I am reading Jonathan Kozol’s “Illiterate America.” Needless to say, it is terrifying.
My used-bookstore edition of the book was published in 1985, so many of its statistics are sure to be out of date. But like many of the older education critiques I’ve seen, Kozol’s observations seem frighteningly familiar, and his concerns of 25 years ago are still prevalent today. In other words, they have been addressed unsuccessfully — or not at all. (More on that in a moment.)
According to a Salt Lake Tribune article, students’ ability to read by the end of third grade is a significant indicator of future success. That’s because the first several years of elementary school are spent learning to read, while success from fourth grade on requires reading to learn. We know this already.
Yet nationally, two-thirds of students are still struggling when they enter fourth grade. From then on, we can only expect the achievement gap to widen. The Tribune’s article cites the usual recommendations: improve early health and education, encourage family involvement, reduce absence rates, make schools perform better. My guess is that Kozol would shoot down most of these suggestions, arguing that the parents whose children would benefit the most from those suggestions are the same parents who will never know what resources are available because they are not functionally literate.
In keeping with Kozol’s 1985 calculation that about one-third of Americans are functionally illiterate, the U.S. Department of Education sets the national literacy rate between 65% and 85%, depending on where one sets the cutoff. Reading Seed’s figure of 80% literacy roughly fits this estimation as well. Of course, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that literacy rates are at 99%, based on the levels of literacy people report on their (written) census forms. (Pause for critical reflection.) Yep.
My other recent experience relating to unaddressed (read: festering) problems related to education was delivered in the form of a sitcom that first appeared in 1969. In preparation for convalescing from wisdom tooth extraction, I went to the library to borrow DVDs representing a variety of genres. Perhaps this strategy could be likened to facilitating channel-surfing without cable.
One of my selections was the first season of “Room 222,” a dramedy about an L.A. high school dealing with the typical issues: students, teachers, administrators, parents… Of the 7 or 8 episodes I watched, my favorite segment centered on a walkout staged by teachers in response to a failing school bond proposal. During the staff meeting preceding the strike, one teacher tries to drum up support among the others by challenging them to imagine what would happen if remedial reading programs were cut. Given the recent cuts to art, music and science programs, it’s not too hard to imagine anymore.
