Have you ever thought about what your every day life would be like if you did not know how to read and write our language? Quite difficult, right? Truth is, there are adults out there that cannot form a full sentence. Though some people might look down upon them, it is far from their fault. Illiteracy in adults comes from issues involving the government, the society, the family that one grows up in and even schools. Family issues that provoke illiteracy rates range from families living in poverty to parents being illiterate themselves and trying to raise a child. The government and our society for the most part looks past adults with literacy problems and has not implemented a significant amount of programs to help the situation. Not to mention the lack of attention that illiterate adults get from schools and any form of education. There are no schools out there trying to help older people that do not know how to read and write. Illiterate adults are basically left out there alone, with no real way for them to acquire the skills that they should have obtained when they were children. We are going to bring to the surface the high percentage of illiteracy in Kentucky and make it apparent that this percentage is caused by issues involving things anywhere from the family that one grows up in to the way that the society and the community neglect this group of peoples education.
Some people make jokes about illiteracy, but that is until they hear how serious it is.
Ugly Facts of Illiteracy
There have been some research studies performed that show Kentucky’s percentage of illiteracy. One website that was found to be extra helpful was the County Health Rankings website (2011 % Illiterate). This showed a complete lay out of the percentage of adults that were illiterate in every county in Kentucky. An illiterate adult is considered to be anyone 16 or older that does not know how to read and write at at least a 5th grade level. The percentages on the County Health Rankings website considered this group of people. According to their statistics, the amount of illiterate adults in certain counties in Kentucky goes from 6.4 to 20.6%. The lowest county, at 6.4% is Oldham County, which happens to also be the richest county in the state. The county with the highest percent of illiterate people is Clay County, with 20.6% of their population illiterate. Fayette County, with 7.5%, is not the worst but still not the best (2011 % Illiterate). More of the county ratings can be found at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/kentucky/pendleton/66. The overall percentage in Kentucky is 12. 2%, this could be changed drastically if all adults were taught to read and write past an elementary level, which could then be passed along to their family. While these statistics are stated as facts, Professor Reed, a man who did a lot of personal research with this topic and is very knowledgeable about it, states that “any statistic that is out there about the amount of illiterate people is an underestimate” (Reed). Many adults that are illiterate are embarrassed of this fact and will not admit it, so it is very hard to find all of the people that fall under this category and it is therefore hard to do research on them.
Current Illiteracy Situation in Kentucky
Now, illiterate is divided into three kinds and the first kind is traditional illiterate who could not read and write, the second is people who could not recognize social symbols and the third is people who could not study, communicate and manage depending on computer. In Kentucky, the situation of illiteracy is serious. In the United States, according to the statistics, the adult illiteracy rates in Kentucky are one of the highest in the past 10 years. The population in Kentucky is 4,339,367 as of 2010 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Meantime, according to the Kentucky Adult Literacy Survey, one million people between the age of 16 and 65 have low levels of literacy. According on statistics, about 40% of people who are in the working age have problems with reading and writing (BBC, 2000). As a result, the literacy situation in Kentucky is serious. Fortunately, the United Nations declared September 8 as International Literacy Day. Depending on current serious situation, we had made an interview about it with John. “Firstly, they have troubles in their daily life like driving, shopping and so on. They could not understand what is written in the books so they could not know the regulation, the community declaration, the governmental policy, human beings rights and so on. What is more, they have low level of literacy, so they could not get a good job with higher salary.” ( John) This shows illiteracy is becoming more important and the whole world is beginning to take it seriously. Since this is such a terrible situation it is necessary to analyze it. However, depending on the phenomenon, it can be the families, the government, the society and the school’s responsibility to deal with it and improve it.
Illiterate adults are spread out all over Kentucky. A professor at the University of Kentucky, Professor Eric Reed, recently performed a 3 year project on illiterate adults in Kentucky. He and a partner took part in coming up with a program in which illiterate adults could come and there were books and peers available to help them out so that they could improve they’re literacy. The class taught the adults in two different ways, one way was through the traditional way of reading books and doing different activities on paper and the other was through a computer program. Professor Reed and his partner helped the adults during both types of activities. An interview was performed with Professor Reed and he discussed many of the things that took place during this project. He came to the conclusion that illiteracy is all over Kentucky. When asked where he thought illiteracy served the biggest problem he said that “50 years ago it would have been rural places, 20 years ago urban cities and today it is both” (Reed). He says that they had participants anywhere from Louisville, Kentucky to Hart County, Kentucky. Professor Reed spoke of how it was very hard for most of the adults to get to class weekly, since most did not have access to a car and had to find varies ways to get there. For some a car was not a problem, but the gas money spent. Because of this, there were 5 dollar gas cards given to the people who drove and requested one. Another interesting thing about trying to help illiterate adults that Reed spoke of was finding ways to reach them. You can’t put out fliers or posters because for the most part the people they are targeting cannot read them. So they did some announceme
nts on the radio and such, which seemed to work pretty well.
