiterate, without the minimum skills required in a modern society,” (Illiteracy on the Rise in America). This report is proof that the government has acknowledged the threat; therefore, the U.S. is mentally aware of its illness. Again the job market, a vital organ, suffers from the painfully lethal affects of illiteracy, because, according to an NIL report, a very large percentage of U.S. citizens are illiterate and, consequently, unable to fill out a simple job application. Then, there is a larger percentile that has no reading comprehension skills beyond the eighth grade level. As time passes, the damage illiteracy inflicts on a normal basis grows exponentially.
     In some cases, though, it is necessary to understand what caused a problem in order to solve it. Often times someone who is a native-born American (not a Native American) can be illiterate if he or she dropped out of high school or if he or she is the child of a “parent who can’t read well,” (Tonawanda News). This brings us back to the reason for early education. If the education is adequate at school AND at home, then America’s preschooler will prove rather illusive for the overly persistent epidemic. “The cost in terms of lost human potential is devastating,” (Newsweek). Forty-four million adults are incapable of performing the simplest exhibits of literacy, such as, reading traffic signs or newspapers, using an election ballot, fully or even slightly comprehending a bus schedule, et cetera. Another fifty million Americans cannot read beyond the eighth grade level, which means that nearly half of the United States’ citizens are functionally illiterate. That is the equivalent of the brain only being able to communicate with half the body; the illiterate half of the United States population did not vote in the 2008 election due to its lack of understanding. In spite of this, there are other United States citizens that do not care, which means there is a whole part of the body that does not sympathize with another struggling part of the body. In a cruel world such as this, nobody can afford to have inner conflict.
     Illiteracy is a problem, but to every problem there is a solution. In fact, mathematics teaches us that there are often multiple solutions to a single problem. The first step America must take is recognizing its condition, acknowledging its illness. The United States, often thought of as a nation of rare elegance and beauty, has lost its glamour in this twenty-first century. The body still has its radiant appearance that is often fawned over by its own masses, but, in reality, it is a glorious edifice that is rapidly crumbling inside. At this rate, the downfall of our country in relation to literacy is imminent. This cancer is merely the straw that sought to cripple the prized camel’s back and was encouraged by its own success up to this point.
     The body has met with a smart, stealthy illness that continues to operate in symbiosis with the body and, therefore, mask its true level of urgency. In this illness, the only obvious goal is that we seek wellness. The body never truly sees the depths of its own illness until it has relieved itself of the illness, so the body must quickly search for a cure. The United States must find a solution to rid itself of illiteracy in order to optimize its own proficiency. America found itself stricken with a cancerous illness and now seeks the relief of restored wellness taking this dying nation from a state of illiteracy to a state of jubilant “well-iteracy.”

Reviews

[Danielle Searby]

I agree with you. I read a beautiful book many years ago by Schlink titled The reader. It's basic premise being that illiteracy was a cage and it undermined the true talents of those who were afflicted with it. Years ago I tutored a young lady who was unable to read. I tried all sorts of ways to encourage her but I think the desire to read, to understand, to have the ability to partake possibly mankind's most beautiful creation- language, had already been extinguished. She had replaced it with contempt, with text message writing for essays, with teenage angst and a stiff upper lip. I will always wonder how she could live without language.

It is only when every person has the right to be educated to their highest ability regardless of class, race, gender or creed that this will be solved.

[hvysmker]

A well thought out and intelligent article, Cedric, also well written.

I think illiteracy is caused by birth, we're born that way. Blame it on nature. Like you say, lack of education keeps many of us in that category. Not only lack of education, but lack of reading skills.

I'm an old man, and not up on modern teaching methods. It's been a long time since I went to school. Let me tell you about my experience as a kid, in a small town in Ohio. Of course, the process has changed since, and my town might not have been a prime example, even in that day and age.

Grade school was the same for everyone. As was Junior High. When we reached the ninth grade, school officials met with parents to determine a curriculum for each student. I was too young to understand the process but was told later by my mother. I can only assume that records were kept of our prior conduct and hope testing was done before that meeting with parents. These were the choices:

College Prep. A definite minority in the '50s at our school. This choice depended on family wealth and determination. My family was poor and we'd never had a member go to college, so it was out of the question. There were few alternatives to family backing, and few of my contemporaries in that school chose that curriculum.

Business. That curriculum depended on intelligence, and covered both boys and girls. It was the one my mother chose for me. Some of the courses were: typing, bookkeeping, business math, and other courses that prepared us for clerking, secretarial, and other low-level office jobs.

