A regular Source feature, Undercurrents explores issues, ideas and events as they develop beneath the surface in the Virgin Islands community.
Imagine being handed a sheet of paper covered with the following symbols and being told to “fill it out.”
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Fill it out if you want the job.
Fill it out if you want electric utility service.
Fill it out if you want to see the doctor.
Fill it out if you want to drive a car.
Fill it out if you want to send your child to school to learn to read – though you never did.
Untold numbers of youth and adults in the Virgin Islands, in the United States, and across the world have never learned to read or write. The numbers are untold because no one seems able to make the count – in part, perhaps, because society relies so heavily on literacy to gather statistics, and also because stigma makes self-reporting unreliable.
However, whatever measurements and anecdotal evidence that exist have convinced many educators and advocates that the numbers are high.
One study published in April 2013, conducted jointly by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, found that 32 million adults in the United States could not read; that’s roughly 14 percent of the national population.
And while the total percentage of persons who can’t read may be elusive, experts have been able to count the numbers in targeted populations. For instance, according to the website Do Something.org, more than 60 percent of U.S. inmates are functionally illiterate, as are 85 percent of the juveniles who face trial.
“Literacy – or the lack thereof – is the Achilles heel of the Virgin Islands,” said Eduardo Corneiro, director of adult education for the V.I. Education Department. His responsibilities include coordinating the GED high school equivalency program, and he said the biggest stumbling block GED students face is an inability to read on more than a rudimentary level.
“There are no accurate statistics on literacy,” said Education assistant commissioner Sarah Mahurt, but she believes “there’s a need” for programs aimed at teaching adults and adolescents to read. With the ever increasing role of the Internet in virtually every aspect of life, literacy has become even more important.
“I don’t have actual data,” said Dahlia Adams, principal for adult education in the St. Thomas-St. John district. But from dealing with individuals who have dropped out of the regular public education system, “I know literacy is quite a problem.”
Her counterpart on St. Croix, Patricia Matthews, agreed. The adult education program has many facets; it covers adult basic education, preparation for the GED exam, and English as a Second Language classes, including helping prepare people to become U.S. citizens.
Students come into the program at various levels of readiness. At Level Three, they are almost ready to take the GED test. At Level Two, they can read a little bit. “Level One, they’re non-readers,” Matthews said.
Of course most of us learned our ABC’s at school, in first grade, or kindergarten, or pre-K. There are many reasons a person may miss this first step, among them, early childhood illness, an unrecognized learning disability, parental neglect, childhood trauma and poverty.
Matthews said many adults she meets at Level One had to go to work instead of to school and simply never had the opportunity to learn. Others faced other challenges. They tend to have negative feelings about school; it is a symbol of failure for them.
“So we try to stress the positive instead,” she said. “We focus on future goals” and encourage them to be role models for their own children by proving the importance of education. “We tell them it’s never too late” to learn.
“Some people are ashamed” that they didn’t complete school, Adams said. “It takes a lot of encouragement … you have to build a relationship with that student. You have to get them to a comfort level before you begin any academics.”
Those students who enter Adult Education unable to read very well – or not at all – are at an obvious disadvantage for learning any other subject, including math and science.
With non-readers, teachers have to start with the alphabet, Adams said. If a student is learning disabled, he or she is paired with a reading specialist in a self-contained classroom for intense tutoring just in reading.
Adams said typically it takes about a year, or a little more, to teach a non-reader to read at a rudimentary level, say like a typical first or second grader. But the skill is key to future learning and to future earning.
(Next: Tackling literacy from various angles; programs in the private sector.)
