Daddy Can't Read: A Job To Be Done

Good evening, I'm Bob Ray Sanders. As part of the continuing cooperative effort between public television and ABC, KERA is proud to present two hours of programming devoted to the serious problem of literacy in the workforce. We will begin with Daddy Can't Read, a look at a Dallas area man's struggle with the literacy. Then we will see how employers from a coast to coast are investing in the future by helping their employees and potential employees gain basic literacy skills in a new film called a job to be done. Finally, we have brought business people, educators and representatives of various literacy programs in North Texas into our studio for a town hall discussion of a literacy in the workplace. Join us now for Daddy Can't Read.

Daddy Can't Read is made possible in part by the Southwestern Bell Foundation and the Dallas Morning News. Nearly two million adults in Texas are functionally illiterate. That's one fifth of all adults in this state. They can't read a medicine bottle or use a phone book. They can't read a wad hat or fill out a job application. More than 400,000 of those adults live in North Texas. But it's not just adults. According to the U.S. Department of Education, it's estimated that 13% of all 17-year-olds are functionally illiterate. They are tomorrow's adult illiterates. The cost is high, welfare aid, unemployment and lost tax revenues affect everyone and the cost can't be

measured in dollars alone. Three out of four prison inmates in the U.S. can't read. Those are the numbers but what about the people themselves? How does someone make it through life without being able to read? We spent a month with Johnny Rogers who grew up on a farm in Southeast Dallas County near Wilmer. He's 30 now and works as a plumber. Johnny can't read. We've done farm work. They helped them out and stuff. It was tough back then. Didn't put in that much money coming out. School. It just didn't work out, I don't find.

Johnny Rogers' family doesn't farm this land anymore but every summer he returns with his brother, Donnie, to Hall Hay for a family friend. Hay Hall is always hard. What I learned to like it. I don't think I can relax more up there and out anywhere else I can. I always figured if I'm going to do something, I'll give it a hundred percent bugger or otherwise I ain't going to do it. None of the 10 children in the Rogers family were able to get much schooling. They had to work on the farm. Johnny Rogers didn't go to school till he was 10 and then he

went only three years. When was the last time you actually set foot on this property and looked in this these windows? When I went to school there, I went by and slept with that. Never styled. Why didn't you learn to read John? I guess I just had someone to really teach me about how to do it so I just finally got tired of it, I guess, and just quit. Are these the same kind of deaths you had when you came? It doesn't look like they changed any. It looks like the same as it was. What could have happened here for you? I don't know. Nobody but a star teacher you know, when I'm supposed to, that I'm not going to learn something. But like it was, it was too late to start. Were you frustrated about it? Scared? Couldn't keep up?

I couldn't keep up with it because I didn't know what was going on. No one showed me how to do anything, any of it. So I didn't. Left my books in the locker and just walked out and then went to work and worked everything. What was going on with the Rogers family at the time? Did your dad need help? Well, we all worked, you know. When we was going to school, we'd work when we got out of work or something. Now school or something. And most time everybody quit school and they only had to go to work. Johnny and his wife Debbie live in a $300 a month, one bedroom apartment in Pleasant Grove. They've been married for 12 years and have three children. 12-year-old Jimmy Ray, a straight A student in the fifth grade, seven-year-old Amanda who is now learning to read and four-month-old Sarah. Johnny also supports his 15-year-old niece Glenda. Glenda is an honor student who's been accepted by the Dallas public school's law magnet. The family lives on Johnny's

$8 an hour plumbing job and odd jobs he picks up on the side. How does this compare to other jobs that you had though? This is easy. You didn't, you haven't always been a plumber. No. No work fence company. About four or five years. What were you doing there? Gold truck. Supervisor. Supervisor, I spent three years. Now you were a supervisor and you didn't know how to read. Did they know that? No. How did you keep it from them? Just like that. You get to be good at faking it, I guess. How do you fake it, Johnny? I found something I don't know. I asked somebody what it is. Don't bother me that. If you don't ask questions, it won't run up. So asking questions is the way they can get around it.

