Archive for Adult Literacy

In a decrepit classroom in the northern Iraqi city of Hawija, men in their 20s and 30s sit chanting the Arabic alphabet. Dressed in green military camouflage uniforms, they are part of the Awakening movement—Sunni tribesmen, some of them former insurgents, who now work alongside U.S. forces to secure their neighborhoods.

This literacy project is part of a pilot program set up by the U.S. military and designed to provide basic literacy skills to some 500 of these young men. It is run by local Iraqis, and classes began in mid-June. Read more of this story or listen to it on NPR's website.

After three degrees, after five universities, after 40,000 pupils, and after 84 years, 10 months and 25 days, John Kuhlman has circumnavigated his way back to the essentials of education: a teacher and a student in a room.

Decades ago, he was a student, the 6-year-old son of a wheat farmer in eastern Washington, going to a school that fit all 12 grades under a single roof. Now, Kuhlman is the teacher, sovereign of a single room in the inconspicuous brick headquarters of an adult English-literacy program here in Asheville, North Carolina. The adult seated just inches from Kuhlman, Raul Funes, had come after working an overnight shift doing maintenance at an inn and then attending a morning class at a local technical college.

No pedagogical technique explains why Kuhlman sat so close to Funes, or why he peered so insistently into his student’s face. Forty years ago, while he was a charismatic professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kuhlman had begun inexplicably to lose his hearing. Disability enabled ability, or at least affinity. For the last four years, Kuhlman has been teaching immigrants to read and write English, to listen and speak. In 90-minute individual lessons, Kuhlman currently tutors 17 students in a week, from Mexico, Thailand, Ecuador, China, El Salvador and Ukraine. Read his story in The New York Times online.

The National Institute for Literacy is holding a Discussion on Reading and Adult English Language Learners from May 12-16. The institute has assembled practitioners who will explore strategies for assisting adult English language learners (or second language learners in general) with increasing their reading proficiency. Join guests Heide Spruck Wrigley, a senior researcher with the New Mexico-based Literacywork International, and a cadre of Texas practitioners who will share information, challenges, and outcomes of a professional development and classroom project called ESL Reading Institute. To learn more about this week’s topic and to be a part of the discussion, visit the institute’s website.

Louie Singleton stood in shock as a crowd of more than 350 people gave him a standing ovation. Singleton, who wore a work shirt bearing his first name, isn’t a politician. And he’s not a celebrity or a religious leader. Singleton, of Odenville, Alabama, was being applauded at the West Alabama Literacy Summit Thursday, March 27, 2008, for an achievement that, while seemingly humble, changed his life. At 54, Singleton had learned to read.

Twenty-five percent of Alabamians are considered functionally illiterate, meaning they lack even the ability to read a street sign or instructions on a medicine bottle. In West Alabama, the percentage ranges from 23% in Tuscaloosa County to a shocking 51% in Greene County. To help fight the daunting percentages, local organizations met with government and business leaders as part of the Literacy Summit, sponsored by organizations including the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and the Tuscaloosa Rotary Club. The overall goal is to create a coordinating council to bring together various groups with literacy efforts. Read more in The Tuscaloosa News online.

Clara Moyo, 50, has 11 children and three grandchildren. She went back to school a few years ago, and is now in grade 10 at the same secondary school as her first-born son who is in grade 12 in Lusaka, Zambia. “I had big problems—I couldn’t speak English [Zambia’s official language]. Education is power, education is very important. Without education you can’t be recognized in the community, without education it is as if you are dead,” Moyo told IRIN.

Zambia’s illiterate adults will continue to be excluded from the benefits of a growing economy unless government steps in, civil society groups have warned. “In all places where people were illiterate, poverty was rife. Illiteracy certainly excludes people from the process of production, and denies them the opportunity to participate in social programs that are meant to improve their livelihoods,” said Margaret Machila, lead researcher of a study, The Extent of Adult Literacy in Zambia, funded by South Africa’s Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and released this week. Read more in IRIN News online.

While more Canadians than ever before are furthering their education, literacy rates among adults are falling. A recent report from Statistics Canada used data from University of British Columbia economics professors between 1993 and 2003. While education levels were rising throughout those years, they found literacy rates were falling. In fact, the average literacy of a 35-year-old in 2003 was the equivalent to the literacy of a 25-year-old in that same year.

According to W. Craig Riddell, a co-author of the paper, the biggest changes in literacy skills are defined by those who are at the very top of the spectrum and at the very bottom. At the bottom of the spectrum, the changes are positive—more people who had lower literacy skills in 1993, had higher literacy skills in 2003. However, those at the top spectrum of literacy skills went down substantially in the 10-year span. Read more about the report in The Brock Press online.

