Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i8KJCIl13232; Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:12:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:12:18 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <146.34486fba.2e808496@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: MWPotts2001@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2841] LD and Literacy--do you agree? X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5030 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Status: O Content-Length: 2774 Lines: 61 Colleagues, The following article appeared in the Orlando, Florida Sentinel on August 25, 2004 All the Best, Meta Potts, Moderator 4-EFF Learning disabilities often cause illiteracy By Jeff Kunerth Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer More than 44 million Americans are like Gerald Hall -- they can barely read. They can identify letters, read some words, sign their names, fill out a date on a form and decipher a single piece of information within a paragraph. True illiteracy -- the total inability to read or write -- is so rare these days that educators refer to those such as Hall as "low-literate adults." Within Gerald Hall's life span, the nature of illiteracy in the United States has changed. Sixty years ago, most illiterate adults were people who were uneducated. Today, adult literacy often deals with those who have learning disabilities. Gregory Smith, executive director of the Florida Literacy Coalition, estimates that half of all adults enrolled in literacy programs have learning disabilities. Others suggest it could be as high as 80 percent. Back in the 1970s, when Hall was enrolled in the Adult Literacy League, illiteracy programs used a one-size-fits-all approach that taught adults to read the same way schoolchildren learn. "The old ways of working with the adult illiterate who are learning disabled will not work. A person with a reading disability does not have the neurological makeup to learn reading the way others do," says Denton Kurtz, executive director of the Learning Disability Institute in Winter Park. It took another 20 years before there was a movement to change the way adult literacy is taught. Newer methods recognize learning disabilities as a primary cause of illiteracy. Called Bridges to Practice and started in 1999 by the federal National Institute for Literacy, the program trains volunteer tutors and adult basic-education teachers how to recognize a student with learning disabilities and then tailor the instruction to the person's ability. "We use a multilayered approach with many different materials and training for tutors to see which way the learner learns best," says Joyce Whidden, executive director of the Adult Literacy League in Orlando. The United States, in which public education is free and compulsory, has been slow to recognize that millions of Americans who are not functionally literate are neither uneducated nor stupid. "There aren't many people left in our country who haven't been to school. Something else is going wrong. That is the issue," says June Justice Crawford, national program director for Bridges to Practice. "To me, this is a problem America has to face. These are people of high intelligence, but we treat them like second-class citizens."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Dec 23 2004 - 09:45:28 EST