Of Illiteracy

Looks like I'll experience my first typhoon either May 29th or 30th. It's supposed to land here in Japan with winds up to 100 mi/hr. It will be an interesting experience to be sure. I'm thinking of going to invest in a poncho.

I saw an article the other day from the National Institute for Literacy that was talking about literacy rates in the US. Recently, they had done a survey and found that the rate of functional illiteracy in Detroit was 47% in adults. I'd like to be able to give some excuse for why that might be, but I can't. It's an absolutely abysmal number of people who can't get by in their daily lives with simple reading tasks. This includes things like reading labels in stores and on medicine, reading instructions, and reading signs. I have no clue how or why the number is so high.

And you know, before I came to Japan, I wondered the same thing. I asked myself, how could people possibly get by being illiterate? While I was in Egypt, unable to read even the Arabic alphabet, I was struck by how difficult it was to just get around. Yet, I was only there for a couple weeks, and so, I learned the words that I needed to know and nothing more. In Japan, where I've been living for almost a year now, it's been different. I am, for all purposes, illiterate.

I never thought I'd say that. I never thought I'd come right out and say, "No, I can't read" until I came here. And then, I've realized just how difficult it is, but also how easy it is to just learn a few words to get by with your daily life. It's not hard to learn the simple directions and kanji. Children do so every day in school. The problem comes when you go to an area where you've never been before, and you're surrounded by characters that you've never seen before or that have multiple readings. There are Japanese who come to different cities and say, "How do you read that? It has more than reading." This begs the answer, what is the literacy rate here then? And that's what's so impressive. Japan is praised by numerous literary societies and studies of having a literacy rate at or above 99 percent.

Although of course there are some people who will be the exception, and no one knows all of the kanji. That's just impossible. There are an endless number of them. But in comparison to Detroit where you have such a huge number of individuals who are functionally illiterate, I find this amazing. Japanese is not an easy language to learn. You have thousands of kanji and two alphabets to learn. Within those kanji, there are an multiple readings of most of them. Some of them are old and rarely used, but yet, most people still understand either how to pronounce them or what they mean, and this I feel is something worthy of praise.

Yet, how is it that American English with the 26 letter English alphabet has so many individuals who can't read? Although these are purely personal, I feel that there are reasons for this. Unlike Japanese, English is not a phonetic language. We have ways of spelling things that for children and non-native speakers seem counter-intuitive. As you learn the spelling rules, it becomes much easier, but there are still times, and especially after I've come to Japan, that I've noticed that I cannot spell things. As an adult with a college education, that at times is frightening. If I find it difficult, how can I possibly expect non-native speakers to grasp those rules? English also has many more sounds than Japanese. This means that there is just more phonetic sounds to learn. Third, although I find English grammar strange, when I've spoken with English language learners, they disagree. Many actually argue that it's easier than their native languages. Therefore, this can't necessarily be the problem. With any language, there are easy and hard things. This depends on an individual's previous linguistic knowledge. Despite all of these reasons, none of these really approach the main problem: What is it that's contributing to this plague of illiteracy?

After much thought, this is the reason that I've decided upon - it must be an education issue. I know there are individuals who will blame the teachers or even the schools,but this is a bigger problem. If it was simply the teachers or the schools, I feel like the problem would be more widespread. But no, in my opinion, I feel like this is a governmental issue. The No Child Left Behind Act was supposed to prevent problems like this from occurring, but it backfired and penalized schools that needed help the most by withholding funding. Instead of this, these schools need to receive more funding, and it needs to be country-wide. Unfortunately, to do this, money is needed. But, you know, so much money is spent on other things when it would be better spent elsewhere. There are those who will argue with me and say, "But my child goes to private school" or  "My child is home-schooled. I don't think I should pay for this." And to those individuals, I understand. I do. You spend a lot of money on those institutions, but at the same time, this isn't an option. If we want Americans to be competitive globally in the future, they have to understand their own language before they can possibly start learning a foreign language. These individuals who cannot read now are not stupid, not by a long shot. They've learned how to live without a skill that seems as simple as breathing to the rest of us, and so, that's how we know they're not only adaptable but clever in their adaptability. They simply need the education.

Although not everything should be exchanged between cultures, this is one of those things that the States can learn from Japan. It's time for Americans to stop spending money on useless things, or things that we want but don't necessarily need. Give up on the idea of that new flat-screen TV and donate a few dollars to schools.