Johnny still can’t read
Back in the dark ages of my early career, a few decades ago, I taught “survival skills” language arts (how to read newspaper classified ads, product instructions, job applications) in Ohio’s only maximum security prison. It was a terrible place—think “The Shawshank Redemption”—that opened in the early 1830s; once housed 28 of the Civil War’s Morgan’s Raiders and, 35 years later, writer O. Henry and then Dr. Sam Sheppard in 1954; and was first condemned as uninhabitable in 1902 and again in 1950. In the 1960s it remained open and still accommodated well over 5,000 inmates in an institution originally built for a maximum population of 1,200. It’s long gone now, replaced after a century and a half of “service” by—what else?—a parking lot.
The illiteracy rate at the Ohio Penitentiary in the sixties was around 40 percent, meaning more than 800 incarcerated men could do little more than sign their names. About 25 percent were hard pressed to tell one letter from another. Many were desperate to learn to read. I suspect the situation may be worse today; it’s certainly no better.
An article in the Christian Science Monitor indicates our nation’s literacy statistics today remain disturbingly low: “About 30 million people—14 percent of the U.S. population 16 and older—have trouble with basic reading and writing. ” Let’s hope for all our sakes that we’ll soon see an end to the misbegotten and poorly administered, teach-to-the-test No Child Left Behind initiative of recent years. Congress is now revising “the Workforce Investment Act, which includes a section to help fund adult literacy and basic education programs.”
It wouldn’t hurt to let your representatives and senators know how badly schools all over the country need meaningful reform. I’m going to. JK
JK :: May.18.2009 :: literacy / right to read ::