Professor Reed gave a couple background stories about the people who attended his class (Reed). One that particularly amazed me was about a man who had been married to his wife for 13 years and she did not know that he could not read and write simple sentences. How this is possible, I am not sure. But it goes to show how embarrassed one man can be about it and how his life is tremendously affected by it, trying to hide it from the whole world, and even his wife of 13 years. Another story of an illiterate man that worked for a propane company and drove one of the trucks for the company seemed astonishing. He could not read at a 5th grade level yet he was driving highly flammable, very dangerous trucks full of propane all around our country, not even being able to read the instructions on it. He said did it by paying attention when the hand book was first given to him and explained by someone in the company. After they showed it to him he went back and put post it notes by each of the pictures so that he could know what to do. Its amazing that this man made it safely, and demonstrates that the problem of illiteracy really needs to be fixed.
Causes of Illiteracy
From the Family
There are many things that can cause illiteracy, anywhere from a disability to the way that you were raised. We think that one of the main reasons that adults in our society are illiterate is because they have been raised in a family that has not taught them properly. Think about it, if you grew up with parents that did not know how to form a sentence and therefore from the age you are an infant you heard nothing but English that is spoken incorrectly, how would you be able to your self talk properly? Humans learn by example, and parents are the biggest part of that example in a person’s life. Not to mention the lack of reading and learning activities that the kid would be able to participate in. Remember when you were a kid and would sit and follow along as your parents read you a story? Or even when you would read to them? According to an article found online titled Parents’ Literacy and Their Children’s Success in School, one study showed that kids that read to their parents on a regular basis became better readers than kids who didn’t (Riley, Richard W.). This article also says that “indirect factors including frequency of a child’s outgoings with adults, number of maternal outings, emotional climate of the home, amount of time spent interacting with adults, level of financial stress, enrichment activities, and parental involvement with the schools had a stronger effect on many aspects of reading and writing than did direct literacy activities, such as help with homework” (Riley, Richard W.). It is safe to say that a family plays a great role in a child’s education, which then leads to better literacy as an adult. Then again, none of these things can be addressed if the adults in a family are illiterate and unable to do these things themselves, which is why family settings are so vital to whether a person is illiterate or not. One hopeful thing that Professor Reed mentioned in his interview is that in his program there were about 100 parents, most of which said that they were coming to the class so they could learn how to read and write so they could teach their kids (Reed). This gave some incite that the parents do care, but they just don’t have many resources to fix their problem.
Parents reading with their cildren can make a huge difference, but how can they do that if the parents can't read themselves.
Illiterate parents do contribute a lot to whether the others in the family are illiterate, but another issue that brings about illiteracy and comes from the family is poverty. According to an article read about the causes of illiteracy, “In the United States, 50% of all those people who are illiterate grew up in homes where the income was at or below the poverty line” (The Truth About the Causes of Illiteracy). I know that because an adult lives in poverty does not automatically mean they are illiterate and unable to teach their children basic things like reading and writing. Adults might be completely literate, but if they live in poverty and are trying to raise a family then it is sometimes not as likely that the kids of the family will stay in school and have the motivation to learn to read and write. According to the National Committee on Adult Literacy, 1.2 million teenagers or 1 in every 3, drop out of high school (The Truth About the Causes of Illiteracy).
As you can see, parents that are illiterate cause a problem for the children they are trying to raise. It is hard to imagine why so many parents would be illiterate and why they would not have addressed the problem while they were in school. One of the main reasons why adults are illiterate is because back years ago when today’s adults were growing up there were no special education programs in schools that would recognize and help kids if they had some sort of disability or were not able to learn as fast as other kids. This inevitably left some kids behind and once they got so far behind it was probably impossible for them to catch up and they gave up. That is why these special education classes that we now have in schools for dyslexic, ADD etc children are so important. They have special need that require more attention and the adults that are in our society now did not have that. A lot of today’s adults who can not read and write most likely do not even know they have a disability or not, because they were never given the attention they needed in school. It is important to find these adults now and figure out what it is that they struggle with and how they can be helped.
