Paula Lu­cie-Smith

Al­ta CEO & Founder

There are two wide­ly-held myths about lit­er­a­cy.

The first myth is that read­ing is easy, so if you can't read you must be stu­pid. Most of us don't re­mem­ber learn­ing to read, we just re­mem­ber read­ing so we think it is nat­ur­al and au­to­mat­ic–easy.

Read­ing is ac­tu­al­ly very com­plex. In fact, re­searchers do not know how the brain ac­tu­al­ly reads. More­over, read­ing is not a nat­ur­al skill, not some­thing that we pick up just by hear­ing oth­ers read. Learn­ing to read, for ex­am­ple, is dif­fer­ent from learn­ing to talk. The young child looks and lis­tens to oth­ers talk­ing and be­gins to talk her­self. Not so with read­ing. Read­ing and writ­ing do not de­vel­op nat­u­ral­ly–they must be taught, must be learnt.

Read­ing is like any skill, some of us have nat­ur­al tal­ent, some strug­gle to learn and most fall at the var­i­ous points be­tween these two poles of ease and dif­fi­cul­ty.

Let's com­pare learn­ing to read with learn­ing to play an in­stru­ment. Some can play by ear and make mu­sic af­ter a few lessons, but oth­ers need in­struc­tion for years to play the same way. It is the same with read­ing and writ­ing. Some have an ap­ti­tude for read­ing and pick it up eas­i­ly. Oth­ers don't.

So, mas­ter­ing read­ing and writ­ing de­pends on the wiring of your brain and hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn.

More­over ap­ti­tude for lit­er­a­cy does not de­ter­mine your abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly your abil­i­ty to think and to suc­ceed. Some very suc­cess­ful dyslex­i­cs who strug­gled with writ­ten words are ac­tors Tom Cruise, Whoopi Gold­berg and our own mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Ge­of­frey Hold­er; cre­ators of busi­ness em­pires Walt Dis­ney, Charles Schwab and Robert Bermudez.

So, read­ing is not easy and poor lit­er­a­cy can­not be equat­ed with poor think­ing skills or po­ten­tial to suc­ceed.

The sec­ond myth is that we are, or even once were, a lit­er­ate na­tion. In the mid-1990s, there were two na­tion­al lit­er­a­cy sur­veys of those aged 15 and over–the first by Al­ta, fol­lowed by UWI. These showed that about one in four peo­ple could not per­form every­day read­ing and writ­ing tasks like read­ing sim­ple signs or fill­ing out ba­sic forms, and on­ly 45 per cent could read and un­der­stand a sim­ple news­pa­per ar­ti­cle.

For these per­sons who do not read, or do not read well, what does it mean?

We live in an age of in­for­ma­tion and that in­for­ma­tion is writ­ten. A phone call has be­come a text; your so­cial life is on Face­book; to ac­cess al­most every­thing, from jobs to give­aways, you fill out a form.

How would you feel sur­round­ed by writ­ten words that give oth­ers a mes­sage but not you? Over the years many stu­dents have talked about be­ing on the out­side, feel­ing ex­clud­ed. As one stu­dent wrote: "There is no place for me in the heart of so­ci­ety." Note her choice of the word 'heart'–tells you she feels re­ject­ed, unloved by the world around her.

Not on­ly are poor read­ers left out, but they feel they have to hide be­cause those who read think read­ing is easy. They live in fear of be­ing found out, un­der stress hid­ing that they can't read. My stu­dent Yvonne speaks of "get­ting a brave­ness" when she came to Al­ta, able to be open lit­er­a­cy for the first time in her 40 years.

Their world is a small one be­cause they avoid any­thing they haven't done be­fore. I re­mem­ber the stu­dent from Ch­agua­nas who had nev­er come to POS.

Then there is the im­pact on the chil­dren, who of­ten strug­gle at school, just as their par­ents did since lit­er­a­cy is a prod­uct of home and school, not just school. In­deed a strong mo­ti­va­tor for com­ing to Al­ta is to en­sure that your chil­dren have a bet­ter life–as the stu­dents put it, "I don't want my chil­dren to have to suf­fer like me."

Some­thing that I have no­ticed is how low lit­er­a­cy af­fects re­la­tion­ships with those around you. One of my stu­dents, Fitzroy spoke of how com­ing to Al­ta changed his re­la­tion­ship with his young son. Fitzroy start­ed as a be­gin­ner stu­dent; that is, he did recog­nise even all the let­ters of the al­pha­bet and vir­tu­al­ly no words. He said when his son came to ask him for help with school work, be­cause he couldn't help but he didn't want his son to know this, Fitzroy would brush him off rude­ly–"You can't see I busy. Stop both­er­ing me." From his first year at Al­ta, Fitzroy be­gan to share what he was learn­ing at Al­ta–the sight word and phon­ics cards–and ask­ing his son to share what he had learned at school.

