06/12/2002

Some of them carry newspapers they can't read. Some forever claim they've forgotten their glasses. Some can write their signatures and nothing else.

The camouflage of illiteracy often takes the form of sad mimicry, of doing things just like those lucky people who know what the words mean. There is such a horrible isolation in the inability to read that some people carry the trappings of literacy just to feel a little less shut out. It's a form of playing dress-up years after such things are supposed to be over.

And now we learn that they are not just a few. There are thousands and thousands of adults in Rhode Island who look at a basic employment questionnaire and feel the angry frustration of not being able to let the words take them where they need to go.

Their situation is a disgrace -- but apparently not enough of a disgrace to force lawmakers to do something about it. Maybe when the disgrace becomes a disaster there will be some concern. Maybe a task force can be appointed.

A report commissioned by the Nellie Mae Foundation and called Rising to the Literacy Challenge estimates that 47 percent of adult Rhode Islanders lack the literacy skills needed in jobs that pay enough to support a family.

Yup, 47 percent. That's damn near half, if you can read the numbers. It's a figure that comes at us as a foul splatter on the state's future. People who can't read well are people who will not help move the state ahead. They will, instead, hold it back.

But they are so easy to ignore. The very thing that makes them a problem also makes them invisible. An illiterate person is not going to ask a literate person to make a big sign, I Can't Read, for him or her to carry in front of the State House.

Literacy just isn't a sexy issue. And there is in many cases a clear disdain for those who can't read -- an easy assumption that they have somehow chosen the darkness of illiteracy over the promise of reading and learning and moving ahead.

So, pathetically little is done to change those horrible numbers.

According to the report, Rhode Island has the lowest adult-literacy level in New England, an area that in turn has an embarrassingly low level, especially considering its rich educational tradition. And Rhode Island responds to its abysmal showing by making the smallest investment of all the six states in adult education.

Meanwhile, the demands of the workplace become even more demanding, and those without basic skills fall further behind. It seems a simple matter of economics: it's cheaper to teach people how to read than to support them because they can't.

There are, within this huge problem, small pockets of true caring. Sometimes, if you look into a room at a public library, you will see two people bent over a book -- one the student, one the tutor. And if you can look long enough, you'll see the painful embarrassment of illiteracy giving way to the excitement of finally knowing what the words say. It can sometimes make a grown person cry.

So more people should become literacy volunteers; it works. Still, it can solve only a tiny part of a huge problem that will leave more and more people competing for fewer and fewer low-paying, no-skill jobs.

State officials should be ashamed at the numbers that came out in the report this week. The numbers tell of a huge failure.

Maybe the state should scratch plans to study what casino gambling does to people, and instead study what illiteracy does to people.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com