R&B star Fantasia is successful in many ways despite her functional illiteracy, as was Stanley Cup-winning Montreal Canadiens head coach, Jacques Demers.
One might reach the conclusion that literacy is overrated. After all, these serve as testament that one can make millions without ever once having advanced in the Spelling Bee.
This is the kind of thinking that kills societies. It's half a two-step away from taking matches and flammable fluids to the classics.
Twenty-five million American adults are functionally illiterate, according to ABC News. That's one of every five adults in one of the richest and most well-educated countries in the world.
Many point to economic situations and poor school districts as the excuse for a lack of education. Others are quick to point out learning disabilities.
Back in Tully, I knew some heavily mentally disabled kids, too poor to buy clothes to fit their growing bodies year to year, in a school district with one of the lowest dollars-spent per student ratios in the county, who were still capable of pronouncing words they'd never seen.
It is first the responsibility of the school system to keep its attendants up to state-mandated standards. That Demers and Fantasia progressed as far into their school systems as they did is incredible, in the strictest sense of the word: unbelievable. No child should be pushed through the system. Schools that practice maintenance of self-esteem are obviously ignoring the repercussions of their actions.
The knowledge that one is not at the same level of comprehending their surroundings as others must be far worse than the embarrassment of spending an extra year or two, or even three or four, in grammar school.
Teachers and administrators need to be more forthright with parents. They need to insist that a child not at par with his or her classmates be held back and given the opportunity to learn again.
When it is the case that a student is pushed through, the next line of defense against illiteracy ought to be the family. Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles are all capable of teaching the most basic foundation of learning.
The obstacle many teachers and family members face is the obstinance of a student who does not want to learn. Fantasia defined herself to ABC as "not into education." This is when the responsibility shifts to the individual. Once the effort has been made by others to teach a person how to read, the learner must be willing to put in the work.
Illiteracy is an issue similar to obesity. Most people aren't afraid to say that it is the fault of a fat person that they are fat. Yes, there are social pressures, inherited body types and a deluge of reasons that fat people are fat, but only one person can make a fat person thinner and healthier. And I'm not referring to a personal trainer.
The ramifications of illiteracy are far larger than any measure of obesity could yield. If every person in the world was obese, we might not be able to break any more records at the Olympics, but at least we could still reason. We could still govern and we could still move forward as a society, if not very quickly by foot.
A functionally illiterate athlete is far more disabled than his or her fat bookworm counterpart. The ability to reason is directly derived from the practice of pondering of new ideas, a process largely initiated by reading.
Being able to sing or coach hockey are great talents, but what good are they if you can't read your child a bedtime story, which Fantasia has admitted she cannot. She has said this is a painful thing to her, and it should be. By finding herself satisfied to be functionally illiterate while raising a child, she is passing her embarrassment on to a new generation.
The sad thing is that the people who would be best served by reading this, can't. But this doesn't have to be a waste of ink. Read this aloud, wherever you are.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
