BE OUR GUEST: COSTS OF ILLITERACY HIGH TO PEOPLE AND NATION

Karen Roberts is a Cape Girardeau resident who enjoys writing and acting. She attends Southeast Missouri State University on a part-time basis.

You say you dream of visiting France, but lack both the money and time?

You want to learn more about the life of Margaret Mitchell who penned that all time epic novel "Gone With The Wind"?

Or you want to learn how to communicate better with your spouse?

The information you are seeking can be found between the covers of books.

Books! That gateway to knowledge and sheer pleasure, that is unfortunately denied to so many.

Yes, denied, though not through suppression or censorship, though both of those pose a disturbing threat in some places in America; but through illiteracy!

Illiteracy according to the `Doubleday Dictionary' is "A mistake in speaking or writing usually resulting from a lack of education."

To be denied access to the printed word that has brought me so much solace and company, so much sheer pleasure, in the best and worst of times, is to me, unthinkable.

Through so much relentless and dire unemployment, and unrelenting poverty, it is books that have brought me the only joy. How much worse those times would have been without the ability to read.

In the first grade, I experienced some initial problems with learning to read, due to learning disabilities.

After this was resolved, reading turned out to be my very best subject all throughout school. I attribute this to coming from a book loving literary family on my maternal side. My mother read to me practically from birth, so that by no older than three I could recite, word perfect "The Night Before Christmas." I have always felt that love of reading was one of the best traits handed down to me. I also believe that is the most effective way people learn the love of reading, if they are read to, as I was from early childhood. To be denied this pleasure is a real tragedy, as it is denied to millions of people.

In a 1988 book by Gary E. McCuen taken from a chapter by Jonathan Kozol, author of the National Book Award winning "Death At An Early Age"; there is stated that "a Princeton group known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that "only" 10 million adults were illiterate, but that 36 million could not read at an eighth grade level and that 70 million could not read as well as students in the 11th grade."

These are devastating statistics at best!

As Jonathan Kozol also contends in "Illiterate America": "In a country that prides itself on being among the most enlightened in the world, 25 million American adults cannot read the poison warnings on a can of pesticide, a letter from their child's teacher, or the front page of a newspaper."

"One out of every 3 American adults cannot read a book." These are appalling statistics that cost us enormously in both human devastation and near financial ruin.

According to Kozol's findings as stated in "Illiterate America," "The Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity estimated a figure of $237 billion in unrealized lifetime earnings forfeited by men 25 to 34 years old who have less than high school level skills."

That estimate, according to Kozol, made in February of 1972 requires serious updating. Direct cost to business and taxpayers are about $20 billion. Six billion dollars yearly (estimated mid 1970s) go to child welfare costs and unemployment compensation caused directly by the numbers of illiterate adults unable to perform at standards necessary for available employment.

About $6.6 billion yearly (estimate of 1983) is the minimal cost of prison maintenance for an estimated 260,000 inmates - out of a total state and federal prison population of about 440,000 - whose imprisonment has been directly linked to functional illiteracy. The prison population represents the single highest concentration of adult illiterates. While criminal conviction of illiterate men and women cannot be identified exclusively with inability to read and write, the fact that 60 percent of prison inmates cannot read above the grade school level surely provides some indication of one major reason for their criminal activity."

It is compelling when we realize how illiteracy can cost us so much in ways we might never have realized.

Kozol warns that "if some recourse to the stick and paddle that were standard operational equipment in the urban schools of 1955 and 1960 is not resolved, they will not only fail to reach their goals but they will give evidence once more that they have failed to learn from history. Violence, whether by tone of voice or wielding of a stick, has never diminished student rage but has repeatedly acted as a catalyst to turn that rage into explosive actions of self - vindication."

Instead, Kozol urges a "heightened emphasis on reading/writing skills in the early years of school and the fiscal allocation which can make this a reality offer teachers the opportunity to better use the competence which they possess without a recourse to Gestapo tactics that an understaffed and underfunded school renders almost inevitable."

It is advice America would do well to heed.