Defining Literacy
I have always been curious as to how individuals become literate. This summer I began my questioning in a third world country, Cuba, who has between a 95 to 97 percent literacy rate. It has amazed me that many individuals can comprehend this complex phenomenon, and use it in life. I feel that literacy is something that is taken advantage of by people, imagine walking down the street and not being able to read the signs or receiving a letter in the mail, these days an e-mail, and not being able to read it; how miserable. These individuals who fit into this category are very susceptible to many disadvantages in the world. I will start off with my experiences in Cuba and some of the things that I discovered while conducting numerous hours of research, and also even more importantly talking with the people of Cuba. At the very beginning of the revolution, Fidel Castro launched a Literacy Revolution where the entire country would learn to read in a year. Castro felt the only way to run a country was to have smart and healthy citizens, and he did just that. The year of 1961 was and still is known as the year of literacy or education. Young students were taught how to teach the illiterate to read and write
while they worked for the families they were staying with. Granted Cuba has many problems starting with socialism and communism, however, there percentages in education and literacy are sky high. I was tutored for that summer before going into third grade, and at the time, hated being tutored. Through the book Help America Read by Gay Su Pinnell and Irene C. Fountas, I discovered many techniques and ideas to help children read. I had become a big person in my mind, for I could read. Reading takes practice; people must read, over and over again, to finally understand the print. Looking at the bigger picture, society runs off of literacy, without it, our country would be in a gigantic mess, there would be no freedom, rights, independence, and our country would be at the mercy of the select few who could read. Becoming literate is not just about decoding a print. It takes years for a child to build what it takes to read a sentence, put it in context, relate it to there life, apply it to the book or source that it is from, and the other numerous things that we do when reading. It means being able to apply understanding and meaning to those words, apply it to life, and of course enjoy it. There are however many things that go into this, for instance, reading from left to right, having sound/letter correspondence, visualization, word attack skills, and etcetera. I have had the privilege to work with two students whose native language is Spanish, and I am seeing first hand the struggles of these children in learning to read English. I interviewed many individuals who were both for and against the government, but one thing was unanimous throughout all, they all appreciated the literacy revolution, and some do not know where they would be if they could not read. I could do what adults did, I could have my own books, and I had succeeded.
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Acceptance Essays
