Read Write Now

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday July 29, 2005 18:08 by Miriam Cotton

Literacy is still a serious problem for too many people in Ireland

An inability to read or write may not conform to some people’s idea of a disability but whatever your view about that, few would disagree that it is a very disabling circumstance to live with. In speaking to Bernadette Collins who manages the North West Cork Adult Basic Education Service, what is shocking to hear is that by the age of just 14 or 15 many people have decided that it is already too late. What follows is a life full of serious inconveniences and problems, compounded by deep-seated feelings of embarrassment – or even shame - about not being able to read or write.

Bernadette Collins is reluctant to attribute the problem to particular causes or to look for social patterns that might help to explain why so many people end up unable to read or write. She says that ‘the reasons are as multiple as the people we meet in our work. The illness or death of a parent, family crises - there are often a number of factors involved – it’s too difficult to try to predict. What matters more is having a system in place in schools for identifying when someone is slipping through the net. If we are ever to address this problem adequately, we need, for example to have a basic literacy test for all children at the end of primary school because once they move into secondary school the problem becomes much harder to identify – and correspondingly easier to disguise. A test like this would make it possible for a support programme to be put in place to address the problem before affected secondary school children start to fall too far behind. I am often surprised at the resistance I meet to this idea and yet it would be an effective and simple means of making an impact on literacy skills.’

Unsurprisingly, Bernadette believes that there should be more emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic in primary schools and that the school curriculum is too crowded with other activities. While that is a controversial point of view from the perspective of the majority of children who are unaffected by this problem it is more understandable when you consider how widespread the scale of the problem is. According to NALA (The National Adult Literacy Agency) there are over 30,000 people nationwide participating in the Basic Literacy Service of which more than half are aged between 25 and 44 years of age. This means that at a time when our education system has prided itself in its excellence, there have been a substantial minority for whom it has not worked at all.

Along with many others in this field of work, Bernadette Collins thinks that the true number is much greater and emphasises that the severe embarrassment that is usually felt about not being able to read prevents many people from ever seeking help. ‘There is an appalling stigma attached to illiteracy’ says Bernadette ‘and a tendency to equate academic results with intelligence. People do learn to compensate in other ways and often develop amazing memories out of necessity. I know countless stories of incredible memory feats. Other strategies can help people to cope as well. One of our learners went to visit his sister in London and he managed the journey by memorising the sequence of visual references his sister gave him for the whole journey, which included a trip on the underground. When he got to the street in which she lived he found her house from a photograph she had sent him. The journey went off very successfully. People have to rely much more on their intuition about coping with every situation when they can’t access a lot of the information that the rest of us are bombarded with. It often seems to me that people have heightened senses in other respects.’

‘The means by which people disguise their situation are equally striking’ Bernadette adds ‘and this is often the saddest part of it for them. For example, one man used to go each week to his local pub. There used to be a regular scratch-card competition which this person could not participate in and so he usually went to the men’s room at that point in the evening when called on to join in. Because he was worried that people would begin to notice, he also varied his routine so that some nights he went home early or came later. People go to enormous lengths to hide their difficulty.’

Ciaran Lynch of ABLES Adult Literacy Scheme in Cork agrees. He says ‘despite the public confessional society we have nowadays where people are quite happy to go on radio and television to talk about their drug or alcohol addiction, people with literacy problems are still deeply reluctant ever to confide their difficulty to anyone. Research at Harvard University has shown that there is no correlation between literacy and intelligence and we need to get this message across. The same study shows that IQ tests are not a true measure of intellectual ability either.’ Clearly a lot needs to be done to encourage people not to feel badly about the situation and to seek help.

‘We should bear in mind’ Continues Ciaran ‘that only in 1999 the OECD put Ireland 16th out 17 countries in a survey of functional literacy skills – Poland being the only country to fare worse. The survey showed that 1 in 4 Irish people were failing to attain a level of literacy that would enable them, for example, to run their homes or hold down a job adequately.’ There were two conflicting reports in 2004 on the issue one of which claimed that Irish teenagers were among the most literate in Europe and another of which showed that the number of teenagers finishing third level education was dropping. Either way, the number of children not completing the school cycle is officially running at between 3 and 4K per year. As Ciaran Lynch points out ‘this means that over the course of a single generation, the number of people without a complete education will be approximately 50K which is a very large number of people. The social and economic problems experienced by these people needs to be borne in mind and the impact it has on society generally should not be underestimated.’

Both Ciaran and Bernadette are anxious to get the following message over to anyone reading this – who by definition will not be anyone affected but may nevertheless be able to pass the information on: there is a network of adult literacy services available in almost every part of the country. People can come forward in strict confidence and have free help with many aspects of their situation. In Dunmanway, for example, Bernadette runs an excellent service in pleasant offices where people can work with tutors on a one-to-one basis or attend a number of programmes aimed at helping people with specific issues, such as driving tests, farming accounts, communications and art and design (to name just some) under the Back to Education Initiative. There are also programmes that can easily be run for employers who may want to help their workers with literacy problems – which are often a reason why many otherwise able and intelligent people refuse promotion despite being the best person for the job. The North West Cork Adult Basic Education Service is based in Dunmanway and it covers the Castletownbere, Bantry, Dunmanway and Macroom area. Whether or not you live in this part of West Cork you can contact either Bernadette on 023 48570/mobile 086 8071478 or Ciaran Lynch on 021 455 3180 and they will be able to refer you to a centre near where you live.