Adult illiteracy is a headache for much of the developed world, as anyone strolling into a conference hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris last week would have quickly picked up. It was the first time countries had gathered to discuss and trade “good practice” in this field, said Tom Schuller, head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (Ceri) at the OECD. There is extensive agreement about the economic and social damage adult illiteracy causes, and about the link between crime and illiteracy. Concern about immigrants’ basic skills has been revived since the European Union’s enlargement led to more migration. Read more in Education Guardian online.

Before Bob Jansen can teach English to the adult immigrants in his lowest-level class, he has to show about a quarter of them how to hold a pencil. Adult education teachers like Jansen are finding themselves starting from scratch as uneducated immigrants and refugees from conflict regions of Africa and rural areas of Mexico and Central America flock to the United States.

An estimated 400,000 legal and 350,000 illegal immigrants are unable to read or write even in their native language, according to a July 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington think tank. “It takes a lot of patience to teach this class,” said Jansen, an instructor at the Don Bosco Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Read this article by The Associated Press.

Approximately one in five adults living in Toledo, Ohio, is functionally illiterate, a condition that dramatically affects not only their lives and those of their children, but also the economic well-being of our community. The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that an estimated 30 million adults in the United States read at what is termed a “below-basic” level. Most are native-born citizens who for one reason or another typically read at or below the fifth-grade level. The study also found that 11 million residents, many of them immigrants, are nonliterate in English.

As the digital revolution advances, being unable to read will result in increasingly serious consequences, as a high level of literacy is required to take advantage of the Internet and computers. Read more of this commentary by Jim Funk, executive director of Read For Literacy, Toledo’s volunteer adult basic literacy agency in The Toledo Blade.

India’s President Pratibha Devisingh Patil said women’s literacy and education should be treated as a “priority,” at the International Literacy Day Celebration in the capital on Septermber 8. “India is home to the world’s largest number of illiterates and this is a matter of great concern. India accounts for 20% of the world’s out–of–school children and 35% of adult illiterates. When such a large number of the population remains outside the pale of literacy and education, it makes the task of development more complex and daunting. She added that “Women’s literacy and education has to be made a priority. If we make women literate, they will be self–reliant and the beneficial impact on society will be manifold.” Read the article at Gulfnews.com.

Family literacy programs around the country have found their bottom lines snipped this year, leaving a vast competition for other funding. According to the U.S. Department of Education, funding for parent/child literacy programs—called Even Start—were at about $225 million in 2005, at $99 million in 2006 and about $82 million in 2007. For 2008, President Bush has recommended eliminating funding for Even Start. The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has also recommended cutting funding, though that has not gone before the full Senate. Read more of this article, and see how the funding cuts are affecting local reading programs, in this article from The News-Gazette of east central Illinois.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released August 21. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year—half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven. If you choose to, you can read more of this article from The Washington Post.

In an earlier life, Xin Meng chased stories as a reporter for a Chinese-language newspaper in New York. Now he spends his days figuring out how to translate mysterious phrases like “empowerment school” and “English language learner” into Chinese. Read more about Meng and other linguists employed by the New York City Department of Education in this article from The New York Times.

A new study in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that elderly people who can’t navigate health information are at greater risk of cardiovascular death than those who are able to comprehend prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips, and hospital forms.

“People are dying because they’re not understanding health information,” said Dr. David Baker, the study’s lead author. “There are a number of factors, but inadequate literacy is probably acting like a lens, focusing all the other factors in.”

Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year for the next six years to make legal and illegal adult immigrants proficient in skills crucial to their assimilation and the economic future of a country whose population is increasingly foreign-born, a new national report says. In the first nationwide study of its kind, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that an additional $200 million a year is needed to improve legal immigrants’ English skills enough for them to pass a citizenship test and “fully participate in the country’s civic life.“ An additional $2.9 billion a year is required for illegal immigrants to meet those standards, the report says. Read more about the report in this article from The Washington Post.

A group of foreign women who sell sex in London have turned their hand to teaching English—but the words they are imparting to their students are unlikely to be featured in tourist phrase books. The classes are aimed at migrants working in London’s sex industry. Alice (not her real name), a 25-year-old Australian studying for her masters in post-colonial theory, is the brainchild of the language classes. Alice also works as an escort and is involved in the International Union of Sex Workers. She formed a group with 14 other women—many of whom are working in the industry—to set up the classes. “Women are [working in the sex industry] for the money, not because they like meeting four or five strange men a day,” she says. Read the article at Guardian Unlimited.

