4/16/2023 0 Comments Fast byword for kidsBut Carlos and Lissette are children of the Bronx, and finished high school with what was then known as a certificate of attendance and is now called an Individualized Education Program diploma. PEOPLE sometimes stereotype illiterate adults as children of the boondocks who left school to help on farms. Wernikoff pointed out were criticized years ago, but the city school system is a ship that takes ages to turn around. “We believe you shouldn’t have to classify a child to give them the instructional help they need,” she said. More than half of all special-education students now spend most of their day in mainstream classes, and are pulled out or assigned to work with special-education teachers who go to the classroom. Klein, new efforts were begun to step in as early as kindergarten with children struggling to read. But she said that four years ago, under Chancellor Joel I. Linda Wernikoff, who runs the city’s special education program, with 180,000 students, acknowledged that the program had been troubled until recent years by misclassification of children and ineffective approaches. Too many learning-disabled students, she said, are exposed to teachers who play down these mechanics and believe students can pick up the techniques merely by delving into literature. Kelly favors the phonics approach to teaching reading, which focuses on the mechanics of sounding out letter combinations. Ruby Washington/The New York Timesįor learning disabled adults, Dr. Syllable cards are one of the tools that Jaman Welch, a teacher at Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities in the Bronx, uses to help students. But an even more harmful shortcoming is that students in the classes find it difficult to get adequate treatment because teachers are not fully trained, cannot keep order or are wedded to techniques that may not work. Some critics assail special education classes, in which those with learning handicaps like dyslexia constitute the largest proportion, arguing that some students may be classified as disabled not because of a specific handicap but because they are simply too much trouble to teach. Some illiterate adults say they are relieved knowing they have a disability otherwise people might think they are stupid. Imagine yourself as an American in Athens having to find an out-of-the-way street in an emergency except that Greeks understand you’re just a hapless tourist. But many, like Carlos and Lissette, have learning disabilities, and though they may have received diplomas, seldom had teachers along the way who could knowledgeably help them overcome their handicaps.Įxperts estimate that up to 80 percent of illiterate adults have a learning malfunction, unable to decode, assimilate or remember information, and that often the problem was either undiagnosed or improperly treated.įor adults, illiteracy is painful, often depressing. Some are immigrants who will master English eventually. The federally sponsored National Assessment of Adult Illiteracy, in its last survey in 2003, estimated that 14 percent of adults are functionally illiterate: unable to read job applications, bus schedules, labels on the drugs they take. “What I was supposed to learn in kindergarten, I’m learning here,” was the way Carlos genially put it.Ĭarlos, 51, and Lissette, 41, are casualties of New York’s public school system, though there are plenty of Carloses and Lissettes in every corner of the country. When the teacher wrote the word “margin” on the board, Carlos thought it was a substitute for butter. He had them break apart the words “construction” and “engineering” into syllables so they could make a stab at deciphering them. That frustrating deficiency in their lives explains why they and four other illiterate adults were recently in a classroom at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, struggling to read grade-school words like “muzzle,” “station” and “formula.” Their teacher, Jaman Welch, reminded them of rules like c making an s-like sound before e, i, and y. “They ask you ‘What’s this word?’ and you have to make some kind of excuse like ‘I got to go to the bathroom,’ ” Carlos said. finished high school decades ago but are often stumped reading menus, tabloid newspapers and street signs, and humiliated when nephews and nieces ask for homework help.
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