Illiteracy doesn’t mean stupidity
The English language is hard, one of the most difficult to learn. There are a lot of rules, and words like “though,” “through,” and “thought” are all spelled similarly but pronounced differently.
Someone could say “I read that you like to read,” and it would be grammatically correct because “read” is pronounced in two different ways. The letter “A” can make three different sounds, and that’s just the first letter of 26.
Twenty-six little letters can come together to make tens of thousands of words. According to the Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English dictionary, there are 171,476 words in the English language.
So far.
With new words like “selfie” being created every year, that number is still increasing. I definitely don’t know 171,476 words, but I know how to read. I can use context to figure out what unknown words mean, and I love opening a new book and getting lost in the story.
But what about someone who is illiterate?
When I was younger, all I wanted to do was learn how to read. I would refuse to go to bed until I was read a bedtime story. In preschool, my teacher started teaching me how to read because I was so eager.
The summer before I started kindergarten, I read my first book on my own. It was “Green Eggs and Ham”, and I was 4-years-old.
Last year, I started classes at Florida Gulf Coast University. I met a guy who would eventually become my boyfriend. Recently, I learned that he doesn’t like reading. I was so upset that I took him to the public library and practically forced him to check one out.
He chose a horror novel and I was annoyed because he didn’t listen to my suggestions. He finished reading the book about a month later and he said he didn’t like it and that he should have listened to me.
In hindsight, I was really rude about it. Eventually, I asked him why he didn’t like reading instead of trying to force him to love books like me.
“English was my second language, and when I started school in America as a 5-year-old, I didn’t speak it well,” he said. “I couldn’t read because everything was in English. It was embarrassing and really hard, so when I wasn’t forced to read for a grade, I stopped reading.”
I thought about this more and more, and realized that he wasn’t the only one to feel that way.
One of my favorite movies is “The Blind Side”, and the main character was illiterate until one of his teachers took it upon herself to work with him and teach him.
After more research, I learned that illiteracy in America isn’t as rare as I thought.
Right now, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, there are 32 million adults in the United States who can’t read English, which is 14 percent of the country’s population.
I was shocked and embarrassed. I was so consumed by my fascination with books that I wasn’t even thinking about the people who were unable to read. In an attempt to learn more about American illiteracy, I decided to attend an adult literacy course at the Literacy Council Gulf Coast.
I called the not for profit organization, a woman with a heavy Spanish accent spoke with me. When I asked if I could observe one of their classes, she was ecstatic and gave me all the information I needed.
I was nervous to attend the class because I didn’t want to appear as conceited as I felt. I didn’t want the people there to think I was just there to show off my reading abilities.
The next morning, I woke up early and headed to Bonita Springs to attend a two-hour class. Once I got there, I learned that it wasn’t a class for adults that never learned how to read, it was for ESL, which means English as a Second Language.
The program helps prepare immigrants for the GED and U.S. Citizenship tests. The classroom was small, with white plastic chairs and foldable tables. There were a lot of books on the bookshelf and upon closer inspection, a lot were in Spanish. The majority of the people in attendance were Hispanic, which makes sense because of how many Hispanic immigrants come to Florida.
I was surprised by the number of people there. It wasn’t a big class like at FGCU, but it was enough people to emphasis how large the illiteracy rate truly is. I was instantly impressed by the 14 in attendance because of their willingness to learn a new language, one of the hardest languages, just to become a citizen.
As someone who took seven years of Spanish in grade school, I was able to follow along with the teacher. The class covered all the basics, like the alphabet and numbers. They used the “Side by Side” method, where they take basic English phrases by the Spanish equivalent for translation purposes. I was expecting a literacy course, but it seemed like I’d stumbled into an English class.
The teacher also used “English in Action,” a method of teaching English where each student is paired with a volunteer tutor to learn conversational English. I didn’t receive a tutor, so I just observed everyone else.
With the language barrier, I wasn’t able to hold a conversation with any of the students, but a couple of the tutors talked to me after.
“I was a teacher before I retired,” one of the volunteers, Kathy Anderson, said. “I do this because I love teaching as much as the people here love learning.”
Anderson spoke with me about the other programs offered at LCGC, including one for those with dyslexia. She said that they use a lot of different methods, including the Barton Reading and Spelling system.
“We help over 3,000 adult students every year,” she said proudly.
Even though the students’ ages ranged from 20’s to 50's, everyone was eager to learn. They all took notes and everyone participated. Even with the language barrier, they made an effort to make sure I was included.
When I began looking into illiteracy with the belief that people who didn’t know how to read didn’t want to know, that they didn’t try when they were younger. Now I know that a lot of the people in America who are illiterate are only considered illiterate because English is not their first language. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy reading or that they don’t want to.
I was wrong about illiteracy. I thought people who were illiterate just didn’t care, but the students at LCGC showed me the truth.
