Kinds of Literacy
By Taylor Stoehr (profile)

Literacy, the ability to read and write, is more than just a point of departure for Changing Lives Through Literature and "changing lives" in the Dorchester District Court. As teachers of language know, there are kinds, as well as levels, of literacy, matters of cultural savvy as well as linguistic expertise - everything from being able to read the street signs and fill out a job application to mastery of the specialized jargon of computer programming or the protocols of international diplomacy.

Every variety and grade of literacy has symbolic as well as practical value, and in our program we are more concerned with how students perceive their abilities than with assessing or upgrading them. They are often proud of their street smarts, which can include important language skills, but they are usually ashamed of their reading and writing, even though most of them finished high school and are not really "street people," but have jobs and families and can keep their heads above water in the dominant culture of paper transactions. Experience has taught them that the world contains two kinds of intelligence: the "lawyer's" mind that allows people to manipulate the system from within, and the "hustler" mentality that works the system from outside, milking it at greater risk, for less profit, but equally dependent on the ability to use words expertly. Many probationers have fantasies of living in both worlds, and actually live in neither.

In recruiting students to the program, our probation officers try to screen out anyone who doesn't have at least 12th-grade skills, but this is an impressionistic label at best. Although we've never had a student who couldn't read Frederick Douglass, many of them have trouble with Anton Chekhov, whose prose is steeped in irony and indirection, cultural nuances that can seem pale and wispy even in a good translation. We've dropped Chekhov from the curriculum recently and added a Tolstoy story instead, crafted for the newly literate Russian peasant at the turn of the last century.

Although very few of our students have read any book at all during the last five years, this is not entirely bad news. The stories they do read will make a greater impact. And by the end of the semester we count on every student taking satisfaction in knowing some famous authors like Malcolm X and Leo Tolstoy, and being able to recount the story of Frederick Douglass's life in slavery. Along with diplomas at our graduation exercises, we present each student with an impressive clothbound edition of Slave Narratives (courtesy of the Library of America), and the fact that this compilation includes Douglass's classic text means that it can go on the shelf as a reminder of accomplishment, and perhaps in some homes, that volume will foster important bonds between fathers and children. Oh, yes, I've read that. You should try it.

So reading has symbolic significance for us, as well as its practical relevance as a jumping-off place for classroom discussions. Writing has even more emotional weight for our students, because there is a tangible product involved, something created and objectified that feels personal to its author, a measure of worth. But this cuts two ways: you can feel bad as well as good about what your thoughts look like on paper.

For our program, both outcomes are opportunities. We want people to be proud of themselves, and so we praise them, and publish their writings for others in the class, which is always a big event. Even more important, however, is the shame that inevitably surfaces on that first night when we ask everyone to write in a blue book. It's got little to do with what they actually write, and everything to do with sitting in a classroom with a blank page in front of you, which you must cover with your own handwriting while a teacher stands at the blackboard waiting.

Bringing probationers back to such a desperate moment, anywhere from two to fifty years since their last encounter, is guaranteed to call up many of the old feelings that were crucial, back then, in determining their fate. Consider, for instance, the indelible mark literacy training left on two of our probationers:

"In school I had this reading teacher, in her 30s, well-pampered and taken care of. She was the nicest, easiest person to understand and get along with. I get all my righteousness from her. She made me feel good about being good."

"I would say I'm a weak person, and only because I really never learned how to read or write like others, which has kept my self-esteem down for many of years! And I really don't know how to spell. I believe if I was strong like others that really don't do anything with the smarts they have ... Me, I feel like I was let out somewhere along the line."

Most men in trouble with the law have been poorly educated and possess limited vocational skills, and now their criminal records are likely to prevent them from getting any job that is attractive or a step up. Improving their literacy skills might help a bit, but if the aim is to make a confident writer, we're talking about years of effort. And in an ordinary school environment, this would involve constant reminders of a student's failings, correcting him over and over, something very few egos can handle. Moreover, by this time, a probationer's failures in school have spread inextricably into every part of life. Difficulties in school coincide with problems at home and trouble with the authorities so that it is hard to say which comes first; but the usual pattern, established by middle school, is that every act of defiance, every avoidance, every mistake and punishment has ramifications through the boy's whole life whether it originates in school, family, or the streets. Soon there is no real distinction to be made.

"I'm too old to learn" is one response we get from our students, and for most of them, it is certainly too late to take advantage of the elaborate indoctrination process that prepares the young for a place in our social order. Some finished high school, some didn't, but almost no one got what he needed to fit in - neither the middle-class information and literacy skills that make up most of the curriculum, nor the habits of prudence, diligence, and conformity that are the true "social studies" of American classrooms. Without these, as one of our students says, children "will lag behind and somehow fall through the cracks."

Who among our probationers could realistically be expected to improve his lot by going to college? I'm not asking who should have the right to it, only who among our students has a chance, at this stage of life, of getting some advantage from further schooling?

Each of our classes includes a few men in their late teens or early twenties who happen to have no one depending on them financially, no children of their own, but who do have a place to live and food on the table, parents or grandparents supporting them, a mother saying to her son, Stay in school, keep out of trouble, make something of yourself. Mothers are the last ones to give up. Here's what one eighteen-year-old young man says about his situation:

"I go through a crisis with my mother every day, always talking about getting a job, going to college, or moving out of the house. But now I have a part-time job, and I'm going to school part-time, and my mother ain't harassing me no more. And that makes me want to do more for myself."