Families all around you are suffering from the fact that they have not been given the opportunity to learn, or if they have, they have not been given the right kind of motivation or financial situation in order to become educated and therefore literate. Though it is hard to change a whole family and take them away from what they have known their whole life, especially if they themselves are not concerned about it, there are things that can be done, with the help of people that are willing to give the time and energy to do it.
The Government Factor
There are a number of reasons why some people have limited reading and writing skills. Some of these reasons include the lack of opportunities to access educational resources or the public’s unrecognized opinion about importance of literacy, etc. First of all, because of how serious this situation is, the government should be responsible for undertaking it because the government did not pay attention to the importance of literacy and did not force people to study and get an education in the past. As a result, some residents choose to work to gain money instead of going to school to study. Furthermore, one generation could not even get access to study because of the Civil war and parading. So due to the disorder, one generation of children were forced to stay at home to be safe so they could not get access to a place to learn. What is more, according to the article “How to Banish Illiteracy”, the most important element that lead to the situation is the fact that residents could not get enough sources, like books and magazines, to read during this time frame (Francis, 1999). An illiterate person could not get the books to read, and they did not have the interest to study how to read and write. With the reasons from the government factor, there appears to be a great number of people who are at low levels of literacy. With the development of society, the government has recognized the importance of literacy and now they can take actions to deal wi
th the situation. Despite the mistakes that the government had made in the past, they now have made some methods to deal with this phenomenon. Firstly, the government appeal for the view that the United Nations declared September 8 as International Literacy Day. The International Literacy Day shows that the importance of literacy has been recognized worldwide because in society reading and writing is a vital ability to live. For example, reading and writing is connected with driving, shopping, working and so on. If a person could not read, he must not know the rules of traffic. As a result, it is possible to have an accident without the traffic rules. In the International Literacy Day, the government holds some activities to enhance the importance of literacy in residents’ mind. What is more, the government has held some evening school to provide opportunities for people who could not go to school in day time to study to improve the level of literacy. In the daytime, the illiterate people could attend work to make a salary to afford to live, and at night, they could go to night school to study and improve their literacy ability. Additionally, the government has opened the tradition of free public libraries to everyone. For example, in Lexington, the library staff takes seriously their mission to share readings and knowledge and provide opportunities to promote lifelong learning for all members in our community. From the BBC, the government has allocated funds to illiteracy to help the people study reading and writing. In Kentucky, there are currently about 51,000 adults who take literacy class. And in the future, an increasing number of illiterate people will begin to study. Because the methods the government takes, the situation of low levels of literacy has changed but it is still necessary to be dealt with it by more manners.
Although the situation is better than before, there is still space to improve by the government to reduce the number of illiterate people. Some children leave school because of financial problems. For example, the parents are illiterate so they could not get a job with good salary to pay for their child’s study fee. To deal with it, in Kentucky the government should distribute more scholarship for students who want to study but are lacking money. Because of the number of illiterate, these methods the government might take are not enough to deal with the problems fully. So the Kentucky government should take more steps. Moreover, the government should allocate funds to pay for illiterate adults to study. What is more, in Kentucky, some socially useful events to help illiterate people gain confidence and appeal for the public should be held by the government. In spite of this, some business’s have some positions which have requirements for educational level even though some other simple positions do not have education requirements like waiter, cleaner and so on. For this phenomenon, the government should list regulations on non-discrimination about educational level. For some nontechnical position, all organizations must not make employment depending on the educational level. With these further methods, the situation of illiterate must become better.
The Society Factor
Even though the government has more responsibility for the situation of illiterate and has taken some methods to improve it, the society is another factor that leads to the illiteracy. For the society, the illiterate made effect on society because it has stopped the development of society. For some illiterates, they could not get access to study because they have some financial problems. Poverty makes them to have no spirit to study and they must try them best to working to gain money（ Taylor& Francis, 2004）. The authority holds the attitude that only with the financial supporting; the illiterate could have the spirit to study how to read and write and other technical skills. At the same time, poverty makes them not able to afford the studying fee. In other words, the society has responsibility for illiterates because everyone should have the right to study. Because they could not read and write, the consequence is that some ordinary people would not like to talk and ask to them when emergency happens. Long time later, illiterates would feel no confidence to communicate with people who has high level of literacy and they would not choose to study how to read and write. We live in one society, and the society should not leave each person. With these reasons from society factor, the illiterate group should get help from the society.