Not being able to read doesn’t just make it harder to navigate each day. Low literacy impairs people’s ability to obtain critical information about their health and can dramatically shorten their lives. A new study from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine shows that older people with inadequate health literacy had a 50 percent higher mortality rate over five years than people with adequate reading skills. Inadequate or low health literacy is defined as the inability to read and comprehend basic health-related materials such as prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips and hospital forms. Read more about this study on the website of Northwestern University.

Bedtime stories are proving a struggle for many British parents who are not confident readers, says a survey from the adult learning agency Learndirect. More than 10% of the 1,000 parents asked had struggled to understand some words in the stories they had read to their 5- to 10-year-old children. Parents said that they made up words they could not read or missed out difficult passages, the survey said. Even more parents—a third—struggled with their children's math homework. Read about the dilemma at BBC News.

A former Normandy School District grounds crew supervisor claims in a lawsuit that the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act when it fired him for being illiterate. Read more of this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An advertising campaign encouraging people to upgrade their skills through education and training is being launched by the government in the United Kingdom. TV, print and poster advertisements will aim to persuade people of their natural ability to succeed. The "Our future. It's in our hands" campaign will run over three years. The campaign comes after a report that warned that the UK must become a world leader in skills by 2020 if it wants to sustain its position in the global economy. This means dramatically increasing the number of adults who improve their skills and gain qualifications at all levels—from functional literacy and numeracy to higher education levels. Read the article at BBC NEWS.

Most Canadians, but especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, experience “significant” literacy loss as adults, a Statistics Canada report shows. The decline in skills begins at age 25, bottoms out around 40 and then tapers off around 55 years old. For example, adults aged 40 scored an average of 288 on a standardized literacy test in 1994, but in a second survey nine years later, that had dropped to 275—a loss of reading ability equal to half a year of schooling. Read more of this article from The Daily News of Halifax.

The head of the Liberia Education Trust has told literacy students of the Sean Devereux Children's Education Program (SDCEP) that they are not too old to sit in class and learn. Addressing mostly elderly women on the SDCEP's campus in June during, Robert Sirleaf, son of Liberia's president, E.J. Sirleaf, said: "Let nobody fool you...Education is one thing that once you have it, no one can take it away from you. Don't feel ashamed to learn." LET provides money for literacy projects, school renovation, and academic scholarships. More than 100 women are in the SDCEP's literacy program. Read the article at allAfrica.com.

Whenever 41-year-old Liana Crowe struggled with her English homework in pursuit of her high school diploma, she could count on a convenient tutor—her 17-year-old daughter. "English is my favourite subject," beamed Megan Crowe, who along with sisters Natalie, 16, and Sarah, 14, proudly attended the graduation ceremony Wednesday, June 6, for their mom and 124 other adult students of St. Michael's Catholic high school at the Fogolar Furlan Club. For Liana, her graduation was sweetened with the knowledge that two of her three daughters will be joining her as graduates later this month—Megan finishing Grade 12 at Cardinal Carter and Sarah finishing Grade 8 at Ecole Ste. Ursule. Read their inspirational story.

Every Wednesday night from 6 to 7 p.m., a small group of students and locals congregates at the New Haven Book Bank on Ashmun Street to peruse letters from prisoners and send off packages that inmates from Philadelphia prisons have requested. As suspicious as the gathering sounds, the New Haven chapter of “Books through Bars” is not an underground operation of derelict smugglers, but rather a charitable organization comprised of Yale students and young professionals from the area. Read more about the program in this article from The Yale Herald.

The federally sponsored National Assessment of Adult Illiteracy, in its last survey in 2003, estimated that 14 percent of adults are functionally illiterate: unable to read job applications, bus schedules, labels on the drugs they take. Some are immigrants who will master English eventually. But many have learning disabilities, and though they may have received diplomas, seldom had teachers along the way who could knowledgeably help them overcome their handicaps. Read about the effort being made to teach adults at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities in this article from The New York Times.

Four reports from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) are available for free download:

A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st Century
Key Concepts and Features of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

These reports offer a wealth of information about adult literacy in the United States. To access these reports, visit the NAAL website. Two of the reports are available on that webpage; the other two are available by clicking on "Archives."

