Five facts about literacy from the Kalamazoo Literacy Council

“The work that I’ve been doing is to help people in the community to see this as more than just a skill that people need to acquire, but more like a right that everyone should have." - Kalamazoo Literacy Council Executive Director Michael Evans. 

One in eight adults in Kalamazoo County struggle to read. This statistic is featured on the first page of the Kalamazoo Literacy Council website in bold, capital lettering. To help adults in Kalamazoo meet their literacy goals, the Kalamazoo Literacy Council is continuing their adult literacy initiative, “Everyone Needs to Read,” and not even COVID-19 can stop the program in its tenth year. 

The “Everyone Needs to Read,” initiative is the Literacy Council’s response to the need for better quality assistance for adult learners with lower literacy skills. The Literacy Council provides classes which improve language skills, English fluency, workforce literacy, health literacy, financial literacy, computer literacy, parent literacy, and much more.

“The work that I’ve been doing is to help people in the community to see this as more than just a skill that people need to acquire, but more like a right that everyone should have,” said Executive Director Michael Evans. 

Literacy Council staff, tutors, and volunteers have worked tirelessly to bring literacy assistance to the community; over 260 volunteers help over 700 learners every year. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic services have continued through virtual learning centers and laptop loaning programs. Despite all of these efforts, literacy is rarely a topic on the minds of Kalamazoo residents. There is still a significant amount of education that needs to happen around the need for literacy development, the number of people in Kalamazoo County that suffer from low literacy levels, and what the Kalamazoo Literacy Council is doing to change that.
 

Kalamazoo Literacy Council
  1. Literacy is a social justice issue.

 

Literacy statistics can be misleading. According to the US Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics, thirty-five percent of adults with low literacy skills are White, and 23 percent are Black,  However, more than 76 percent of US Americans are White, and only 13 percent are Black. When that statistic is taken into account, it is  four times more likely that an African American would struggle with literacy than someone who is White. 

“For people of color, if you combine all the factors that we may disproportionately face, literacy ends up being one of the things that you are more likely to encounter as a skills gap because of those other factors: lack of access to quality education, lack of access to employment, and a lot of other environmental factors,” Evans said.

Literacy disproportionately affects people of color, and people with a lower socioeconomic status. In a 2019 study, researchers at Edbuild found that primarily non-white school districts recieve $23 billion less funding despite serving the same amount of students. With less money being put into education, it is no wonder that people of color more often struggle with literacy.  

A person of color is more likely to struggle with low literacy skills than someone that is White, however, Evans encourages us to not view literacy as an exclusively racial issue. 

“I think that the challenge is that people try to pigeon-hole literacy onto a certain demographic of people instead of looking at it as to what it really is by itself: literacy by itself is a social justice issue,” Evans said. 

There are a broad range of reasons for people to lack literacy skills, said Evans, so it is important to view the problem as a social justice issue in and of itself, rather than a symptom of racial discrimination. 

Whether or not you agree that literacy is a racial issue, there is one thing that is certain: literacy might be a priority in Kalamazoo, but it is not a priority for the United States. Among industrialized countries, the United States ranks 16th when it comes to literacy, said Evans.

“There are countries that have lesser capacity that are exceeding us because literacy is not the same type of national priority as some things,” Evans said. 

Even without looking at rankings, the fact that the National Center for Education Statistics hasn’t conducted a National Assessment of Adult Literacy since 2003, shows this nation’s priorities.  

While the nation’s commitment to literacy remains questionable, Kalamazoo continues to remain faithful to the cause. After ten years of the, “Everyone Needs to Read,” literacy initiative, the Kalamazoo Literacy Council has drastically expanded their programming, volunteer force, and yearly learners.  

“I can’t state enough how much of a pleasure it was to land here with this organization, doing this important work for people in our community,” said Kito Jumanne-Marshall, marketing and fund development coordinator for the Kalamazoo Literacy Council.

 

  1. There are many factors that can lead to low literacy skills.

 

The road to low literacy skills has many paths. There are a lot of things that may happen to a person that puts them in the position where literacy is not something they  acquire into adulthood. 

