notes on illiteracy, part 1 of many
Posted by nina on May 30, 2010
I am reading Jonathan Kozol’s “Illiterate America.” I have a lot to say about it, but unfortunately I don’t have much time before dinner, so I need to keep this brief.
In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes,” the character Tarzan learns to read from alphabet books and other children’s stories he finds in an abandoned house in the wilds of Africa. His aptitude for language makes for a great story, but not a particularly realistic one. Kozol’s work has opened my eyes to the possibility that a person can remain illiterate even while he is regularly exposed to spoken and written language. In fact, illiteracy prevails in the some of the most populated urban areas, where residents are surrounded by street signs, billboards, graffiti…
We expect literacy out of too many people who don’t have it. We judge people too harshly for being illiterate to any degree. I have been guilty of believing others to be stupid because they can’t read, or lazy because they are uneducated. But now that I understand the forces manipulating literacy in this nation, I can no longer feel anything but sympathy for the illiterate; and anger for those who perpetuate policies of inequity.
words in context « noun is adjective said
[...] Herbert Kohl’s account of his first year as a public-school teacher in Harlem. Like Jonathan Kozol and Sylvia Ashton Warner, Kohl is constantly cited in my textbooks for his revelations on public [...]