The Necessity of Literacy

Keynote--11th Annual Greater New Orleans Regional Adult Education Graduation Ceremony/

Loyola University                            June 16, 2018

THE NECESSITY OF LITERACY

It is an honor to share  on this occasion a few ideas about the necessity of literacy in America, and I thank the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans for inviting me to do so.  My gratitude has deep roots in the forty-two years I spent as a teacher in assisting young people to expand their literacy.  My purpose today, however, is to celebrate those who achieved something commendable----passing the HiSet Exam and earning their high school equivalency certification.  I urge them to celebrate themselves for having the determination, will power, and fortitude to demonstrate mastery of the Exam's five subsets --- mathematics,  social studies, writing, reading, and science.  They have, to allude to a famous book by President Barack Obama, the audacity of hope; better still, they have  the audacity of keeping the faith in their humanity.

Human beings have an enormous capacity to be literate, to acquire the skills required for processing a surplus of information and decoding the complex signs and symbols which the human mind uses to  represent (and in unfortunate instances, to misrepresent) what we call reality. On the other hand, some human beings convince themselves that formal education in their native land is overwhelmingly difficult.  At an early age, they kill the dream of being an educated person. Or life circumstances or other people kill it for them. Some of these people are innately talented or even brilliant.  Life has dealt them a bad hand.  They play the game with a losing hand.  In the worst scenarios, the game is terminal. It is so crucial that we have an array of adult literacy programs to help them save themselves if they have the will to do so. These programs also help those who are not native-born, who immigrate to America with first languages other than Standard American English.  Having literacy at a high school level makes life in a super-competitive society  a little more bearable. 

Let us celebrate those who took advantage of the programs.  The celebration must be tempered by reason rather than seduced by such jubilation as might be appropriate during our annual carnival season that culminates with Mardi Gras. The bane of life in our beloved Crescent City (and a probable cause of certain problems of inequity) is economically driven confusion of Apollo and Dionysus in the context of a mythical  American Dream. One outcome of having passed the HiSet Exam ought to be the displacement of blindness with pragmatic insight. Otherwise, newly acquired literacy is rendered trivial, because one minimizes the obligations that success and good fortune impose upon us as citizens and social beings.

I am not a dream merchant. My thoughts on using literacy to reclaim the American Dream in 2018 are remote from those Obama, who was then a senator from Illinois, offered to us in 2006.  I prefer, like Herman Melville's remarkable character Bartleby the Scrivener, to tell a truth rather than articulate hopes wrapped up in promises, promises that our new kind of politics only gives lip-service to keeping.

This year I am tutoring a few inmates at the Orleans Justice Center, our parish jail, as they prepare to take the HiSet Exam. This effort has been life-altering for me. I refuse to condone the idea of giving up; I refuse to allow the inmates to fail themselves despite the horrors of incarceration.  I suppose many people who volunteer to teach literacy might agree that compassion and tough love are as necessary both inside and outside prison walls as is literacy itself.

To anchor my feelings about the difference between teaching students who are free and those whose mistakes have minimized their freedom,  I wrote a poem titled "Alone" on March 16, 2018.

ALONE

(a kwansaba for Prisoner # 2440943)

Alone, when you alone, speak of alone

as spasms of light in black holes.

Or else, alone, you visit unknown dread,

itself alone in a blood black fist

that pounds against even odds of fate.

Did you ponder, alone, how your spirit,

being an egg, alone refuses to crack?

Less than two weeks ago, I gave my inmate students copies of "Taking Care," a poignant, unpublished essay by Kalamu ya Salaam.  Yes, I wanted them to have some real, locally produced, world-class writing upon which they might hone reading comprehension skills.  Moreover, I wanted them to ponder what Kalamu ya Salaam  concludes about humanity and the obligations of care-taking.  I quote ---

Humanity is not a solitary state; to be human means to be social.

In one sense or another, all of us are like babies: Dependent on others to take care of us but at the same time near [ly] totally self-absorbed with our own individuality. But the importance of, and even the psychological dominance of the individual personality notwithstanding, essentially our identity as a human being is initially created, continually shaped, and ultimately fulfilled by our relationships with others.  In that regard, taking care of others is the highest expression of our humanity that any of us can achieve precisely because in caring for others we ultimately define who we are as a living organism interacting with our physical and social environment.

The beauty of being human is that, regardless of our condition, we are not alone.  Or, as a number of African philosophies correctly assert: I am because we are.

With Salaam's words circulating in my mind, I think of the disciple and literacy gained from passing the  HiSet Exam; I think of the obligations those of us who possess various forms of literacy have by way of expressing our humanity and taking care of others who possess smaller measures of literacy.

I think as I commend and celebrate the achievement of the graduates, I must recall the advice Polonius gave to his son in Shakespeare's Hamlet ---to thine own self be true.  I extend this challenge to those in possession of newly acquired literacy: Use it wisely.  Be an egg that does not crack.   Express your humanity.  Take care of others.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.