The job that you had had the most reading involved in it. I guess that fence company. What kind of things do you have to have? You had to make bills up because I was farming over the yard out there and I had to give them tickets and stuff where they could load the truck and know what the load is. And how did you get by? Well, the first year or so they made my bills farming. Just give them, I just don't give them what I wanted to. Now they're going to look at them enough and I learned what everything was. Do they know you didn't know how to read? And then I start making my own bills. How did you do that? I just sang it so much and it never changes. It's always the same stuff. So you actually memorize the way it looked when they did it over that year. Memorize the letters and what had to be written to where you could copy it. So I can know what it is.

Johnny doesn't spend much time with his fence when he does. It's usually over beer and dominoes. We got 17 points here. There's no way that he left 31. Oh, there's 42. So we got 15. 17 is one more. And that kept them getting there 31. Okay, come out. You're going to give me a beer that week. Come out with a go. Oh, okay. You're going to be this time. Okay. Like his son, West Rogers never learned to read. Feeding and clothing a house full of children was the priority. He expected the children to pull their weight on the farm. That left little time for school. It's going high. When there was reading to do Johnny's mother did it. She had enough schooling to get by. Would you say you guys really worked hard back then? We worked hard all the lives. How important

was learning to read if you were working so hard? We didn't have a chance to go to school. We had worked for a living. School wasn't the most important thing in your house. Was it? It wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't. Was it? I spayed to go, but they had to stay on my after-day. Did you, one day, say, Johnny, look, I need you to help me here with the work. How did it go? No, we also worked together all the time. We went to school. But did he go to school? He went to school. He went like three years of school, right? I can't. And he didn't learn to read. Why? I think to put it all away. Huh? He went to school about three years. He didn't learn. So he dropped out. Mr. Rogers grew uncomfortable with our conversation and left. Could you all have survived if your kids were going to school?

I don't know it would tell. It would be a hard struggle. Did you know how important schooling was back then? No, not really. But now you know. No, no. And those grandkids know. How does it make you feel? You know, that Glenda's going to a good school and that Jimmy Ray's making straight A's and how does that make you feel? Happy. Why? It just does. What, what, what makes them go to school? What makes them have that, you know, they've been able to be persuaded to go to school? How does that happen, you think? Well, I told them that the need of education now to get good jobs. You told your grandchildren that and your children must be telling their children that too. They must be.

If you had to do it all over again, all your nine children, would you have done it any differently? Would you have made them go to school? Yeah, I would. I wouldn't make them go to school every day. Every morning Debbie drops Johnny off at his job. Steven's company is a small, plundering repair shop in Pleasant Grove where he's worked for four years. Morning, guys. Morning. Sleep good? Yeah. His brother, Donnie, joined him two years ago. Their boss is Robert Stevens. It's that copper tea. It wasn't even sold it. You put it out at least about two months ago and all of a sudden water started just pouring out of all of it. Now you've got to solder it, Joe. But it didn't happen all the time. He has real good hard worker, conscientious, and you watch it. And then he

does, you can depend on him to do the song thing again. Okay, where else? It's a white star laundry. That's what I want to deliver that nipple. Oh, yeah, 3-Buh, 29, 2019, okay. There's a lot of driving in the plundering repair business because Johnny can't read. Stevens gives detailed directions to job locations. Okay, can you give her a downy ass and get to 4-2-1? More complicated jobs like this one at St. Paul's Hospital require more reading and sometimes precise measurements. While Stevens must be there to help, he does not consider it a burden. Johnny's real good help. He's learning, learning fast and with a little time he'll make it good at plumbers there. He's dependable, real dependable, and nowadays it's just hard

