A Fifth of American Adults Can’t Read. Here’s How To Teach Them. 48 million adults in the U.S. read at or below the third-grade level. Some educators think it’s not possible to teach them. They’re wrong.
“Having worked in adult education for 20 years, I can tell you the shocking reality: There are very, very few programs that teach adults to read,” writes Volunteer Literacy Project founder Larissa Phillips. (Illustration by The Free Press. Image via Alamy)
Marian* was in her late 30s when we first met, and she asked me to help her learn to read. This was in 2007. I was the new-ish supervisor of a tutoring program in Manhattan aimed at adults who were trying to get their GED. Most students came in for help with essay-writing or algebra. But Marian, who had seen her three daughters through high school and into college, wanted to get better at reading. She told me she was at third-grade level. Once we started working together, I discovered it was more like first grade. This isn’t as unusual as you might think. Forty-eight million adults in the U.S. read at or below the third-grade level, and many of them struggle in ways that are almost impossible for a fluent reader to imagine: They can’t order off a menu, check in for a telehealth appointment, or fill out a job application. Low literacy skills correlate heavily with poverty and crime, and are associated with an estimated $2.2 trillion per year of social services, healthcare, and lost wages. This is an issue both sides of the political spectrum would love to address. The question is: How?...
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