He worked all his life, paid for a house, bought a car every three years and raised three kids, but Louis Brach (not his real name) suffered for years from a problem that, like alcoholism, is shrouded in secrecy, shame and conspiracy.
Like 45,000 other people in Chicago`s affluent northern suburbs, he could not read or write. Two years ago, his rabbi asked him to read from the Torah at sabbath services. It was a moment of horror, not honor. What really hit him, at age 71, was a stab through the heart. He found that the woman he wanted to marry–whose picture he still carries in his wallet–was stealing his checks to pay her bills.
Life, for many people, is a series of shocks. For those who cannot read, knocks come early and often. In school, they fake their way. At work, they refuse promotions. At home, they keep distant from their own children, ”too busy” to help with homework or read notes from teachers. In restaurants, they always order the same thing. They say to a friend, ”I`ll have what you`re having.”
For those who can read, the skill is second nature. For those who cannot, daily life is scary. Literacy underlies almost every form of communication
–reading a memo, looking up a phone number, writing a love letter. In the workplace, safety hangs on written warnings. Job manuals are complex. Poor readers cost employers millions of dollars in lost supervision time, absenteeism, low productivity, poor product quality and equipment damage. For many, illiteracy causes personal pain. It shreds personal worth and, in many cases, family ties.
”In one case,” recalls North Shore reading teacher Marilyn Antonik,
”we found a son who didn`t know until he was 19 that his father couldn`t read. He always thought his father was indifferent.”
They are warehouse workers, salesmen, janitors, housewives, zookeepers and restaurant hostesses. They look like average citizens. Now, sitting in class in Niles or Northbrook or Glenview, they are learning to read. They also are learning to drop the defensive habits of a lifetime. As with alcoholics, who typically deny that they have problems despite obvious chaos in their lives, those who cannot read go to great lengths to cover their disability.
Many claim that their glasses are lost or broken. They pretend to read newspapers and magazines though they rely on television and radio for news. They seldom send Christmas cards. They can`t read the messages, and these days the chances of picking an embarrassing card are high. In supermarkets, they buy what they know. They avoid generic labels and depend on guesswork. It doesn`t always work. One man confused Pepto-Bismol with pink liquid detergent. Another ate dog food. The label showed a plate of what looked like corned-beef hash.
One man, the chief executive of a Chicago manufacturing company, hid behind his dictating machine. His secretary took care of anything requiring reading or writing. As employees recall, he insisted that staff reports be made in person. ”Tell me what`s in it,” he would say. ”I don`t have time to read.”
”At work,” says one, ”you`re constantly living with the fear you`re going to be found out and fired.” After-hours are scarcely better. People who can`t read can`t follow TV schedules, decipher movie times or find out from newspapers what`s up on the weekend. At home, clothes that should be dry-cleaned get washed. Appliance booklets are useless. Outside, street signs make no sense. Routes must be memorized. Tickets for trains, planes or buses are confusing. Strangers, asked for directions, give wrong ones, as a joke.
Compared to other industrialized nations, where illiteracy is a curse of the poor, illiteracy in the United States spreads across social classes. According to figures gathered for ”Project Literacy U.S.,” a PBS television documentary on illiteracy, between 23 and 27 million American adults lack basic reading skills. In Illinois, 1980 census figures put the number of adult illiterates at two million.
”Persons who cannot read face enormous obstacles,” said Secretary of State Jim Edgar last month in proclaiming Literacy Weekend on behalf of the Illinois Literacy Council, a network of 200 local programs and 50 local and regional councils working to address illiteracy by raising the level of public awareness. ”The cost to the state reaches into the billions of dollars. The loss of human potential is immeasurable,” he noted. ”It touches both rural and urban areas of the state, white native-born residents as well as blacks, Hispanics and foreign-born.”
One group offering help is Volunteers in Teaching Adults. In the former Niles East High School and in the Des Plaines Public Library, 170 tutors, working through the adult and continuing education program of Oakton Community College, huddle one on one with students for two sessions a week, two and one- half hours each, a total of 50 hours a semester. Eight other libraries have chipped in by establishing special book collections for those with reading problems. Could this be happening on the North Shore? Yes.