Next, boys and girls were separated, though there were a few, very few, exceptions. It was for those with the lowest levels of perceived intelligence.

Girls were relegated to a Home Economics curriculum and taught cooking, sewing, and other courses to prepare them for domestic jobs such as housewives or domestics. That also covered many factory jobs, such as working on factory sewing machines.

The boys spent their time working on Shop courses, taking old cars apart and putting them together, as well as wood and metal working.

Since leaving high school, I've worked at a lot of jobs where a lack of higher mathematics have held me back. Computer programming, for instance. I did take various trade school courses and even get one of those low-level associate degrees. I've found that trying to learn math as an adult is a lot harder than at a young age, when your mind is more nimble and better at accepting new concepts.

I digress. What I'm getting at is that if we took anything less than the college courses, reading and any other intelligence developing skills were less than secondary.

Shop students had one English class, while us Business students got two. Subjects like Creative Writing and foreign languages were reserved for the College Prep students only. It was the same with science subjects. I had to fight to get a Biology class, since a store clerk or bookkeeper had no need for that knowledge.

If my school is indicative of the times, my generation didn't grow up to think. When I finally, at the age of fifty, attended a community college, one of the first things I noticed was how classes were dumbed-down. For example, I took a few accounting courses. It wasn't until near the end of the second semester that the teaching got to the level of my high school courses.

During one course, the instructor kept harping on how we absolutely had to learn a certain concept. He told us that it was instrumental to have that knowledge before going to the next stage of instruction. We finally got to the testing phase. Only three of us passed, out of maybe twenty students.

What do you think he did? Well, he simply added twenty points to every test score, and went on to the next stage.

The above example was indicative of how the school was run. Everybody had to pass, the instruction lowered to the standard of the worst student in any class. The aim of the school was to make money, not educate. School had to be "fun."

Being a mean old man that wanted to actually learn something for my money, that attitude annoyed me to no end. I've got my degree, but put little or no value to it.

Literacy appears to be a weak point in education, at least in this country, even though it's the foundation of the entire educational system.

Your vocabulary is instrumental in your thinking process. It determines the depth of your thinking. While a person with little understanding of a language will look at a dog and think, "I see a dog," another will think "I see an African Bluggie, which is a breed from Lalaland, developed in the 1400's to dig truffles," or something like that. Hey! it's only an example. I don't know s**t about doggies.

In other words, your understanding of a language determines your depth of thought. Not everyone has capability of deep thinking, but the process can be taught. What an individual does with that skill is up to them, but they should have a chance to find out. That, in my opinion, can best be done at school, and at an early age. If stressed in grade school, it would cut down the huge dropout rate.

I thing that multiple choice and "yes" or "no" tests should be replaced with essays and other types that require a student to think and do research. Although admittedly not an expert, I think ways could be found to make research enjoyable. I certainly enjoy it when writing a story, sometimes never getting around to the story itself.

A semi-famous battle was fought in my home town during the war of 1812. In researching that that battle, I became so interested and involved with the era that I've never gotten around to the story. I want to do the story from the viewpoint of a carpenter that lives in the town and works on improving the fort. To make it realistic, I have to learn everything I can about how he lived.

I learned to type on a beat up manual typewriter, electric ones hadn't been invented. My bookkeeping classroom had one mechanical calculator. One day I helped move it across the room, and it weighed more than I did. That meant either waiting in a long line to do our calculations or learning to do them in our heads. Most of us used our heads, in order to get good grades; yet another example of being forced to think. At that time, few people could type. Now, I have a ten-year-old niece that can type as well as I can; an example of how the computer has changed society.

In other ways, electronics have dumbed us down. Where, in the past, people read books for recreation, they now play electronic games -- which require little thinking. Us writers, though, have learned the powers of research, made easier by computers.

A funny memory comes to mind. This missive is getting long, but I have to tell you.

When the Internet first hit my small town, my father didn't understand it. I was living with him at the time. He was about ninety-years-old at that time and we figured someone should. Being single, that task fell to me.

Anyway, I told him such things as how I had a friend in France that I talked to regularly. Also about doing research at a university in Australia. That was in the era of the dial-up connection.

I didn't give those idle statements a thought. That is, until one day when he exploded. "Oh, my God," he cried out, "when are those phone bills coming due? I'll lose my car, my house. How can you do this to me?"

Apparently, all that time he'd been worrying about long-distance calls, not understanding the concept of the Internet. Knowing my father, I can imagine him not being able to sleep, expecting phone bills from Australia to come to his mailbox.

I better quit. I'm already well into page three.

Charlie -- hvysmker