Illiteracy in America

ILLITERACY IN AMERICA Understanding and Resolving a Grave National Problem by Harry Hattyar Copyright © 2005 by Harry Hattyar 2430 Kirkham Street, San Francisco, CA 94122 Phone: (415) 566-2988; e-mail: [email protected] NOTICE: “Iliteracy in America” is a copyrighted work. The author gives permission to download “Illiteracy in America” free of charge; however, this permission can be withdrawn at any time at author’s option. The present permission to download “Illiteracy in America” free does not constitute placing it in the public domain. ILLITERACY IN AMERICA: Understanding and Resolving a Grave National Problem 2 Table of Content 1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 3 2 Communication to Writing ………………………………………………. .15 3 Language, Learning, Comprehension …………………………………….. 25 4 Writing in the English Language …………………………………………..39 5 Reading and Learning to Read …………………………………………….48 6 Teaching to Read in Other Languages……………………………………..65 7 Teaching to Read in the U.S. A Retrospect…………………………….75 8 Teaching to Read in the U.S. Critical Review……………………….…90 9 The Teaching-To-Read Industry.………………………………………....117 10 Solving the Unsolvable Problem…………………………………………149 ILLITERACY IN AMERICA: Understanding and Resolving a Grave National Problem 3 Chapter 1 Introduction In August 1984 a momentous event occurred in my life. My daughter-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Shannon, my first and only grandchild. This event, strangely, started me on a path that eventually lead to the writing of this book. A surprising discovery A little more than a year after this, to me, historical occasion, I read an editorial review in the November, 1985 Reader’s Digest, titled, “Why Our Children Aren’t Reading,” about the alarming condition of literacy in the United States. It stated that some 27 million American adults are func- tionally illiterate, and 45 million more are only marginally literate. The article then dealt with the Phonics-First versus Look-and-Say reading instructional methods, and the controversy surrounding them. It also mentioned a book by Dr. Rudolph Flesch, “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” which deals with the root of the problem, namely the according to Dr. Flesch ill-advised and non-workable way of teaching reading to children in school: the Look-and-Say method. The article went on to men- tion a sequel to this book, also by Dr. Rudolph Flesch, “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read,” which re- ported that the situation in the schools was still the same, in spite of the numerous research projects related to reading and the teaching of it that had been conducted in the interim period. The results of these research projects, Dr. Flesch stated, convincingly proved that phonics-based programs were superior in their results in comparison to look-and-say programs, but in spite of these findings the schools persisted in using the latter, producing the same dismal results. With my granddaughter to think of, the specter of her not learning to read in school rose before me and I became very interested in this whole business of literacy, or rather the alleged widespread lack of it, in the United States. I was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, where I went to school and learned reading in the first grade, as do all children there. A child getting promoted to the second grade without being able to read was inconceivable and just did not happen. When I read that Reader’s Digest editorial, I have had lived in the United States for twenty-six years. Quite naturally it came to me as a shock to learn that illiteracy existed here, moreover that it affected such a significant number of people who had finished not only grade school, but sometimes high school as well, and yet were not able to read and write. At first I did not believe it. Granted, English spelling is difficult. At the first glance it is a hopeless confusion. I remember having to memorize the spelling of each and every word as I learned them, but then, learning Eng- lish as a second language involves a lot of looking up of words in a dictionary anyway, so I thought it was possible that I missed some of the difficulties native English speakers face when they learn to read. After reading the Reader’s Digest article and the 1981 book of Dr. Flesch, “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read,” I hunted up his earlier book, “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” which was published in 1955. To my utter disbelief, during the intervening twenty-six years (more than an entire human genera- tion, mind you!) the functional illiteracy problem had not improved one iota, in spite of the iron logic and firm data Flesch marshaled in presenting the problem in 1955, and in spite of the effective ILLITERACY IN AMERICA: Understanding and Resolving a Grave National Problem 4 remedy he offered to solve it. It was still hard to believe that illiteracy of such extent existed. But then I began to notice little things in everyday life, such as people in the supermarket asking occa- sionally what was written on packages, or where certain products were located even though the signs overhead clearly stated it mumbling something about their eye glasses. Was it possible, I asked myself, that there was nothing wrong with their eyes, that the problem was that they cannot read? Well, schools or no schools, I decided that my granddaughter was not going to stay illiterate if I can help it. I got hold of two primers Dr. Flesch referred to, “Teacher’s Manual for Reading with Phonics” by Julie Hay and Charles E. Wingo (J.B. Lippincott Company, 1948), and “Let’s Read” by Leonard Bloomfield and Clarence L. Barnhart (Wayne State University Press, 1961). Based on these books, plus “Why Johnny Can't Read,” I worked out a slightly modified and simplified phonic system of learning to read, plus I wrote practice text for each step of the process, so that children can immediately use their freshly acquired knowledge and read a little “story” that has meaning. (It is perhaps worth to note here that phonics primers, or rather linguistic primers, are based on system- atically sequenced lists of similarly spelled words to practice the instant recognition of English spelling patterns.) Then I put this “course in learning to read,” as it were, in a story about a little girl and a little boy who entered, through the good services of a wizard, into the world of letters, and after fascinating adventures ended up being able to read all the print that came before their eyes. Incidentally, by the time I would have had the opportunity to try this out on Shannon, the issue was moot. Shannon belongs in that fortunate group of youngsters who, through their quick wit, dis- cover for themselves the relationship between letters and sounds, and all of a sudden they can read. When she entered the first grade, she was a reader. Having finished the book which I called “The Magic Reader,” I sent the manuscript to my agent, who made a half-hearted effort to place it with a publisher, who made a half-hearted effort to look at it and then suggest another publisher who might be interested. Well, I said to myself, “Admit it: the story is not another Alice in Wonderland. Forget it.” I took my own advice. But then my circumstances developed such that I ended up having quite a bit of free time on hand. I also had this practical way of teaching folks how to read, and there were still tens of millions of people who were illiterate, or so the article and the books said. One day I read an article in the newspaper about “Project Read” of the San Francisco Public Library, and I decided on the spot to sign up as a volunteer tutor to help somebody learn to read. Meeting the reading establishment In order to become a tutor, one has to go through a week-long training course, but there were so many volunteers that it took two months of waiting to get into one. I signed up anyway and waited out the two months. I was quite excited when I went to the first meeting, which was the first time that I got in contact with the American Reading Establishment. The course was held by a specialist from an institution who spoke to us, laymen, on the subject of reading and the teaching of it with great authority and vigor. My first problem was with her defi- nition of what reading is. Reading, she proclaimed, was comprehension. If one reads a text by merely sounding out words, that person was not reading at all. Only fully understanding the meaning of the text can be considered reading. Very politely and hesitantly I took issue with her state- ment, saying that being an engineer I consider myself a person capable of reading, yet when I take a pharmaceutical text, or an article dealing with microbiology, or astronomy, I don't precisely under- stand everything the writers discuss. Was I, therefore, considered a candidate for remedial reading? Then I added that in high school, where the Russian language was a compulsory subject for us, I ILLITERACY IN AMERICA: Understanding and Resolving a Grave National Problem 5 could quite fluently read Russian text, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, without understanding a word of it, and then I added that in my opinion reading was reading and comprehension was comprehension. I instantly became the class maverick, which resulted in moments of mirth in the course of the week as she made allowances in her presentation to accommodate my “rigorous criteria for clarity.” Finally the seminar ended and I got a student, an unemployed San Francisco-born man with a family of three children.

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