Readable & Relevant

When I started my new career writing low literacy books for adults just a few months ago, I envisioned having a wonderful blog where I entered something new and interesting every week.  There are tens of thousands of people who blog something informative and entertaining even more often than that!

Reality has set in here.  Learning to blog and Facebook and trying to work up the steam to Twitter has been trying at best. (And yes -- I am on the north side of fifty!)  It is just too easy to spend all my time doing what I like to do and what I do best -- writing the books and getting them into print.  But -- without the social media "smarts" that thought I would have by now -- it is hard to reach other people committed to improving the reading ability of young adults and adults.

So -- I am making a public (sort of) commitment to spur me to bloggin action action.  And -- hoping that I can figure out how to link to other people interested in the same issues.  My public commitment is this -- I WILL begin with two blog entries in March and rev up my efforts to create three blog entries per month after that.  Even if I don't figure out enough to have readers to this post, I will STILL be spurred on by this public plan.

Your input is welcomed and will be appreciated.  How do you manage to create those interesting blogging articles a couple of times a week.  Are there secrets I am missing here?

Here is to great success with this fledging blogging career and an early thank you to anybody out there who can inspire me onward and upward. 

Betsy Wolff

Once I "woke up" around the age of 25, I appreciated growing up in a small town. And I mean VERY small. In Latta, S. C., there was one stoplight until I was about fourteen, when another stoplight was added at a second intersection. As teenagers, we complained about our "isolation" and dreamed up plans to conquer a larger world. One summer in the late 1960s, my crowd's favorite song was The Animals' tortured tune -- "We Got to Get out of This Place."

Now, decades later, I understand that growing up in a town of a thousand people presented some unique opportunities. As a student at Latta Elementary, Latta Junior High and Latta High School, I knew people who lived in nice, brick houses equipped with air conditioning and also people who lived in tiny "shotgun" houses where the ground was visible under rough wooden planks.  

For the first few years of school, we played together on the dusty playground. We presented Christmas pageants where one little fellow playing a shepherd might have come from a home with no food on the table, while the shepherd beside him might be looking forward to a brand new bike and a basketball from Santa. We truly stood side by side.    

By the third or fourth grade we were moving apart and along our academic tracks, which would either continue through high school and onto college (for a few of us) OR would end in the eighth or ninth grade. The eight-year-olds from homes where their Moms and Dads dropped out of school and where there had NEVER been a book beside the Bible had one chance in a million to make it out of the "low" school classes. 

Now I understand that the uneducated Moms and Dads wanted the best for their children, just like my parents wanted the best for me. But they were trapped in a cycle of poverty made worse by a very limited ability to read that diminished their children's likelihood to succeed in school, which (later) diminished their ability to find good jobs. And so it goes . . .

Now reader, please don't get me started with that old boot straps strategy. Yes, there were disadvantaged people who grabbed their boot straps and climbed out of poverty through sheer hard work with a little luck thrown in. And yes, I think everybody should work as hard as they can to get educated and employed. However, my small town upbringing showed me just enough of the "have nots world" to be convinced that getting up hungry in a house so cold the pump is frozen just isn't something every teenager can manage.

While we've done some good work improving education for children, we MUST increase our focus on ensuring young adults and adults can read well enough to succeed. Sure, there are lots of people working hard to help adults improve their literacy levels. But we need to step up to the next level . . . the level where communities come together and make adult literacy a true priority issue. Let's do everything possible to ensure there are more programs devoted to adult literacy that are reaching more adults with more effective teaching and learning strategies.

Check out the links below to learn how decades of work with less advantaged people built upon my small town experiences to increase my commitment to improving adult literacy. And, of course, let me know what you think about the issues covered here. 

Betsy Wolff

 http://www.thestate.com/local/story/1084937.html,

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/dec/25/job-seekers-receive-help/

One in SEVEN Americans is illiterate. While this number is hard to believe, it's true. The U. S. Department of Education says so. One in seven can't read well enough to complete a job application successfully . . . to understand directions on a prescription bottle . . . or to interpret a letter that could be an eviction notice.

ProLiteracy - the BIG dogs who champion the need for adult literacy funding - tells us that illiteracy costs American businesses more than $60 billion in health and safety issues and lost productivity every year. 

This $60 billion just involves the business world and is only one of the frightening ways that poor literacy skills threaten our fragile economy.

Our country's unemployment rate is at the highest level it has been in sixteen years.  Do you know which Americans are most likely to be unemployed? ProLiteracy's CEO David Harvey answers that question, stating that the "majority of the unemployed are low-skilled individuals who struggle with everyday reading." 

Poor literacy results in another gazillion or so dollars in unemployment checks and social services for families who need food, shelter and clothing but have no breadwinner. Sure these are the services needed to keep these families afloat through hard times. But shouldn't we be dramatically expanding efforts to improve literacy skills? Isn't literacy essential for families struggling to get out of poverty? And why aren't we advocating for more focus on adult literacy -- especially literacy programs that help young adults and adults get and keep jobs?

Now, you answer this question. Why aren't more of us throwing open our windows and shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."  (Don't despair if this famous line doesn't ring a bell with you. Only readers of a "certain age" or young journalism students will recognize this dramatic rant shouted by actor Peter Finch in the 1976 movie, Network.)

Some (respectful) shouting is called for here. It is time to come together and make the improvement of young adult and adult literacy a true priority. Reaching this goal will require an adult literacy movement that sweeps across the country as it sweeps across disciplines and party lines. Let's get going now!