”People often tell me, `But I`ve never met an illiterate person!`
” notes coordinator Marilyn Antonik. ”`In fact, I tell them, `You probably have.` ”
Many calls about VITA courses come from confidants. (The number:
635-1426.) ”I have a friend,” one recently began. ”She wants to read a short story to her daughter.” To create an effective learning atmosphere, VITA deals as much in psychology as in pedagogy. Individual counseling is offered before classes begin. Students, who range from young marrieds to octogenarians, are encouraged to set their own goals. Some want to read a utility bill. Others want to pass a driver`s test. Classes are free. Getting there requires a leap of faith.
”Often something comes up in their lives and they choose to face it,”
says Antonik of the 100 students who register each semester. ”They`re tremendously courageous.”
Among recent case histories (names changed):
— Dan, 60-ish, a homebuilder, was raised in rural Michigan where teachers banished him to the boiler room, telling him he would never learn to read. He had a learning disability; he could read blueprints, but not regular black-on-white printing. His wife, who handled all the paperwork for the family business, became seriously ill. He needed to learn to write estimates and bill his customers.
— Prudence, 40-ish, a receptionist in a Merchandise Mart showroom, was abused as a child by her mother, who smacked her legs with a switch whenever she read inadequately. Technically, she could read. But she suffered such anxiety over printed material that she was unable to comprehend.
— Alan, 36, a warehouse worker, was yanked from school to school by his squabbling parents, then beaten by teachers when he couldn`t concentrate in class. Now he ”felt like throwing up” when asked to review documents at work, remembering times when he was tied to chairs and hit across the knuckles with rulers.
— Andrea, 45, a Morton Grove housewife, grew up in an Eastern European country where the education of female children was not considered important. She came to class with a simple goal–to write notes for her son to take to school in his lunch box.
Louis Brach, 71, came to class ”to learn for myself because I can no longer trust others to do my tasks for me.”
Born in an area once known as the ”Great Vest Side,” Brach, the youngest of seven children, started at odd jobs on street corners, shining shoes and selling the old Herald-American. When time came for school, he was
”tongue-tied. I just couldn`t talk. The words wouldn`t come out.” Shunted into special-education classes, he learned shop skills. ”But they never told me how important it was to learn to read and write.”
He has struggled ever since. In a fruit store at Roosevelt Road and Avers Avenue, he arranged displays, made deliveries, got friends to write for him. Often, he needed two people to help him with his mail ”because no one would read it right.” Later, as a night janitor for 40 years, he answered phones and took messages. ”I could print letters, but I didn`t understand words,”
he says. He asked callers, even those named Smith, ”How do you spell your name?” and printed what they told him.
To order supplies, he copied labels of empties. With chores, he says, ”I had to remember everything.” He worked hard, but never moved up the economic ladder. ”You know, Louis, if you knew how to read,” an employer once told him, ”you wouldn`t be doing windows.” He picked up extra money repairing and selling lamps on Maxwell Street, paying all bills in cash. Somehow he got a driver`s license. (”We`ll leave that subject alone,” he says.) He always got a second opinion on legal documents. After he married, his wife handled finances. When he got divorced, a girlfriend stepped into the role.
It almost went further. As he explains, ”I`d sign a check and leave it on the table. She`d pay my bills with it. Then a friend of mine found a check on the floor. He told me she`d been using my checks to pay her own bills.”
Brach was devastated. He dialed 411 and asked an information operator,
”Where could I go to learn to read and write?” She gave him the number of the Board of Education. After several false starts, Brach reached Oakton. ”My goal,” he says, ”was to write my own checks and keep my own balance. After that, I wanted to learn to read and write. That`s very important.”
Now, 65 years after he started, Louis Brach is back in school. After 10 months, taking a double load, four sessions a week, he can make out words. ”I don`t ask anybody to read my mail to me,” he says, ”and I have a message to anybody who has a chance to learn to read and write. Do yourself a favor! Find time! Go to school!”
Nor is he alone in his enthusiasm. Hanging on the wall outside Marilyn Antonik`s office is a quilt. On the back, at a testimonial banquet last year, over 900 students wrote their names. To many, making a signature is a simple thing. For them, it wasn`t.