to find a dependable house. He's got one handicap though. Okay, he's learning. But he's learning and he wants to learn. That's the main thing. He's like, Plum, he wants to learn so bad that I'm not worried about him wanting to learn how to read and write because he can do that too. You have to be able to take care of blueprints. You know how to lay out the work stuff. And it's just a necessity. He could never make it without learning to read and write. And he understands this too. You call this a drip. Sometimes when they are pouring and pouring down your face and water just running everywhere, then you really enjoy. They keep it cool though. Did he actually come out and say, I can't read or did he have to get a word? No, I told him, you can't read and write, can't read. He says, I've been tricking people for years now. It was kind of cute. A lot of people didn't catch it. That he couldn't read and I didn't realize he couldn't read. You're paying him $8 now. $8 now, yeah. I could pay you more if he was capable of going out and being

able to write work orders and stuff like that. Any higher paid man, it's got to be able to just be turn loose and man in them to set a plan or tell him to go do something and forget about it when you're making that kind of money. And John is just not that far along you know. What do you want for him? He's just a good kid that hadn't had a chance and he just ate to see somebody trying to make life without the capabilities of some other fellow that has that much age on him. And he works hard and he really, he's disabled. Okay, I got it. Johnny and Donnie handle routine jobs on their own. Donnie, don't let me want him cutting his. They work good together, make a good thing. Too many can always work better together anymore. Donnie's pretty good about right now and what time they get

to a job, what time they leave and their mollets and stuff like that. And that helps a lot too. Here again, Johnny can't read it all and he depends on Donnie to do what little reading they can and they work it out by copying other words and stuff like that. We shake the job. Thank you. See you about six months. All right, just come back when you get something there. All right. As Johnny's mother did the reading for her husband, Debbie does Johnny's reading. Debbie Rogers has an 11th grade education. So you've gotten time to use the filling out forms for him. Well, there's been times, too, like he's worked at Safeway after Steve's gone and he's had to bring home the papers for me to fill out what they've done and what they had to use on the job. I've tried to teach him how to read mollets, glibrary,

movement, or poses. He won't let me. I mean, I, you know, I've got to help him a lot. He don't like doing it in front of me because I mean, he's always had a conflict about not knowing how to read. Did you know he didn't have a read when you married him? No. Did it matter to you when you found out? No. Do you think it's important that he learns? I do now. Why? Well, like he's wanting to get his plumbing license and stuff and he has to know how to do that to get there. And he's always wanted to learn, but, you know, I'm already used to doing it all myself. How about when you had the baby? When you had sail four months ago. Did, did, uh, was Johnny there and did he have to fill out any paperwork or what are you doing in a case like that where he has to fill paperwork out? Well, like when

I went in to have her, they had to bring everything into the labor room for me to fill out an answer and like I had to sign a bunch of papers so if they had to give me a blood transfusion, stuff like that. And if he could have read the papers and everything, he could have filled him out, but he couldn't, so I had to. Johnny comes home from work at 4.30. Like clockwork, he plants himself in his favorite chair, has a cold beer, and watches TV with his family. As our homes reflect our lifestyles, Johnny's home reflects his. There are no newspapers, no books, not even a TV guide. But Johnny doesn't watch TV on Wednesday nights anymore. Instead, he spends two hours at the skyline branch of the Dallas Public Library, his

learning to read. Johnny dropped out of a reading class two years ago. He says the class was too big for him. Johnny's daughter may have given him the push he needed to try again. My daughter, she told her teacher she had to learn how to read. She said, my daddy don't know how to read. He said, I don't know how to read. And I figured, no, I'm going to start doing so. Here's a new pattern of words. You know that A-D makes the sound of ad. S-A-D is sad. That is M-A-D-Good. What is D-A-D-D? Good. And F-A-D is sad. And here's that favorite each again. Head. Okay.