Although Anthony may be lagging behind, this young man hasn't yet fallen through the cracks. For him and others like him, college may offer a way out of the fate that older probationers in our classes have met. The key is really one of timing and luck: having come to a crisis early in life (Anthony has been stealing cars) and recognizing that his future is going to be determined by his next step (a choice at least partially in his own hands), the probationer of eighteen or twenty years may have enough ability, desire, and support to change direction and devote himself to some pursuit that will give more shape to his world and new ideals to live up to. School is one way of nurturing such a choice.

Another sort of student for whom further schooling might be a good idea comes from the opposite extreme and faces a much more desperate moment of truth. Actually, we've only encountered one such case in all the years we've run the program, but his example may shed some light on our attitude toward literacy, as well as providing a sense of the limits of our ability to help students think about school. One semester, a functionally illiterate man slipped past our twelfth-grade competency gate because his probation officer thought the course would be good for him. He could read Frederick Douglass, but only with great effort, going over each page again and again, puzzling it out; and he had a terror of writing so overwhelming that he could not produce a single sentence on his own.

Arriving early the first night, Jason sat in the front row and began talking nonstop to no one in particular. When we explained the reading and writing requirements, he began to fidget, and finally blurted out: "I can't do that."

"Oh, sure you can!" we replied, assuring him that homework needn't be more than an honest attempt to say what he thinks in a few sentences. Jason signed his name on the attendance sheet, but he sat staring at his hands while everyone else wrote a brief class exercise that night.

The following week started with his literally running into the room, out of breath, late. He had barely gotten into his seat when we began to hand out blue books and said to him with a smile, "Okay, time to write." At once Jason began to cough, a strange, dry cough brought on, we supposed, by his run from the bus stop in the cold weather. It sounded like it would work itself out in a minute, but Jason jumped up and left the room. The class had begun writing when he returned from the water fountain, quickly gathered up his belongings, and hurried out the door, saying he had to go home, he was sick. Early the next day he went to the courthouse and confessed his terror to his probation officer. He could not write.

At our third meeting, we took him out in the hall for a one-on-one session, Jason dictating while one of our facilitators wrote for him. But when handed the pencil, Jason froze. His immobility/flight reaction had nothing to do with the ability to form letters and words. He could sign his name and a few things like that, so long as it wasn't "writing" - just as stutterers can often sing or recite poems, words not "theirs," with fluency. What Jason couldn't do was put his thoughts directly on paper. We decided to keep him in the class anyway, taking the pressure off by telling him to concentrate on reading, which he did conscientiously.

But Jason really does need to learn "how to write." His panic reaction in our class was not new to him. On the contrary, the demand for words on paper is almost a daily occurrence, and Jason's diversionary tactics, practiced for forty years, have taken over his entire character with disastrous consequences. His irritating loquaciousness, for instance, was obviously a smokescreen of words to hide his wordlessness. After we made it clear that he would not have to write, he stopped babbling and his face cleared. Behind his anxious mask, Jason turned out to be an intelligent and likable person, however devious and self-thwarting.

After learning to trust us a bit, Jason asked for a list of adult literacy programs and promised to join one. His was a case where we felt that further education made sense, and his probation officer resolved to push him in that direction. But Jason's fear and evasiveness were stronger than his will to change his life or our determination to help him do it.

Although our course seemed to bring out the best in him, he kept stalling for the rest of the semester and never did sign up or even make a phone call inquiring about a literacy program. Within a few weeks of graduation, we heard that Jason had been in front of the judge again, for driving with his license suspended - not the first time - for which he would probably spend sixty days in jail. Would his resolve to learn to write be forgotten now, or would he build up his courage while doing his time? Maybe Jason is too old to learn, but I wish he could spend those sixty days in a literacy group instead of the workhouse.

It's not easy to diagnose the true core of Jason's pathology, but getting past his writing anxiety would probably bring an avalanche of other changes, some of them hard to cope with, but freeing him from the cycle of shame, flight, and transgression he's now trapped in. Getting a decent job might be possible - he's been out of work for a year - and that in itself would lead to other breakthroughs. No more appearances in court? The odds are against him, but it's not an impossible fantasy. On the other hand, there's no way of knowing whether our pushing him so hard, urging him to face his humiliation head-on, might not have been a factor in his latest arrest and sentencing.

In any event, Jason's case illustrates some of the ambiguities in judging whether to steer a probationer toward more schooling. How desperate is the need? Would school really help? Can the probationer afford the time and effort? What about the pain of repeating old failures and facing new humiliations? Does a man like Jason dare to give up his defenses and become a vulnerable child again? Worse even than the shame, he exposes himself to the risk of a final defeat, inadequacy confirmed once and for all.

Whenever we take it upon ourselves to encourage a probationer to go back to school, whether he has a real chance like Anthony, or simply a desperate need like Jason, we should remember that for them the cost of failure may be one they can't afford to pay. I'm not saying that it's never worth it, only that it's a step not to be taken lightly. Most of our students fall between the cases of Anthony and Jason. With those in the middle, it's probably better to concentrate on the literacy skills they already possess, a complicated mix of street smarts and a colloquial eloquence available among friends and family. To exercise these in a public setting like our classroom, where we talk about serious concerns that affect their lives, is the best training in literacy we can afford them. If reading and writing can provide a context for such conversations, so much the better.

The important things for facilitators to keep in mind are those I've emphasized here: that literacy is a cultural competency, broader than mere reading and writing, and that our students come with different literacy skills and needs, not always well served by traditional schooling practices. Rather than setting out with an agenda that assumes lack of competence, let us begin by giving as much scope and play as possible to the powers of speech our students already have, and encourage them to exercise these powers with more self-conscious confidence, in the circumstances where they actually find themselves, before asking them to think about their weaknesses or what more schooling might do for them.