The State of Adult Literacy Report, scheduled to be delivered to the mayor and council members of Washington D.C. today, found that nearly 36 percent, or 170,000, of the District’s residents are functionally illiterate, compared with 21 percent nationally. And only 8 percent of District residents with the lowest literacy skills get the remedial assistance they need. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

Up to half of the 12,000 Army recruits in the UK each year are at or below literacy and numeracy levels expected of 11–year–olds, a report by the Basic Skills Agency says. More than half of Army managers found the poor skill levels prevented soldiers from carrying out their jobs. The report, “Army Basic Skills Provision: Whole Organisation Approach, Lessons Learnt,” found that while half of Army recruits had the basic skills of students completing primary school, up to 9% were at the lower standard expected of seven and eight-year-olds. It also found that many of the 9,500 foreign nationals serving in the British Army required additional English language training. Read the article at the BBC News website.

A survey last year by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials found that in 12 states, 60 percent of the free English programs had waiting lists, ranging from a few months in Colorado and Nevada to as long as two years in New Mexico and Massachusetts. The United States Department of Education counted 1.2 million adults enrolled in public English programs in 2005—about 1 in 10 of the 10.3 million foreign-born residents 16 and older who speak English “less than very well,” or not at all, according to census figures from the same year. Federal money for such classes is matched at varying rates from state to state, leaving an uneven patchwork of programs that advocates say nowhere meets the need. Read more about the long wait that many immigrants must endure in order to learn English in this article from The New York Times.

In HMP Chelmsford in Essex, England, a medium–security prison, a new program to teach dyslexic inmates using phonics and multi–sensory techniques appears to be successful. Jackie Hewitt-Main, the prisoners’ mentor and special needs tutor, says young dyslexics are seldom adequately cared for. “This results in huge numbers of them becoming bewildered, disengaged and failing in the classroom by the age of eight, nine or 10... Many drop out, truant and follow a depressingly familiar downward path that leads them into the courts.” Read about the program at the Guardian Unlimited website.

The former director of the Basic Skills Agency in the UK doesn’t believe students can be taught basic literacy skills in a “stealth” fashion by “embedding” them in other courses, particularly vocational courses. Alan Wells says there is no authoritative research to back up the notion and, furthermore, it won’t particularly help older adult learners. Read his opinion piece at the Guardian Unlimited website.

“In today’s ‘information boom’,” says columnist Meghan Daum, “being ill-read isn’t a symptom of failing to read, but of reading too much of the wrong thing.” Find her column in the Los Angeles Times.

The British government has announced it will stop funding the Basic Skills Agency (BSA), putting the future of one of the country’s oldest education agencies in doubt. Ministers are blaming the excessively complex and bureaucratic education landscape for the tough decision, prompting accusations that they are the chief culprits. But those working in adult literacy and numeracy will inevitably suspect that government is stifling an organisation that has been a critic. Read more of this story in The Guardian (U.K.).

Five years after declaring that English for adults unable to speak it would be taught for nothing because it was such an essential requirement, the British government has revised its stance. Demand for free English classes is too high, says the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), so now asylum seekers and others will have to pay to learn. This article appears in The Guardian (UK).

In a recent edition of the Toronto Star, columnist Linwood Barclay takes satirical aim at the Harper government’s decision to cut funding for adult literacy programs in Canada.

The recent White House Conference on Global Literacy hosted by first lady Laura Bush coincided with the rollout of a new international assessment that holds the promise of providing a much more accurate picture of adult illiteracy in developing countries than ever before. The assessment is designed to help countries understand better the weaknesses in their primary and secondary school systems and nonformal education programs in order to reduce high illiteracy rates among all. An article in Education Week has full details.

The U.S. Senate has confirmed the appointments of three individuals to serve on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL): M. Carmel Borders and IRA members Donald D. Deshler and Timothy Shanahan. Shanahan currently serves as president of IRA. For further information, read the NIFL news release.

The Canadian postal service, Canada Post, has honored two IRA members, Pat Campbell and Carol Hryniuk Adamov, among its 2006 Canada Post Literacy Awards. The awards recognize adult literacy learners and those who help them.

A third of all British businesses are forced to send staff for remedial lessons in basic literacy and numeracy because schools have failed to teach them to read, write or add up properly, business leaders warned yesterday. Poor standards are costing the economy £10bn a year, and could see jobs lost to China and India if skill levels among workers do not improve, according to a government-commissioned report. Get details in The Independent.

 The International Reading Association invites applications from qualified members for the editorship of its Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. This volunteer position has a term of six years. Application deadline is October 1, 2006. Find complete information at the IRA website.

Two-thirds of inmates in British prisons lack literacy skills. Who better to teach them to read than the other third? Learn about Toe by Toe, a unique program devoted to literacy in prisons, in The Guardian.