It is said that human being is one part of the society and it is called human beings if we leave the society. Meanwhile, it should not be the society if human beings leave the society. So in the society, we have taken some manners to deal with the problem. Firstly, in the society, we are the main part so we coordinate with the government to hold the socially useful events to enhance the attention for the culture. It means that the latest generation could get access to learn culture. What is more, in the society, we eliminate the discrimination for the illiterate and we could communicate with them with our love and patience. Doing this, they could get the feeling that they are not rejected by the society and they must have confidence to study how to read and write. Lastly, we work as the guarantees in our spare time. In the guaranteeing process, we read the newspaper for them and help them to learn some simple words. With these methods, the illiterate rate has decreased and most illiterate would get ready to study and be high level of literacy.
The illiterate situation is better with these methods but the society could do more to deal with the problems. For example, we could make some speech about the illiterate to introduce them into the society for the Kentucky civilians because some of them are not aware of what an illiterate person is exactly. If a large number of people know about illiteracy and help them, the number of illiterate must decrease dramatically. Furthermore, in fact, some illiterates have realized the importance of literacy but because they have no resources to help them to study they are still at the low level of literacy. So it is necessary to open some free classes to teach them how to read and write basically. With their hard working, they must read and write. Lastly, for fear of the discrimination, after learning how to read and write, business organizations should give them opportunities to get a good job like people with high level of literacy. With these supplementary methods, the situation of illiterate must be better than before.
The School Factor
Currently, the illiterate problem has been analyzed by the government and the society and provide a lot of methods to improve it. But go into the why and wherefores of it, the most important factor is education. In another word, human beings not only seek to be alive but also seek to be developed. And they not only get on living but also chase higher quality of life. To achieve these objectives, human beings should not leave from education. Getting education is one special manner to live. So the education is the most important element to lead to the increasing number of illiterate. In fact, some people give up studying because of some special examples like Bill Gates, Newton and so on. Because these well-known people did not get more education but they got be successful. Some people are affected by these examples. What is more, the process of learning to read and write is uninteresting. From the point of view of education, they should find some special, interesting and useful methods to teaching. Some students are studying in the class but they are not interested in these dull methods to learn, they reject to accept the education in their heart. Long time later, they must not understand what they learned. In another view, there are some differences among different kind of school. For example,” in America, the major difference between America’s straight A private schools and the straight-F public schools is that most private schools never stopped teaching beginners to sound each syllable, whereas most public schools started teaching or trying to teaching children to sight whole words”( Regna Lee, 1993). From the education factor, the reasons which lead to the phenomenon of illiterate are basic, there should make some approaches to change the situation.
Education is an important element which leads to illiteracy, but it has listed some ways to deal with it. In fact, education is equal to everyone but in the past, due to discrimination, some people could not get education. For this, people must be forced to study some basic reading and writing skills. In some places, people hold the thought that the education is not useful, so they do not get access to study. As a consequence, this kind of though could be affected by useful speech. In some certain degrees, education is divided into two part the regular education and irregular education. From irregular education which means the parents should teach children some information in daily life, the parents should improve their quality and behavior to be the example for teaching children. While from the regular education, it is the school’s responsibility to persuade children to study. Moreover, it is necessary to find out some interesting methods to teaching for different kind of learners. For the illiterate is aged from 16 to 65 mostly, some special schools have been opened like evening school, weekend school, the old school and so on. Education is the most important part for illiterate group, and some methods are taken. The illiterate trend changes a little but for the better of illiterate, some other useful methods should be taken.
The more useful methods could decrease the rate of illiterate. From the children, school should open extra class to teach reading and writing for students who could not get to know how to read and write quickly and easily. For the younger, community of each one in Kentucky should open some classes and speeches to teach them read and write. For the older, because they are too old, if they want to go into colleague or classes to study they could. Otherwise, the home community should distribute workers to home to read important news and others things for them to deal with their living problems. With this simple method, the illiterate group could get a great improvement and learn how to read and write. The following is an image that displays some of the causes of illiteracy, more can be found at http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112734/page5.htm.
This chart shows some of the common causes of illiteracy.