Man, Mr. Stevens got together and he found this class here for me. We're going to do a little reviewing. So let's start with these words, okay? I like it. Just one on one. I like my teacher. She's nice. She's one of the nice ones that we met. If I learn how to read or something, you know, that's something that's missing. All right, we'll do this one together. He was a total non-reader when I first met him. He did not know how to read. He did recognize letters. He didn't always know the sounds of letters. But he didn't know how to put letters together to form words. The letter K. The letter K right here is the sound you hear at the end of check, leak, and black. What sound am I making at the end of those words? Okay. He's like a blank piece of paper, a blotting paper, if you like. He soaks up. Everything I can give him and asks for more. Let's say those together. In alphabetical

order, A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Okay. Is he different than many students that you've had in the past? Probably different only in his motivation and his sincere desire to learn. I said, do you want to learn to read? And he said, oh yes. He says, I've made up my mind. I'm going to read. He says, I'm going to do it. And I said, well, I think you will. He says, I know I will. When I make up my mind to do something, I do it. And he's proving this every time I see him. I can. Did not earn much at the market. How could he get a present from four? Four. Four is friend. It can't help but make a change in his life. We're opening up a whole new world to this young man, a world that he's perfectly capable of grasping with everything he's

taught. And he wants a good, bad north of town. There are no boots to go. We feel we're educating families by reaching at least one person in the family. That's bound to have some effect on the entire family. If daddy can read, daddy's children will read. We know as teachers that the greatest influence on a child's progress in school is not the school or the teacher, but his family. A Saturday afternoon picnic at a Dallas City Park and Johnny is where he likes to be with his family in a place where reading isn't required. He has survived 30 years in a world of the printed world without knowing how to read. He has brought three children into the world and supported them. Johnny Rogers is proof that you don't have to know how to read to survive, but surviving is not enough for him anymore.

You think taking these reading lessons is going to help you? No, yeah, yeah. It's something I always want to learn. So I think I learned it. I should have learned it about four years ago. My memory was good, dad. Do you think this is something that's been missing in his life for a long time? Yeah, it's something he's always learning. Did you ever talk about it much? What do you want for these kids, you two? What do you want for these kids? Whatever they want. What do you think they want? What's the direction they're moving in? Are they going the same direction you guys went? They're going the same direction I went. I was brought up to go to school. One thing we had to do, my kids, they're going to do it. Johnny's the one to make sure today. They're going to, they're going to learn it. I didn't have a chance to do that.

They're going to do it. They got to do it. Did you have his wild ears? How are those years? Terrible. What was that like? Well, like he would go to work on Friday morning and wouldn't come home till Monday morning. Well, Johnny, what happened? I mean, really, what happened to make you decide to stay one day? You know, I'm not going to blow my paycheck and stay out over the whole weekend. I'm going to go home every night and be with my family. Well, it's time to make change, you know, because I ain't getting no younger. But I'm starting now. I ain't going to be having that. And I won't have something. I die. I don't have something to leave my kids to do. I won't leave them to something. My mom and them, they was to die. All day, I got to pocket half a shoulder. That's all I have to do for my woman. That's all thing you have to give me to ever since I've been born. You want to leave them with something

a little bit more. You had to work. You know, if you had a big family out there, you know, kids had to work to help out. But they didn't, you know, sometimes we went hungry. When you have a girlfriend. Well, that's called a little man going to drink it up and stuff. Would go out and wouldn't make 100 out of the day. How nice. And it's been a 100 out of the day. He wouldn't put back for a rainy day. Then during the winter, he wouldn't work anything. It wouldn't be no good. He wouldn't put like a member of them, my uncle and stuff. Who would need it? And you, when you found yourself spending a new paycheck. I was doing the same thing they were doing. I said, I wouldn't want to do it. I said, I wouldn't want to do that when I left home. And I found myself doing the same thing that they was doing. It's time to stop. I ain't going to be in the same thing they were. That's kind of what you want to do. That's kind of it. I want to leave them more and what I want to have. I don't want them to be better off than I was. Johnny doesn't often think about how his life could have been if he'd learned to read, but

visiting his old school made him think about it. I don't care how bad I get. My kids are going to go to school. They ain't no telling what they could be. They can be young doctors, lawyers, whatever they want to be. If we went to school, they didn't tell what we could have done. I could have, you know, like getting out of a dig and ditching and stuff. Wouldn't that do all that? Do you ever think about what you could have been? At one time when I was younger, I always wanted to be a lawyer. I never did go to school in that school. I was fascinated. I always changed it. I always like to know everything I can about it, but you know, I couldn't read the books to learn anything. I just pick up what I hear in there. And you want to make it a little different for your kids? Well, yeah. I'm going to do what they wanted. But they ain't quit in school. Look here. Look where they at now. They're in the dark. Do you think he's going to

