Archive for Low Literacy

On September 8, 2008, the celebration of the International Literacy Day will reiterate India’s commitment to eliminate the problem of illiteracy. As in previous years, the function will be organized by the National Literacy Mission (Ministry of Human Resource Development).

The key aspect of the observance of International Literacy Day is the need to mobilize public in favor of the struggle against illiteracy. It is also a reminder to all responsible citizens that the huge task of making our entire society literate is yet to be fulfilled and for this we need to sensitize people in each stratum. Read more about the planned celebration at the Government of India's Press Information Bureau online.

Hollywood movies, often considered a threat to reading, are now proving to be a powerful ally.

Researchers from the University of Canterbury’s School of Literacies and Arts in Education in Christchurch, New Zealand, have just tested a United States-based reading program in six Christchurch schools. Struggling readers who took part in the program improved their reading age by 1.2 years in just six weeks.

The patented program, called Audio Visual Achievement in Literacy, Language and Learning (AVAILLL), is based on the use of movie subtitles to support literacy activities. Low achieving students in primary schools are enticed into books through “read-watching” of popular movies that are themselves based on books. The program builds on research undertaken in 1992 by University of Canterbury (UC) Emeritus Professor Warwick Elley. Elley analyzed the results of the International Education Assessment study of reading literacy and discovered that heavy watching of subtitled TV for students in five of the top performing countries may be a variable that contributed to higher results. Read more about the study at the UC website.

From Google Health to Wii Fit, Americans have an increasingly wide array of tools for tracking their health backgrounds and statistics but their understanding of what that data means is poor, threatening their health and costing the economy billions of dollars.

Just 12% of American adults are health literate at a level that allows them to manage their care, the latest News and Numbers statement from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) showed.

The AHRQ release is based on information from the 2007 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, which found that the majority of Americans lacked the skills required to correctly complete health care-related activities like reading a prescription bottle, figuring out medication dosage, filling out forms or calculating insurance coverage. That lack of literacy can negatively affect the quality of care a patient receives and costs the U.S. economy between $106 billion and $236 billion annually, the University of Connecticut said in a report last year. That's enough to insure all of the more than 47 million Americans currently without coverage. Read more of this Reuters article at Canada.com.

Test scores at Parkway Heights Middle School, in South San Francisco, have been very low for the last seven years. To improve students' English skills and general literacy, two English teachers have helped set up a bookstore inside the school. The store provides a variety of interesting books at affordable prices and an opportunity for students to run it themselves. Read a story about the project at the Voice of America website.

In an updated blast from the past, PBS will air a new version of the 1970s children's series "The Electric Company," according to The Associated Press. Production on the 21st century model of the PBS show for 6- to 9-year-olds was set to begin today (Tuesday, May 13, 2008) on the streets of New York City and in a New Jersey studio, according to producer Sesame Workshop.

The series, aimed at reducing the literacy gap between low- and middle-income families, will promote the idea that "reading is cool" with help from online and community-based activities, Sesame Workshop said in an announcement Monday.

"The literacy crisis today is as pervasive and alarming as it was in 1971 when we created the first version of `The Electric Company,'" said Scott Cameron, director of education and research for Sesame Workshop (which is the nonprofit educational organization behind "Sesame Street"). Weekly episodes of "The Electric Company" are scheduled to air nationally in January 2009 on PBS Kids.

More than half of Canadian adults do not have the skills necessary to properly make daily decisions about their health, according to a report released March 3, 2008, by the Canadian Public Health Association. Its expert panel called the low levels of health literacy in Canada “critical” and says a countrywide strategy is needed to solve the problem, especially since health-care systems are becoming increasingly complex.

Only one in eight seniors has adequate health literacy skills, which suggests most may not be able to cope with the health-care system on their own, the panel found. Recent immigrants, people with low incomes and low levels of education, and people for whom English or French is not a first language are also most likely to struggle with health literacy, said Irving Rootman, executive director of the Health and Learning Centre at the University of Victoria, and co-chair of the expert panel.

Even though health information can be found on the Internet, Rootman said a study conducted by the University of Victoria found a minimum of Grade 11 reading skills was required to understand most Internet information in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Read more about the situation in The Toronto Star online.

Beginning February 25, ABC's World News With Charles Gibson begins a special series titled "Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America." For further information visit either the text link or the video link.

