A man stares at a sign posted on the door to the local construction company office. On the sign are the pink reflective letters OPEN imprinted on a black background. But this man stares at it rather blankly. He wonders if he should go in... His decision is made up when he considers his situation. Unemployed, nearly broke, and always hungry, he has no choice. He walks in and asks the man standing behind the desk for an application. After handing him an application, the man behind the desk informs him that there are no positions available at this time and that he should return at a later date. Disappointed, the man leaves quickly. Why did all these signs look alike? If it had only said HELP WANTED... But he couldn't tell either way. Oh well, he would get somebody to help him fill out the application and he would turn it in anyway.

To understand how desperate the need for a solution to the illiteracy problem is, one must understand some of the facts behind the problem. "Twenty-five million American adults cannot read.... An additional 35 million read only at a level which is less than equal to the full survival needs of our society. Together, these 60 million people represent more than one third of the entire adult population." (Kozol p.4) In other words, twenty-five million people are at the level where the man who could not read the sign is at and 35 million are at the level where they cannot read a technical manual and comprehend its meaning. Sixteen percent of white adults, 44 percent of blacks, and 56 percent of Hispanic citizens are functional or marginal illiterates. This ranks the US forty-ninth among 158 member nations of the UN in terms of the literacy level. (Kozol p.4) In reality, the numbers may be larger since this data is probably not accurate. And what does this cost businesses, communities, and individual taxpayers? According to Kozol, individuals may be losing hundreds of billions due to unrealized lifetime earnings. Businesses and taxpayers lose billions due to the different aspects of maintaining illiterate citizens.

All in all, if we consider these statistics, wouldn't it seem to be of some worth to have these businesses, communities, and individuals pay less in the long run by educating their fellow coworkers and citizens? Thus, these newly-literate citizens could then become contributing members of society, decreasing the amount of money that is essentially going down the drain... The US itself would benefit in that there would be a decrease in the unemployment level. With the ability to read comes more employment opportunities, since these workers can now read and comprehend the technical manuals. But why is it that these people cannot read in the first place? And why is it that a large concentration of the people that cannot read are minorities, even in today's society?

Public schools - the most essential and fundamental part of education in America. The classrooms of America's schools are where the education of American students must take place. Students must have the ability to read and not just "get by" with inadequate skills. Yet this does seem to be the case. More and more today it seems that most of the education that the children and young adults are acquiring occurs outside of the classroom, in the halls of the school and in the streets. The education acquired is not done so by reading books... And the victims of this have tended to be minorities, especially the Hispanic and Black minority. In fact, statistics show that both the Hispanic and Black minority read at a lower level than their White counterparts. (Applebee p. 11) The reasons for this are many.

Considering Blacks as a specific example, John Ogbu suggests that in the schooling of Black youths, White perceptions have lead to the providing of an inferior education to these youths. He says that this, in turn, has generated (among Blacks) "disillusionment about schooling and a lack of perseverence toward schoolwork; they lead to survival strategies that require knowledge, attitudes, and skills which may be incompatible with school requirements." (p.149) He also suggests that a mistrust of White education contributes to this. This is a major problem that stems from history when Blacks were brought over as slaves. Thus, there must be something that can be done to repair this damage and these attitudes so that Blacks are more willing to trust the school system. A key to decreasing the illiteracy level is, of course, proper schooling. But this may only occur if the students are willing to learn to read! Hence , the question becomes, "How do we make all students (not just Black students) attain the ability as well as the motivation to read?"

As Hirsch put it, "During the recent decades Americans have hesitated to make a decision about the specific knowledge that children need to learn in school." (p.9) Thus, a key to getting the motivation into the students would probably be to make sure that the schools have the proper curriculum and the support required to support the students in every aspect of their lives. This is of course, not entirely possible, but many small attempts at correcting this problem by piping money into doing this would definitely help. Businesses should place a large responsibility upon themselves to accomplish this. This is because many of the workers that they will be hiring in the future will have attended public schools. As stated before, businesses lose if they higher an illiterate worker.

In the past, having the ability to read was not necessarily required by one's job. And in fact, it was discouraged by the upperclass since, "expansion of literary skills is (and was) often viewed as a means for poor and politically powerless groups to claim their place in the world." (Scribner p.11) But this is an outdated view in today's society as businesses try to wrest the purchasing dollars from the consumer and away from other businesses. Hence, all businesses require that their workers be literate so that this mission can be carried out efficiently and inteligently. So it would be of some value for the big companies to assure that the workers they hire are literate. And what better way is there to do this than to assure that their workers have had a good high school diploma? They could accomplish this by offering incetives to local schools or merely by giving free tours to the students to show them what "real work" is all about.

Another possible solution would be to assure that the children get a good start in school. The National Assessment of Educational Progress' Nation's Report Card shows that a good start in school has been attributed to increased reading proficiency in minority students. (Applebee p.13) One way to accomplish the reading skill required at that age is to assure that children are taught cultural texts rather than "developmental texts." (Hirsch p.27) Children require the background knowledge so that they are able to learn on their own. Businesses could assure that the children get this knowledge by allowing the workers to get off work to attend to their children or by offering incentives if the parents were to place their children in private schools.

Although illiteracy is a large problem in the US, there are many ways that this problem can be reduced - to destroy the roots of the problem, so to speak. It can probably never truly go away, but there are many things that can be done. Assuring that children get the proper education and not merely slip through the educational system is one way to decrease this level of illiteracy. Another is to eliminate the barriers lying between minority education and White education. Most of these barriers are self-imposed in the age we live in, so it is a matter of changing the way people think. Money is one of the keys to this. Businesses, large communities, and even individuals can provide this money. And even with the money, reducing the level of illiteracy will take a long time as children must grow and take the positions of power that their illiterate parents never had or could ever dream of having. Illiteracy will never disappear completely. But it can be reduced to a much more manageable level through smart solutions to big problems.