Reading, Education, and Freedom: First Cousins

This column appears in the September 2011 issue of the Excelsior.

Once you learn to read,
You will be forever free."
 – Frederick Douglass

Former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass knew the importance of reading from a personal perspective. He remembered not knowing how to read, and what a dramatic change it had made in his life to be able to read . . . and to do so well.

Were Douglass alive today, he would be a big literacy supporter. Douglass understood that one’s ability to get the daily news, absorb the Bible’s teachings, and help one’s child learn through text were all dependent upon one’s ability to read well.

Were he alive today, Douglass would also know what many of us have said: There is little ability to rise economically, to an extent that one can support oneself, without reading well. When many of us were growing up, one could earn a good living without being a strong reader. No longer. Today, reading well is critical to one’s success in school, which in turn is vitally important to one’s success in the workplace.

In a country in which almost one in five adults is functionally illiterate, in which no area with significant poverty has ever become a literacy community, we aspire to be that literacy community, a community in which all children are capable of reading and writing well. To this end, we are redoubling our efforts this school year, in both the school district and community, to strengthen reading and writing skills among both children and adults. Below are a few of these expanded efforts this fall:

• Parent education classes for the parents of newborns and the parents of 3-4 year olds. We will be expanding classes beyond our successful but short summer pilots at New Genesis on the north side, Open Door Ministries on the east side, and the Hispanic American Council on the south side.

• Family literacy classes. We will be expanding classes in family literacy beyond our similarly successful but brief summer pilots at the above sites and at the Boys & Girls Club on the south side.

• Kalamazoo Public Library. We will be working with the community’s outstanding public library to expand library usage among our children and families.

• After-school programs. We will be working with after-school program providers to infuse literacy – reading and writing – into children’s after-school programs.

• Summer literacy and Reading Recovery. We will be working to fundraise to expand our successful summer literacy and Reading Recovery programs to a wider circle of children.

Frederick Douglass died in 1895, 30 years after the Civil War ended in 1865, 32 years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863, but long before Bernard Lee, a young civil rights activist, came onto the scene in 1961. Like Rosa Parks a few years before him, Bernard Lee stood up by sitting down, in Lee’s case as part of the sit-in movement.

In stressing his resolve, Lee said, “If it takes us from now until 1965 to bring about what was decided in 1865, we will do it. Education without freedom is useless.” To his steadfast words, we would similarly add today, “Freedom without education is useless as well.”