walk there? Let's see what he says. I do not like green eggs in him. I do not like them so I am. I beg you to eat them. You do not like them, so you say? Try them. Try them. And you may. Say, I like green eggs in him. I do like them, so I am. I do so like green eggs in him. Thank you. Thank you, so I am. That's all I have. That's some story. Me, since you last introduced us to Johnny over a year ago, what's he doing now? What's his progress like? Well, he still is working at Steven's company, Bob Ray. He's doing better at work. He's able to write down what time he gets to a job, what time he leaves a job. He can write down a location of a job. So he's working on it and he doesn't

have the help of his brother anymore. Donnie no longer works for Steven's company. So Johnny cannot be dependent on his brother anymore, which a lot of folks who can't read grow dependent on other people. As far as reading classes, he is still taking classes. His teacher, Mrs. Krebs, moved to Florida. That was not good news. And he had a hard time getting back on track. He now is working with a man who he does like. And he's learning to read the sports page among other things. And we'll be talking with Johnny later on the program live. In fact, that's coming up in just about one hour. That's right. Okay. Thanks a lot, Mia. Unfortunately, Johnny Rogers experiences far from unique. A lot of literacy cost employers literally billions of dollars in loss productivity and what takes an immeasurable toll on families. In our next program, a job to be done, we see the effects of adult illiteracy on the American economy and the nation's businesses and what is being done to confront this problem. A job to be done is made possible by Nabisco Brands. We're proud to join Project Literacy U.S. in an effort to close the book on illiteracy. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

which asks you to join in efforts to help people learn to read. American business spends more than $200 billion a year to educate and train its workforce. It's roughly the same as the total spent on primary, secondary, and higher education in the United States. Traditionally, most of the money has gone to train upper and middle-level managers. But now, some businesses see that they must provide similar educational opportunities for lower-level workers. Locate your page down, Keith. And tap it once. And tap it again. Already, the shortage of skilled labor, intensified world competition, and the computer revolution have signaled to these businesses that improving human resources is crucial to future success.

They're trying to spread the word by their examples. That educating all of America's workforce is a job to be done. Own and Corporation manufactures a full line of electric generator sets, engines, and related switch gear. When I came on board in 1980, this plant was in fairly serious shape. The technology of production was very obsolete. Likewise, the skills of our people were obsolete.

Hi, Jerry. Hi, Tim. The job being run here is the way it used to be done five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. In fact, that machine is probably about twenty years old. This is the next generation technology. This is the computer-controlled manufacturing cell. What we're able to do here is get six or seven different partners coming out of the cell at one time. Let's go upstairs and see our robot paint system. And what you're going to see here, the operator is going to re-teach this robot a spray pattern. He's installing the teaching pendant on the robot. He was not quite satisfied with the spray pattern he was getting the first time. And so he's going to put a new memory into the robot as to how to do it. With spray painting, as well as with welding, you need to put your absolute best people on teaching the robot.

Because if you do a very fine spray job each time by the human, the robot will mimic that. The robot will mimic that also. The first thing to come off the street and come into a plant like Onens years ago, without any screwing, maybe did real porn school basic mechanical skills about all you would have to have. And you could have came into a place and found yourself a good job. He able to work at that place for life. I don't think the workplace is like that anymore. And that's one of the reasons that I did go back to school. We offered a few random courses and we found, although there was a very high interest level on the part of our employees in taking technical courses, that they were finding a very high frustration because they were not qualified, they did not have the necessary prerequisites,

