AN EDITORIAL WRITER who writes about literacy is preaching to the choir. People who read this page are literate.
That does not mean they wear tweed jackets or blue stockings and are given to making windy critiques of T.S. Eliot. It means they can read and write. It means they can absorb complex ideas from the printed word.
Such people are in the lucky majority. But a substantial minority of their fellow Americans do not share their luck.
In 2003, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy estimated that 14 percent of the adult population had, at best, meager skills in reading and writing English. That would mean that 30 million people in this country are missing much of the nation’s public dialogue, missing the joy of written fiction and the edification of non-fiction. (Reverse those attributes, if you like.) It also means that they are signing contracts they cannot fully comprehend and, sometimes, trying to obey traffic signs, rules and directions that they cannot read.
Literacy has little to do with intelligence. There are smart people who cannot read a word and not-so-smart people who read voraciously. In their most basic form, reading and writing are skills, not talents or exercises of great brain power. Once learned, those skills are no more intellectually demanding than driving a car that has a standard transmission. Reading and writing become an automatic process.
But some people do not learn the skills when they are first exposed to them in grade school. Why? Any number of reasons. Some children hit a bad patch and become prey to a self-fulfilling fear that they will never learn. Some people are born with perception problems that can mix up letters and words in the mind and never get the special training that can help them overcome that disability.
But whatever the reasons may be for not having learned to read or write, it is still true that almost every adult person is capable of learning those skills.
In Emporia, there is help available for those who want to learn.
The Emporia Literacy Program has been helping adults learn basic literacy skills and specific reading, writing, math and communication skills for 22 years. The program is not a kindergarten for adults. Volunteer tutors and learners work together to reach goals the learners set for themselves. In the past year, according to a fact sheet from the program, 70 percent of the people in the program achieved their goals, which included receiving a Kansas High School Diploma, moving beyond a high school education, becoming a U.S. citizen, getting a job and getting a promotion.
Each goal achieved represents a life improved and each life improved helps make a better community.
Friday is International Literacy Day. The Emporia program has no special plans for the day, but Emporians who wish to celebrate can do so by attending a tutor-training workshop on Sept. 16 and becoming literacy volunteers.
Share those precious skills with people who need them. Call Diane Gladow at 343-4630 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
The editorial writers of America (who can never have enough readers) will thank you.