A fac­tor of in­creas­ing im­por­tance is that the non-lit­er­ate have few­er le­git­i­mate op­tions to earn a liv­ing. Most jobs re­quire three CXC pass­es. There are lim­it­ed le­git op­tions, but ap­par­ent­ly a wide range of fair­ly well-or­gan­ised il­le­git­i­mate ones of­ten start­ing quite in­nocu­ous­ly: "drop dis here for mih," "look out and see when Baby­lon comin.'"

Fr Clyde Har­vey wrote in an ar­ti­cle in De­cem­ber 2010, "Those of us who have worked with youth at risk have been struck by the high per­cent­age of them who have very poor read­ing skills. Many of our teenage boys are read­ing at lev­els half their age. Many of our gang lead­ers have read­ing dis­abil­i­ties which were not recog­nised at school, left them at the back of the class and then saw them com­pen­sat­ing through their oth­er nat­ur­al abil­i­ties of lead­er­ship."

What can we do?

Be alert to the signs of low lit­er­a­cy:

Avoid­ing print: not read­ing menu (I will have what you are hav­ing), ex­cus­es–'for­got glass­es', 'too busy'

Miss­ing out on op­por­tu­ni­ties or not par­tic­i­pat­ing in any­thing new: Al­ta stu­dents have said that they turned down a pro­mo­tion or quit a job when there is a change of pro­ce­dure.

Dis­play­ing badges of lit­er­a­cy, eg car­ry­ing a news­pa­per, pen in pock­et–but nev­er us­ing these.

Re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly–do not be sur­prised, dis­mayed or even sad­dened when some­one says they can't read. Avoid say­ing "How come you can't read?" This im­plies some­thing is wrong with them, which they are of­ten al­ready think­ing.

Some­one say­ing they don't read well should be like say­ing you don't sing well. There is no stig­ma and if you want to im­prove, it's ok to get lessons what­ev­er your age.

We need to un­der­stand the myths and change our at­ti­tudes. We the lit­er­ate are re­spon­si­ble for the shame each non-read­er has to over­come to walk in­to an Al­ta class.

Sug­gest Al­ta in the same tone as you would com­put­er class­es–lit­er­a­cy is a skill like any oth­er.

Now is the time to en­cour­age the adults around us to come to Al­ta as we reg­is­ter new stu­dents on­ly once a year–on the first Tues­day and Wednes­day of Sep­tem­ber, the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Reg­is­tra­tion is easy–just go to your near­est pub­lic li­brary on Sep­tem­ber 3 or 4 and Al­ta tu­tors will let you know the class op­tions in the area and sign you up.

Last year was Al­ta's 20th an­niver­sary and we con­duct­ed an im­pact sur­vey. 100 per cent of the ran­dom sam­ple of past and present Al­ta stu­dents said they would rec­om­mend Al­ta and more than half said Al­ta helped them to earn high­er salaries.

Many added an im­pact that we hadn't thought to ask them–they said they are much hap­pi­er now.

Love­na Gookool, who start­ed in Al­ta be­gin­ner, grad­u­at­ed from Lev­el 3 and went on to get her school leav­ing cer­tifi­cate wrote:

I am not ashamed to go pub­lic. When my three chil­dren were grow­ing up I couldn't read flu­ent­ly to them. Now I can read to my grand­chil­dren. I couldn't put notes in my chil­dren's lunch kits.

Now I write five notes on the week­ends for my grand­chil­dren, one note a day for their lunch kits.

There is no need to ask any­one to help me fill out forms. I can do it on my own now. I al­ways won­dered how peo­ple knew how to do these things.

Learn­ing to read opened up a whole new world for me.

This is what Al­ta is about–tak­ing away the walls that box non-read­ers in­to the very small world of the fa­mil­iar; mov­ing from de­pen­dent to in­de­pen­dent; trans­form­ing lives not just for this gen­er­a­tion, but for the next.

Play your part to build lit­er­a­cy. If you have time, vol­un­teer to be a Read­ing Cir­cle guide or to as­sist Al­ta stu­dents on the com­put­er. If your time is al­ready booked, spon­sor an Al­ta stu­dent for the year (TT$500). Call 624-Al­ta (2582), 664-2582, 653-4656 or email al­tatt@ya­hoo.com

?