A majority of urban-based First Nations and Metis people in Saskatchewan do not have the literacy skills to cope in today’s society, according to a Statistics Canada study. The study released Monday, January 7, 2008, found 70% of off-reserve First Nations and 56%of urban-based Metis scored below the benchmark considered to be the minimum for an individual to cope in a complex knowledge-based society. The study also found the proportion of low-scoring adults was much lower among non-aboriginals, at 37%, in urban Saskatchewan.

But as grim as the numbers are, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Literacy Network Inc. says the study doesn’t capture the full extent of the problem. “There’s nothing from the north, there's nothing from the reserve, nothing from any of the institutions where there are a lot of people who are struggling with literacy issues, so this is not an accurate reflection,” said Carol Vandale, executive director of the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Literacy Network. Read more about the study at canada.com.

“I couldn’t read until I was in Grade 4.” The statement shocked me because it came from my partner, Adam. He was someone I had always known to be a voracious reader, an experienced teacher and one who has always stressed the importance of literacy and learning to his students. How could someone neck deep in teaching literacy have flown under the radar for so long?

The dictionary defines literacy as the ability to read and write. What it fails to mention is that literacy goes beyond the decoding of words and sentences. Its true core is understanding and making sense of information. Its core is that of attaining knowledge. The inability to read has a far-reaching influence and impact on one’s life. Yet it is a skill we often take for granted. We neglect its direct impact on our health, social interactions, ability to learn and day-to-day functioning. Continue reading this personal commentary in The Toronto Star.

Where do young cows eat when they go to school? In the calf-eteria. Oscar Henderson, 9, serves up a big grin to go with the punchline from a new library book at Dovercourt Junior Public School in Ontario, Canada. “It’s really good to have new books,” said the Grade 4 student. “Joke books are my favorite.” His school was one of 10 across Canada that received a $150,000 grant last year to buy new books and beef up literacy support for their libraries. On September 19, Dovercourt pupils attended the launch of the documentary “Writing on the Wall” that says nearly half of Canadians have trouble with day-to-day reading while 80% of those who end up in jail are functionally illiterate. Even so, the film says, governments have slashed funding for school libraries. Read the article at TheStar.com.

To address the growing problem of low health literacy levels and to help consumers access usable health information, The Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc., and Libraries for the Future, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing innovation and investment in our nation’s libraries, have launched the Wellness Information Zone, a new consumer health information project in Atlanta. The program aims to bring together expertise and resources from the two partner organizations to help the 90 million Americans who have difficulty obtaining, understanding and acting on basic health information and services. Read more of this article from CNNMoney.com

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds need to do more than just attend a good school to boost their educational achievement, a new report by the British charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation says. School quality accounted for a fraction of variations in achievement, it said. Family disadvantage is passed on from one generation to the next in a cycle of underachievement, it added. The report, which summarizes the findings of eight earlier projects for the charity's education and poverty program, seeks to understand the well-known correlation between poverty and low educational performance. Read about the report at BBC News.

It’s being called an unprecedented initiative in solving Buffalo’s dire reading problem. The vision of Read to Succeed Buffalo is 100 percent literacy for the city’s children and adults. The campaign, to be launched early next month, is viewed as the city’s first strategic literacy plan. Behind it is a literacy coalition made up of more than 40 local organizations. Read more about the coalition’s goals in this article from The Buffalo News.

New teachers are being blamed for the decline in reading scores in Connecticut. Elaine Zimmerman, executive director of the state Commission on Children, says new teachers either don’t know or haven’t followed proven techniques for teaching reading. Doris J. Kurtz, New Britain superintendent of schools, decries new teachers’ lack of preparedness in literacy skills as “disgraceful.” A quick glance at third–grade reading scores, however, shows that higher scores come from wealthy towns and lower ones from poor cities. Poverty has long been associated with low scores across academic disciplines. Leaders ignore greater societal ills as they point their fingers at those who lack the protection of tenure. Read more of this opinion piece at courant.com.

Heard the one about the cow inseminated by seamen? The plants sewn together or the rouge genetic elements? You will soon. Grammatically challenged undergraduates from Imperial College London, England, are about to be publicly shamed. Their tutor, Bernard Lamb, was so unimpressed by their poor spelling, punctuation, and choice of words that he started to keep a diary of every mistake. Lamb—unfortunately for his students, a member of the Queen’s English Society—was shocked, and occasionally amused, and he decided to take the experiment one step further and publish it. Read some of the bloopers at Guardian Unlimited.

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.”