Great Britain’s education secretary, Alan Johnson, has pledged to stamp out illiteracy and innumeracy in the adult workforce by 2020, claiming it was no longer acceptable to indulge in “the luxury of failure” by tolerating poor basic but vital skills. Get details in The Guardian.

Concern that the nation’s adult illiteracy rate may be far worse than reported has led the Kenyan government to launch a national literacy survey. The exercise, to be conducted in all districts throughout the country, will establish the actual number of people who know how to read, write, and count. Learn more in The Nation (Kenya).

Responding to the plight of Afghanistan’s 8 million illiterate adults, more than 200 literacy teacher trainees, the vast majority women, have embarked upon tutor training programs in three western provinces as part of a joint government–United Nations effort to improve reading skills among the older generation.
Find the story in Scoop (New Zealand).

Washington, DC, mayor Anthony A. Williams yesterday announced the formation of a task force that will examine the problem of adult illiteracy and develop recommendations for his successor. Find this article in The Washington Times.

British Chancellor Gordon Brown plans to launch a new multimillion-pound initiative for workers who struggle with literacy and numeracy. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) workplace learning scheme, Unionlearn, is aimed at the seven million adults in England who find it hard to read, write, or calculate figures. Learn more about the plan in The Guardian.

For some New Zealand inmates, prison literacy programs offer hope — a chance to lead a “normal” life when their terms are completed. But throughout the nation these programs are collapsing due to dysfunctional management, caused by escalating prisoner numbers and overcrowding. Get details in The New Zealand Herald.

A team of South African literacy experts left for Cuba, Venezuela, and New Zealand yesterday to examine Cuba’s model for educating large numbers of illiterate adults quickly. They hope to learn how the Cuban model has been adapted in other countries and how it might be used to reduce SA’s largely stagnant adult literacy rate. This story appears in Business Day (South Africa).

With 5,000 people on waiting lists and a million undereducated people in the workforce, the need for adult education services in Maryland exceeds the capacity of the system, according to a new report.

Masters champion George Archer's widow has revealed that the golfing great never learned to read or write beyond a rudimentary level.

As many as 16 million adults — nearly half the workforce — are holding down jobs despite having the reading and writing skills expected of children leaving primary school, a new report reveals today. Among its conclusions: A major government scheme costing billions of pounds has done little to improve the quality of adult literacy and numeracy teaching. Get details in The Guardian (UK).

New test results show that far too many adults lack the basic tools needed to get on in today’s world, in which the written word is so important. Governments can help, not least by improving access to adult education. So argues this essy in the OECD Observer.

Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees—and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees—have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies, according to a new national survey by the American Institutes for Research that was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. However, the survey found that the scores for quantitative literacy were not lower than those of previous graduates, and that the students surveyed had higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education.

British education inspectors have condemned the Skills for Life program — a £2bn government drive to improve basic literacy and numeracy levels among adults — as a “depressing” failure. The findings came just 48 hours after a government review warned Britain’s economic prosperity was at risk because so many adults cannot read, write, or do basic arithmetic at an adequate level. This story appears in The Guardian (UK).

Three foundations in the Cleveland, Ohio area have united to boost literacy in the region.

The complex causes and multiple effects of inadequate literacy skills in a given locale—in this case, an affluent county in Michigan—are examined in this Oakland Press article.

One person in four across the UK lacks literacy and numeracy skills necessary to hold a “meaningful” job. In observance of Adult Learners’ Week, educator Tom Place discusses the challenges faced by adult learners and the role of Northern Ireland’s Further Education colleges in bringing adults back to the classroom. Read more in the Belfast Telegraph (Northern Ireland).

According to a new international study, adults often lose skills learned early in life, with negative effects on earnings potential and on the prosperity of the community where they live. The report, published jointly by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Statistics Canada, calls on governments to do more to ensure that people retain and develop skills acquired in early schooling through lifetime education. Get details at the OECD website.

A new report on adult literacy says 40 percent of Canadians do not meet everyday reading requirements, and the numbers haven’t changed much in the last decade. The Adult Literary and Life Skills study by Statistics Canada found that 42 percent of Canadians do not have everyday reading skills. Find out more on the CTV.ca website.

A new publication from the UNESCO Institute for Education looks at the importance of training adult educators and grassroots workers to improve quality of adult basic learning and literacy. The work evolved through a five-country study conducted in in Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Republic of Tanzania.

Learn more about this publication at UNESCO’s Education for All website.