Sheats Social Services’ Reading Rainbow Collective Literacy Program hosted the screening of the documentary, “The Right to Read,” at the Athens-Clarke County Library on Thursday evening. The documentary focuses on the stories of an NAACP activist, two families and a teacher who understand the value of children learning how to read.
Sharon Duncan, founder of the Waseca School and employee for the Reading Clinic at Broadacres in Athens, said she believes there is an ongoing literary crisis people don’t know about. According to her, children are being told that they might be dyslexic or might not be able to read, when that is not always the case.
“The truth is, they’re just not being taught the right way,” Duncan said.
Duncan coaches children with phonics and practices with them on how to decode words. She says in two or three months, they start to pick it up and feel more successful. Even after summer break, when students typically lose traction, the children she works with come back to school ahead of where they were in the spring, she said.
“They’re feeling confident, like they can do it,” Duncan said. “We give them the tools.”
After presenting the documentary, Duncan expressed to the audience that there is a significant connection between prison and illiteracy. According to her, 85% of people that enter the juvenile correctional system are functionally illiterate. However, learning to read can drop a juvenile’s chances of recidivism from 70% to just 7%, according to Duncan.
“If you can’t read, then you’re not functional in our society,” Duncan said. “Do we want future criminals, or do we want future people that contribute to our society and our culture?”
Duncan suggested pressuring the school district to change their curriculum to a science of reading and including a font phonetic approach because of its comprehensive and sequential nature.
Similarly, Marvin J. Nunnally, a coordinator at Athens Technical College, emphasized that learning to read often begins in the home. He encourages parents to commit to and take responsibility for encouraging their children to become more literate.
“The missing word right there — commitment and responsibility,” Nunnally said. “We’ve got to take more of that because we’re investing in our kids.”
Nunnally comes from a family of educators and states that this has caused literacy to be an important issue to him. In working for the In Touch Management Youth Group Academy for the last 11 years, he says their goal in working with these children is to push for literacy and oratorical skills.
For Nunnally, this program reinforced his perceptions of how valuable the reading skills are. The documentary touched on important aspects of the issue, such as how minority groups typically have higher percentages of illiteracy in children.
“The equalizer is education, so we’ve got to bring everybody up to a level playing ground,” Nunnally said.
Source: The Red&Black
