Literacy needs to be on our minds

As we move forward in the 21st century we must look at the many ways to fight illiteracy. The article below takes a look at literacy and its impact whether we are abled or not. The fact is we can do so much more. What if each person lend a helping hand where needed,mentor a child,volunteer by reading for a blind person,donate books to poor communities,give 5 percent of your pay to help educate someone.No gesture is too small.

Literacy for today for a better tomorrow.



One hundred years ago, individuals who could not write their names were considered illiterate. This illiteracy, which often resulted from a lack of opportunity, relegated many people to life as second-class citizens and sometimes even nonpersons. Literacy was a symbol of intelligence, and intelligence was a symbol of personhood.
Literacy involves the ability to acquire information and communicate with others. Literacy involves the ability to gain access to written information. Information which is communicated needs to be stored so that it can be refered to again later. This means that for the blind person, literacy involves all methods of acquiring, storing, and accessing information and all methods of communicating one's own ideas, opinions, and needs. Literacy includes the ability to use Braille, print, and computers as well as the ability to use readers and recorded materials to gain access to and acquire the most knowledge from information.
David Doake (1995) defines miseducation as "disempowering them (the students) and denying them the opportunity to direct and control their own learning". This definition implies that education empowers students to direct and control their own learning, to awaken their intelligence. (Doake, 1995) If this is what education is, then teachers and families must strive for this goal: to empower blind children to direct and control their learning, thus giving them the opportunity to move upward in society as full participants.
Many tools exist to enable a blind person to obtain, store, retrieve and communicate information. Not all of these tools enable the blind person to learn how to spell or how a printed page appears. These elements of literacy are foundational to the blind person's ability to communicate well with others, blind or sighted. In fact, they are so vital that their inclusion in a letter written by Helen Keller as a defense for using braille over New York Point was a convincing factor in the decision of personnel at schools for the blind to begin using American Braille; for texts written in New York Point did not contain capital letters. (Irwin, 1956).
Braille literacy has become an issue of great concern to blind adults, parents of blind children, and teachers of blind students. Authors state that an increasing number of blind people are growing up illiterate and that Braille is the answer to this problem. (Ianuzzi, 1999; Johnson, 1996; Mullen, 1990; Rex, 1989; Schroeder, 1989; Spungin, 1996; Stephens, 1989) Of particular interest are the difficulties faced by students who have low vision and can read printed letters, even if the letters must be very large and reading is very slow. Negative attitudes about braille often get in the way of the teaching and learning of braille. (Ianuzzi