Lieracy important for immigrants as well as local residents

Teaching immigrants - legal or illegal - to read and write is quite a challenge as they try to learn English.
A recent Associated Press story from Kansas City, Missouri, related the problem of adult education teachers who are finding themselves starting from scratch. Working with uneducated immigrants and refugees from conflict regions of Africa and rural areas of Mexico and Central America who are flocking to the United States is challenging.
An estimated 400,000 legal and 350,000 illegal immigrants are unable to read or write even in their native language, according to a July 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington think tank.
It’s easy to understand why immigrants struggle if they aren’t literate in their native languages, said Barbara Van Horn, co-director of the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Pennsylvania State University.
“They haven’t made the connection between their oral language and the fact that what is printed, those letters represent sounds that are used to make up words. They don’t have that basic understanding of what literacy is about,” she said.
Service providers first began noticing large numbers of unschooled immigrants after the Vietnam War, when throngs of Laotian Hmong refugees arrived with no traditional written language.
The Migration Policy Institute has reported the number of foreign-born adults with less than a fifth-grade education increased 25 percent from 1.74 million in 1990 to 2.18 million in 2000. However, it had dipped 2 percent to 2.12 million by 2006.
Added to the problem of having mixed classes of nonliterate students and those who have a degree of literacy is the pressure of government regulations.
In order to maintain some reasonable control over the expenditure and proper use of tax monies, federal and state governments often mandate rules that are far different from those needed to meet the problems encountered.
The recent number of local residents who have earned a Certificate of General Educational Development (GED), brought the total to 114 for the year, Everett Learning Opportunity Center Adult Education Coordinator Carol Ergenbright said.
Some scored high enough to be eligible for a state lottery scholarship.
While we place a high priority on a college education, it is at least equally important that we try to insure the literacy of the entire adult population with hopefully a GED or high school diploma.
The GED tests students in social studies, reading, writing and math, and they are no snap. Ergenbright says 40 percent of the high school seniors could not pass the test.
Education, combined with a willingness to work, can help us as a nation and a community to reduce poverty and open new doors of opportunity. Literacy is essential to healthy operation of our democratic form of government and to maintaining a high standard of living.
Can you imagine what a cold world it is for an illiterate person?