Effects Illiteracy Has on the World
It is obvious that illiteracy is a problem for people in the country, state and community around us, but how big of a problem is it? You might not realize some of the major affects that a high rate of illiteracy among people can create. Think about our country and major economic hard ship that we are facing right now. A large percentage of our people are unemployed, something that no working person wants to see. As of September 2011 9.7% of Kentucky’s population is unemployed, 0.6% above the national average (Kentucky State Unemployment Rate and Total Unemployed). This could be raised if all of the people in our state knew how to read and write. As of right now, a larger percent of those unemployed people are unable to even read or fill out a job application because they are illiterate. This is an awful reason to have unemployed people, the families of Kentucky need to be helped so that we can raise the rates of literacy and lower the rates of unemployment. The nations economy is such a big problem right now, many factors affect this, but not many have realized that part of this comes from adults in their community literacy not being able to read or write.
Despite what people might think, illiteracy in adults has a real effect on our economy.
Not only does illiteracy affect our unemployment rate, but it is also potentially unsafe for the people that are illiterate. Think about your daily life and how many things that you have to read in order to get through it. You must read the signs along the roads, the notifications that are sent to you, and even simple instructions on how to do things. It would be hard to even navigate your way through Wal-Mart with out the ability to read. And what if there is a sign telling one that they must not enter a place or a label that tells about the hazards of product. The illiterate person that receives these things is unable to read these important messages. An illiterate being cannot even read the alert running along the bottom of a TV screen saying that severe weather is coming. Think of being illiterate as being alone in the middle of China where there is no English written anywhere, trying to live your life. It would be hopeless and terrifying. And what is a person that is put in this situation supposed to do. To the families that are illiterate, there is no hope. That is why people from outside of these families that are more fortunate have to try to reach in and help.
Illiterate adults affects our society in so many little ways that people are unaware of and would not even realize. Illiteracy can potentially even make our Health Care go up. If their are people out there that cannot read the label on their medicine and take it wrong to the point that something goes bad, then all the other people are going to end paying for that. Also, it costs less for someone to buy a book rather than a flat screen TV, which all of the illiterate people are to buy because they cannot read books. If an illiterate parent cannot do simple tasks that require reading and writing to take care of their kids, then society is going to end up paying to take care of those children. There are so many different everyday things that are affected by this issue.
Rising or Falling?
According to Professor Reed the rates of illiteracy in Kentucky are not increasing or decreasing. Many people are unaware of the topic and therefore the amount of adults that cannot read is not going anywhere. When people talk about problems with education, they miss the point. “They talk about a problem with a single teacher or their kids preschool, but they do not think illiteracy is proactive enough to be a big problem, but the people we help the least are the most vulnerable” (Reed).
Since about 2000 many programs and such have been implemented to enable people to work on their literacy. This is not just an issue in Kentucky, it is all through out the United States. In Kentucky specifically though, the government have become aware of this issue in the 21ist century and is working to improve these percentages. In the upcoming years, Kentucky plans to be at the top of the list for small percentages of illiteracy. This is saying a lot considering that about ten years ago Kentucky was almost very last in the standings.
Whats Being Done!
The government and other people that are more fortunate are not all just sitting back while this problem exists. Many programs have been established to help bring up Kentucky’s rate of illiteracy. At http://www.education.ky.gov/kde/instructional+resources/literacy/ many programs are listed that have been established for this problem. Some of these programs include Literacy Without Limits, Literacy Leadership and Issac Murphy-Everybody Reads projects. One program that sounded very helpful to families specifically was the Kenen Trust Family Literacy Model. This is program that works with parents on basic academic skills and parenting skills while their children attend preschool class. Over 80% of the parents that enrolled in this were unemployed, had not finished high school and had an income of less than $7,000 a year (Riley, Richard W.). The Even Start program has proved to be successful, a full description can be found at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/evenstartformula/index.html. Another helpful act was the Inter generational Literacy Action Research Project (ILAR) that provided mothers with basic-skill introduction and job training. This project showed great influence on the mothers and the kids (Riley, Richard W. ). Programs like these, that work directly with a parent and their kid, need to be implemented every day in order to have more success in lowering this rate of illiteracy.
