D Glossary, 252 E List of Acronyms, 256 F Workshop Participants, and Reviewers and Contributors, 258 G Contributing Sites, 265 H Contractor Reports Prepared for This Assessment, 268 INDEX, 269
After working all day in a chicken processing plant and cleaning offices until 10:30 pm, Eraclia Benitez has little time to help her children with their homework. Even in those few hours on weekends, when she’s finished the cooking, cleaning, and shopping, and has gone to the laundromat, Eraclia cannot read to them or answer their questions about school work. She’s caught in a double bind-she is unable to read or write in either Spanish or English. 1 When the steel mill closed, 48-year-old Howard LeHuquet was laid off after 18 years as a blast furnace worker. He decided to train for anew career in computer repair or air conditioning and heating. When he took the entrance test (almost 30 years after finishing high school), he failed on the math and was told to try something else. “Now why do you need so much math . . . to fix an air conditioner or a refrigerator? I was working all these years, paying the bills, paying off this house, making car payments. You don’t realize time goes by and then, bang. It’s gone. Everything is math, ’ laments LeHuquet. Now he hits the job market every week, looking for any kind of full-time job with health insurance; currently he is working as a security guard 2 nights a week. 2 Siman Skinner is an independent contractor who tried numerous methods of learning to read before coming to the Columbus, Mississippi, Learning Center. “When I come in here, I couldn’t read a lick. I couldn't. ” As he talks about why he quit school, Siman relates: “I had a lot of problems with my eyes. Plus I was a slow learner, too. And after a while they just move you on up and I got disgusted with it. ” He’s always worked. “I’d run crews for 1 David Fntzse, “De Nada a Literacy-In One Generation, ” Listening to Mothers’ Voices: A Reporter’s Guide to Family Literacy, Education Writers Association (cd.) (wil.ShiUgtO@ DC: 1992), pp. 25-29. z Dale Russakoff, “Lives Once Solid as Steel Shatter in Changed World, ” The Washington Post, Apr. 13, 1992, p. A14. 1 Summary and Policy Options 1 “4---, ~ 4 i’ 1 ! .“ k &L ! , 1. { ,4 . .— . . .— —-A ——. .J -- - —-- -- - -- -- - --- “- -- - - + - T
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