I’m a reasonably intelligent, 34-year-old male. Obviously, I can read, as I’m typing this post.
However, I’ve heard of adults who managed to fake their way through school, and fake their way through life, who cannot read. In fact, it’s not as uncommon as we’d like to believe. Obviously, the intelligence of these people is not normally in question, as it probably takes some quick wit to fake your way through life being illiterate.
Making exceptions for people of very low intelligence, how hard is it, really, for an adult to learn to read? Do adult literacy programs take years before they see results? Is it a frustrating, bang-your-head-against-the-wall kind of experience (as trying to learn the piano as an adult was for me)?
I was involved with an adult literacy program here in San Diego, and I can share a little of what we were told in the introduction. There are probably a LOT more illiterate adults than you’d think. I was shocked to hear the numbers. I was equally shocked to find how well they have “adapted” to overcome this. Perhaps the most amazing story was of the UPS delivery truck driver who could not read. Think about it. No street names, etc… When he’d get stuck, he’d pull into a 7-11 or gas station and act as though he just wasn’t familiar with the area. And get (verbal) directions on how to get to his delivery. Pretty amazing.
I seem to recall the goal of the program was to get people to the “read and understand the newspaper” level. I think they mentioned that newspapers are written to a 7th grade level, but I’m not sure. But that was kind of the goal of the program.
I can’t really say how long it takes for adults to see results. A lot depends on the individual and how motivated they are. I ended up more of an ESL student, and she could actually read pretty well. Her writing and speech were what we worked on the most. But along with that, a big part was idioms and just commonplace phrases that make no sense to a foreigner.
Hang on a sec. This smells funny. I have heard that illiterate people do learn to adapt and even hide their illiterateness. But how did he take a driver’s test? I suppose there might be illiterate people with driver’s licenses, but the question stands. And did he pull over and ask directions for every single package? It just seems like there is too much reading/writing involved in a job like that to fake it.
Do you mean totally illiterate or functionally illiterate? You’d assume it would be easier for the functionally illiterate, they may just need practice.
It’s difficult to quantify “how hard it is” but it does not take years to make very good progress. I was a volunteer for an excellent organtization called Literacy Volunteers. I tutored people wanting to learn English as a second language, but also took the training for illiterate adults.
It depends upon the person’s intelligence, but more important, upon their desire to learn and how much time they are willing to put in to accomplish this.
I have a vast admiration for any adult who is finally willing to admit he/she needs help and goes to the L.V. HQ. They have to take a test to establish the degree of help they need, but while they first may feel a bit ashamed, they soon find out everybody is so completely supportive and willing to help, that they become very enthusiastic.
It is a wonderful program and anybody needing help can get somebody to look up the organiation in the phone book or find it online for them. If you know such people in need of help, you should urge them to give it a try.
I can’t answer for how he might have gotten a driver’s license in the first place (I don’t recall them talking about that), but I do know that if your record’s clean, you can go many years (here in CA) getting an automatic renewal.
He did not need to ask directions for every package. UPS delivery routes have lots of repeat customers. So once he learned the majority of his repeat customer’s by “symbol”, he could remember how to get there (via landmark and not so much street names). So it was only rarely that he’d come up with an address he couldn’t find and then he’d ask (and I remember them saying that rather than getting directions like “take a left on Maple”, he’d have them draw pictures showing which left was Maple).
This person was not dumb, and was very creative/inventive in mechanisms to compensate for not being able to read. The center was as shocked to find that he could adapt, and had been doing so well for so many years.
Sad but true, and he didn’t last very long in the job. This American Life profiled this guy or someone very much like him a couple weeks ago. From my recollection of the episode (you can hear it via RealAudio if your connection is reasonably fast) he did ask directions a lot, including how to spell names. He could match up letters even though he couldn’t read. He even called his brother up and asked him for routes. (Apparently, his brother didn’t even know he couldn’t read. It surprised me, too.) It was slow and he was late a lot, but after he was fired he took a Civil Service exam. He did so badly they routed him into a reading program.
FWIW, when I drove a cab we had a cabbie who was illiterate. He was an older guy whom we all liked so we covered for him a lot. Letters were graphics to him, and when he’d call on the radio for help he’d describe them as such: “A” was the tent, “T” was the double hangman’s gallows, “W” was the spikey tits, etc. As described above, the majority of our efforts were no brainers that one learned quickly (“Take me to the Sheraton Downtown.”), so we only had to help him out on the odd suburban address. He could handle ascending/descending address numbers just fine.
I suppose it didn’t help that he was (legally) blind.
Seeing that we’ve got a few people responding that have some experience with adult illiteracy, I’d like to ask: are there primers written for adults? My mom taught me to read with The Cat In The Hat - are there non-silly basic primers for adults?