Illiteracy and Death in a Small Town
August 21, 2007
What difference does it make if someone can read? For those of us who are literate that may seem to be a silly question. It’s hard to imagine not being able to read and write.
But I’m talking here about the difference reading makes beyond taking care of the day-to-day activities of living. I’m thinking more broadly than that.
I was especially interested in an opinion piece published recently in the Birmingham News. In it, David Nichols, a member of the Shelby County Board of Education, a former Shelby County teacher and administrator, and a veteran law enforcement administrator, speaks to the issue through the lens of the murder in 1980 of a notable, elderly citizen of Montevallo. Two young men were convicted of the crime. Victor Kennedy was executed for the crime in 1999. Darrell Grayson was put to death last month.
Nichols notes that up to 70% of Alabama’s prisoners are illiterate. I’ve been told recently that number is easily higher. He asks what difference might it have made if either or both of these young men had not been failed by the education system. Would their employment opportunities and their self-esteem fared better if they could read?
This is not an unimportant question. The answer has impact on real lives. I have lived in Montevallo for over twelve years. I can tell you that this and many other questions echo here a generation after this awful death.
Inadequate education has a terrible impact on poverty. And we all suffer as a result - in many ways.
Growing Up Healthy Too
"We have breakfast and lunch programs that deal with nutrition, but the greatest challenge is helping those families that work hard all day and are so tired by the time they get home, there's not much left for the children. Helping those children directly has got to be the focus."
That’s Tuscumbia Superintendent of Education Joe Walters, quoted in a Times Daily article about obesity and the role schools play, especially as regards meals and available snacks at schools. The article takes another look at the recent Kids Count study. That report indicates that between 34 percent and 38 percent of Alabama children from ages 10 to 17 are in the overweight or obese categories.
I’m guessing that many of those children, of course, are also poor. Being able to afford a healthy diet is one of the major challenges facing poor families. It just costs more to eat well. Since 52% of Alabama’s public school children qualify for free and reduced meals at school, our education system has an opportunity to address the issue.
By the way, the 2000 census shows that 18.6% of Colbert County’s children ages 1-17 live below the poverty threshold. You can check for those kinds of statistics in APP’s interactive Picture of Poverty database, searching the state as a whole or by Individual County.
Four Weddings and A Funeral…and Poverty
It turns out that the guy who wrote the Four Weddings movie (Notting Hill, too) has a burning passion about addressing poverty.
In an article from Christian Post, Richard Curtis says, “I can only really do one thing well. I can write comedy. But I'll ruthlessly do the thing that I do to try to rectify this general injustice.”
Seems that the Sermon on the Mount is a big part of this man’s inspiration, even though he is apparently not a believer. Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek megachurch says, “This was a very disturbing interview for me to do, because I'm interviewing a guy who doesn't even have his faith figured out and he's doing 100 times more work than I am to alleviate the suffering in this world.”
The article goes on to say that Curtis holds that “if all the churches in the world took a central stance on the issue and on their ‘God-given duty,’ the goal (halving global poverty) could really be achieved within the next decade.”
Pastor Hybels conducted that interview, and also another with Jimmy Carter, a somewhat controversial choice it appears. Click here for that article, also from the Christian Post.
In the interview, also conducted by Hybels, Carter says the rich-poor gap is the greatest challenge faced by the world in the new millennium. That challenge is great because, he says, "It's naturally inconvenient for us to break the cocoon which every human being builds around oneself because we naturally want to be with people like us, [who] look like us, speak the same language, sing the same songs, worship God the same way.”
Watch for an upcoming announcement about APP’s Faith Initiative, an effort to empower faith leaders to address poverty all over our state. The above comments inform this effort.
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