New book indicts U.S. education system

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SOCIALISȚ ACTION JUNE 1987 15 Illiterate America, by Jonathan Kozol, Anchor Press, Doubleday 1985, $15.95, 270 pp.

"We want one class of persons to have, a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. You cannot train them for both... You must make a selection."—Woodrow Wilson, January 1909 Jonathan Kozol's latest book, "Illiterate America," offers harrowing statistics on the plight of illiteracy in the United States. He is the author of the book "Death at an Early Age," which documented the failure of education in the Boston school system in the early 1960s. The book caused an uproar. Twenty-four years later "Illiterate America" has done the same.

In the past, the U.S. Department of Education and the Bureau of the Census gauged illiteracy by the results of questionnaires. This method wasn't very precise since there were no actual figures to go on. And the few studies that did exist did little more than establish "simple literacy." A more in-depth study was needed.

In 1973, the University of Texas, under the direction of Dr. Novell Northcutt, conducted a study on Adult Performance Level (APL).

Using Dr. Northcutt's standards, the U.S. Office of Education calculated during the early 1970s that 57 million Americans did not have the skills required to perform most basic tasks. Twenty-three million didn't have the skills to perform at all, while the remaining 34 million had marginal skills.

All in all, the number of functionally illiterate people in the United States add up to 60 million—well over one third of the adult population.

The largest number of illiterate adults are white, native-born Americans. In proporton to population, however, the figures are higher for Blacks and Hispanics than for whites.

Sixteen percent of white adults, 44 percent of Blacks, and 56 percent of Hispanic citizens are functionally or marginally illiterate. Forty-seven percent of Black 17year-olds are functionally illiterate. (That figure is expected to climb to 50 percent by 1990.)

Fifteen percent of recent graduates of urban high schools read at less than sixth-grade level. One million teenage children between 12 and 17 cannot read above the third-grade level. The list is endless.

What is to be done?

Most of Kozol's book takes to be done.

In contrast to his biting expose of the failure of American education, Kozol's proposals to eradicate the problem are disappointing. One proposal cited is to create a volunteer corps of students and senior citizens who help teach illiterates to read.

Cuba and Nicaragua have done this with great success. But the virtual eradication of illiteracy took place simultaneously with the revolutionary transformation of their societies.

Kozol offers essentially band-aid-type solutions to a problem that is deeply embedded in capitalist society. As long as we have a capitalist society that places profits before human needs, illiteracy will never be eradicated.

What is needed is a restructuring of the economy which would provide funding for education. We need to make education a national priority.

Federal funding for education can be raised by taxing the corporate profiteers, the banks, and the rich-and by using the $289-billion war budget for education and other social services.

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