Adults with low literacy may be in that position because school  never worked for them to begin with; the class structure wasn’t to the benefit of their learning style. Maybe circumstances kept this student jumping from school to school and they never were able to keep up. Maybe the student had a home environment that kept school from being a priority.  Not to mention students for whom English is a second language that face a whole slew of added challenges.

It could be that the cause has nothing to do with school, and that the person was incarcerated and now they need to read better to get by in the community. The Literacy Council, however, cares less about the why, and more about how to get learners to their goals. 

“One of the things that we pride ourselves on is that we meet learners where they are,” Jumanne-Marshall said. 

Along with teaching literacy skills, the Kalamazoo Literacy Council  actively works to remove barriers to their resources; they often provide child care, transportation, and even housing.  

 

  1. The illiteracy rate in Kalamazoo is higher than in surrounding areas.

 

Thirteen percent of adults over age 18 in Kalamazoo are reading at the lowest literacy rate, according to the Kalamazoo Literacy Council. Executive Director Michael Evans says that Kalamazoo’s literacy rates are better than some, and worse than some cities. 

“Each community has a different rate based on their demographics,” Evans said. 

Urban cities with greater challenges and aging infrastructures tend to have higher illiteracy rates, Evans said. For example, more suburban areas like Portage have less difficulties with literacy than Kalamazoo, while Detroit has a greater problem.

A large factor is the access to resources and demographics in each community. Kalamazoo is a  diverse community, and attracts people who are looking for the resources here. 

“I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest community when it comes to literacy,” Evans said, “but it has perhaps the greatest opportunity for addressing literacy because of what has been built in this community.”

Besides the Literacy Council, Kalamazoo has libraries, world class research institutions, and higher education facilities housed within its borders.  The Kalamazoo Promise, offering free tuition to Kalamazoo Public School graduates, is the cherry on top of it all.

“If any community has the ability to be better,” Evans said, “we have that ability.”

 

  1. Literacy affects nearly all areas of life.

 

When looking at the Kalamazoo Literacy Council’s wide variety of classes; from health literacy, to workforce, from parent literacy, to digital literacy; it is apparent that literacy is involved in everything. 

“It’s important to understand how important literacy is to achievement in general,” Evans said. “If you can’t read, how can you fill out a job application?”

Job applications aren’t even the half of it. Lower literacy skills make it difficult to pass a written drivers test, to understand healthcare information, file for unemployment, gain citizenship, succeed in education, mentor your children, and the list goes on and on. Without literacy being present in all of these areas, there are many roads that lead to poverty.

Since literacy is a root solution to  many challenges,  it is no surprise that people come to the Kalamazoo Literacy Center with a wide variety of goals. Though the staff may have their own ideas about how their resources can help, they always design their curriculum around each learners unique goals. 

“The empowerment is to have the option to choose what you want to learn,” Evans said. 

Literacy Center students pave their own path to comprehension, and leave better equipped to find success. 

 

  1. “Illiterate” is a stigmatizing term.

 

It is fairly common practice to use, “illiterate,” to describe someone who cannot read. However, the Kalamazoo Literacy Council views “illiterate,” as a stigmatizing term. Instead of labeling people for their weaknesses, Evans says it is much more useful and empowering to identify them based on their goals.

“We call them ‘adult learners,’ because it’s just a question of ‘what are you learning?’” Evans said. “The term illiterate to me feels like it is a label that does not show the strengths and the goals of our learners.”

Instead, the word “illiterate” focuses on a problem that can be easily overcome with instruction. No one wants to be labeled by what they lack. 

Illiteracy refers to a lack of understanding, and anyone can be made illiterate when put in a certain circumstance, Evans said. For some people that could look like a difficulty reading, but for others that could mean not understanding the rules at a sporting event, or being ignorant of the right times to clap at an orchestra concert. We all have gaps in our knowledge, but hardly ever does it label us. 

To combat this mindset, the Literacy Council focuses on goals. The goal could be to be a better teacher for your children, or to better understand health literacy or digital literacy, but the goal is never to be illiterate.