As discussed before, Professor Reed and his partner had a class for illiterate adults that succeeded in helping about 200 adults learn how be able to read and write at a 5th grade level. The program consisted of a class that specifically targeted adults that were illiterate. Since the class was just for adults this helped bring them in and made them ore comfortable. Reed and his team worked with the adults on basic skills. Having them work with more educated people showed a great improvement. This proved to be an affective way for them to learn, but according to Professor Reed there are no other program out there like the one he did (Reed). Most programs like this in places where the illiteracy rate is high could help out a lot. The government puts some money towards educating people, but they have paid most of their attention to getting people\ GED’s, which skips over the large percentage of people w
ho can not even read at a 5th grade level yet and therefore cannot get a GED. One thing that is important to note when trying to educate adults is the fact that they do not want to be going back to an actual elementary school level and learning it that way. They obviously have different needs than a 4th grader. If you were to hand a 40 year old that could not read a sponge bob book and tried to have them read it to you I’m sure they would not be very happy about it, for obvious reasons. Therefore in order for adults to improve their literacy they need to be able to learn from books that are specifically made for older people. The problem with this is that those types of books are not in high demand so they are hard to come by and if you are to find some, they are expensive and way out of the price rang most older adults would be willing to spend. The prices of these books need to be lowered and the amounts of programs like Professor Reeds needs to increase in Kentucky to make a difference.
Overall is it easy to see that illiteracy is a hidden problem that needs to be addressed in our own community. People are coming together, the government is buckling down, the rate of illiteracy is changing for the better and will be significantly improved in the future if more and more people are informed on the subject.
Conclusion
A low level of literacy in adults develops from the government not paying enough attention, social factors, ones home environment and the schools in ones community. In general, the government society should decrease the discrimination towards illiterate by holding some events and allocating funds to pay education fees for illiterate people to study. From the society, we should act in concert with the government to appeal for them to help the illiterate to have confidence to study and be happy to get along with the illiterate group. Lastly, the most important part is education. Kentucky as a whole should make a bigger effort to ensure that every person in Kentucky is able to receive the amount of education that is needed. We should teach using interesting, useful and powerful methods. We could implement different types of education, like weekend and evening school, or any other time that is convenient for this group of people. With these methods, the situation of illiteracy will be improved. For the better future, we should do extra things to reduce the number of illiterate adults. If we could do that, the situation of low level of literacy in Kentucky would be much better than before.
Works Cited
Wood, Regna Lee, “OUR GOLDEN ROAD TO ILLITERACY” National Review; 10/18/1993, Vol. 45 Issue 20, p54-58, 4p http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&hid=13&sid=41e5e097-f88d-4a86-a838-6d8e83531b32%40sessionmgr11
Beckett, Francis, “How to banish illiteracy” New Statesman; 04/02/99, Vol. 128 Issue 4430, p30, 1p, 1 Cartoon or Caricature http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&hid=13&sid=41e5e097-f88d-4a86-a838-6d8e83531b32%40sessionmgr11
Roman, Sarah Poff, “ILLITERACY AND OLDER ADULTS: INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS” Educational Gerontology; Feb2004, Vol. 30 Issue 2, p79-93, 15p http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&hid=13&sid=41e5e097-f88d-4a86-a838-6d8e83531b32%40sessionmgr11
BBC Website, (2000), “Kentucky tackles high illiteracy” Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1028424.stm
Riley, Richard W. “Archived: Parents’ Literacy and Their Children’s Success in School: Recent Research, Promising Practices, and Research Implications.” U.S. Department of Education. Office of Research. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. <http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ResearchRpts/parlit.html>.
Paul E. Patton “Adult Education and Literacy in Kentucky.” Task Force on Adult Education. 18 Oct. 2011. www.lrc.ky.gov/lrcpubs/rr296.pdf
Parker, Cindy. “Literacy.” Web log post. Kentucky Department of Education. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 2 Nov. 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2011. http://www.education.ky.gov/kde/instructional+resources/literacy/
“2011 % Illiterate.” Web log post. County Health Rankings. Ed. Becky Wexler. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2011. http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/kentucky/pendleton/66
“The Truth About the Causes of Illiteracy | What Causes Illiteracy?” Knowledge Galaxy – Information For Your Everyday Life. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. http://www.knowledgegalaxy.net/causes_of_illiteracy/causes_of_illiteracy.html
“Kentucky State Unemployment Rate and Total Unemployed | Department of Numbers.” Department of Numbers. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/kentucky/
Reed, Eric. Ph. D. Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky College of Education. Personal Interview. 7 November 2011.
Daniel,John. Native friend. Personal interview. 4 November 2011.
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