What If You Couldn’t Read These Words

Here’s what I know about you: you had no trouble learning to read. Or if you did, someone cared enough to get you some help to overcome your difficulty. And that one fact of your childhood has given you options that you now take for granted because reading is such an integral part of your life. But you would not be sitting where you are, living the life you have now, if you had never mastered reading.

I’m thinking about this topic because of Eddie (not his real name), the tile setter who renovated our bathroom last month. It seems like the guys who come to work for me always want to talk, especially if they’re here for several days. I hear about their families, their hobbies, their wives or girlfriends. Sometimes both. Eddie is particularly chatty. He has five kids, ranging in age from 1 – 16, and he’s worried about his 10-year old son, who struggles with reading.

“He sees the letters funny,” Eddie says.

“Dyslexia?’ I ask.

“Yeah, that’s it. I’m like that, too. I always had trouble reading in school. I mean, I can read but it’s hard for me. I try to help my son but I don’t know what to do.” I tell him my husband, who was a special ed teacher for years, might be able to help. Eddie says his son is too embarrassed to talk to people about his reading problem.

Eddie is a machine. He owns his own business, and while he and his helper were here on the bathroom project, they typically put in 10-hour days and rarely stopped for lunch. They worked on Saturday. If I’d let them, they’d have come Sunday, too. Eddie knows tile and does beautiful work. The difficulty came when it was time to install the glass shower doors, something he’d never done before.

Eddie could identify all the pieces, hardware, and connectors by looking at the diagrams, but he couldn’t understand the written instructions. I’m not sure if his dyslexia prevents him from reading the words as they are written, or if he can’t make pictures in his mind even after he reads the words, but he finally had to ask me to read to him. He said if he could hear the instructions, he could make sense of them. And he did fine after a couple of false starts, but it took him a long time to put everything together because he couldn’t go back to the directions for clarification and had to rely on his memory and the diagrams instead.

Eddie’s son is 10. He gets no extra help in school because he hasn’t been officially identified as a child who needs special education services. Eddie never got that help either and didn’t know he can insist that his child be tested for learning disabilities. I don’t often predict the future, but I see with some certainty what will happen if Eddie’s son doesn’t get help soon. Success in school hinges on reading. If you’re not good at it, you’re screwed.

Not just in school, but in countless ways that we who read effortlessly rarely think about. If you read with difficulty or not at all by the time you enter middle school, you won’t do well academically. The assignments get harder as you enter high school, and if you’re still struggling with reading and comprehension at that point, success in school will be beyond your reach. Nobody likes to fail, so you’ll probably drop out. No diploma, no college, and no career that might’ve sprung from higher education. Your income potential will be seriously limited.

Also, functional illiteracy eliminates the possibility of any kind of employment that requires reading or writing — so office jobs will be out of your reach. Ditto for working at the postal service, police department or most public sector jobs that pay well and offer benefits, except maybe in janitorial services or groundskeeping. The box into which your opportunities fit shrinks some more.

Aside from the economic limitations of being unable to read well, the social hurdles are staggering. Picture going to a restaurant and not being able to comprehend the menu. Try putting together your child’s bicycle or helping with her homework if you can’t read the instructions. How would you understand a written contract to buy a car — or a house? Imagine wanting to vote but being unable read about the candidates and issues on the ballot. Think of how much energy you’d expend every day trying to hide your illiteracy from the people around you. After your 10-hour workday, I bet you’d be pretty worn out.

Sure, there are organizations that help adults learn what they didn’t get in school, like Literacy Volunteers of Tucson, and they do great work. But adult learners have jobs, children, and the same mountain of commitments everyone else has. Even if a person has overcome the shame of illiteracy and sought help, life frequently gets in the way of those after-work tutoring sessions and homework. It’s not impossible for an adult to learn to read, but it is a Herculean task.

Here’s what else I know about you: if your child or grandchild has a learning disability, you’ll move heaven and earth to help him overcome it. You’ll contact the principal, the special ed department, or you’ll tutor that child yourself. You’ll make sure he doesn’t get to high school still “seeing the letters funny.” I’m not worried about the kids in your family. What I’m concerned about is who will help Eddie’s son and how small his world will become if someone doesn’t do it soon.