primarily mathematics, to move on into the technical areas. We in fact had to go back to basics, basic study skills, which many people probably had at one time, but being out of the classroom for many many years had simply lost. When the Onens offered the first classes at work, as far as the convenience, it was just great. I mean, I got done with work and walked down the area that we were going to have classes. We started out in math refresher and then we went to algebra. And then we took trigonometry, and then we took no geometry and then trigonometry. And it took us about two and a half years to take all those classes that we had together. When students come into a class, and it's the first class they've taken, whether it be refresher math at Onens or adult basic,

when they come in the first time, it takes a lot of courage because for an adult to admit that they can't do decimals, can't multiply, can't divide, can't do fractions, it's just something special for them to admit. And I guess to me, they're kind of heroes in a way. Right, sure. Now, this is the hardest part of the problem right here. Once you have that, now it says there are two numbers that went at it equal 51. Half the job of an adult educator is to build back up the self-confidence and have them realize that, yes, they are capable of learning. Yes, you can teach an old dog, new tricks. In fact, old dogs learn quite well. In better some cases than the younger ones because there's some motivation. When I first started in the algebra, my son was at the ball at the same point as what I was when I first started.

Here I was in my 40s, taking the algebra, which I thought I'd never use. And my son at the same time who was a sophomore in high school, taking his algebra and working together on something that was schooling. And I really got a good feeling out of that. At times it was okay and at times it was bad because he would get kind of stuck. And then Gary came in and I'd walk over there. This is easy, Dad. You can do it and you couldn't make it stick in his mind that it was kind of easy, you know. And he would get stuck and five minutes later you'd go walking away and I'd start doing my homework. Gary, come here. I'm stuck again. When I teach trigodone and I apply to the fact that okay, you're going to need trig because you've got to tell that machine how far to move over on a coordinate axis and where to drill the hole. I'm going to make this functional so it's trig they can use.

I'm not going to water it down so much that it won't help them if they decide to go on to school and take more math too. And they seem to not mind. Guys get so excited. I mean, sure they're looking forward to reading a plumber's manual, say they're a plumber. But they're just excited over being able to sit down and read a newspaper and find out what's going on in the world from the paper instead of sitting in front of a television set. What do you think of the machine? I think it's really good. Almost directly after Mr. Eichel showed up was the fact that he opened everybody's eyes to change. And he said that the world will pass you by if you don't change with the time. I really don't enjoy reading unless the reading directly pertains to what I'm doing. I think it's operator manuals. Sounds kind of sickening but operator manuals are dealing direct with what I do.

And without them, I can't function so why not be familiar with them to begin with so I read them. You got to know what it's telling you. If you can't read it, it's like reading a book. You have to understand what the machine is trying to tell you. And it'll only do what you tell it to do. They can't do anything else. The machine itself is made to be run unmanned. This machine, when I got here eight years ago, the biggest automation was multiple drilling heads. The world is going to computers. I have one at home that I just got. But I don't understand that as well as I understand these because I've run working with these for five years. I'm not old but I'm not young.

I'm not in the dark ages. I'm trying to keep up. I took robotics, which I took for one summer. And then I took another robotics class. The instructor asked me the first night, why are you here? And I says, the only reason I'm here is because I want to learn to speak to my replacement. There's got to be somebody who knows how to talk to and communicate and repair the robot. In the perfect world, we would prefer not to be in the business of education. But we recognize that we've got a large operation right here. We've got a lot of good people right here.

And so as businessmen, we look at and say, we have a certain sunk investment, sunk cost. Our roots are here. We have chosen to compete against world competition in this location and to use the resources we have available to us to do that. Among those resources, in fact, the most valuable one are our people. Our folks have been trained to program this kind of equipment to maintain it and operate it. Previously, all that was done by hand. What you're seeing here is the interest and marriage of equipment technology and people upskilling. Without people qualified to operate and maintain and program that kind of equipment, it's so much full damage. I thought I was a good assembler when I could assemble 200 parts in an hour, but I don't know. This machine had her ideal conditions to put down 13,000. You have a later recommendation that I think really has a lot of merit.

And that is an advisory board made up of manufacturing employees. Owning's management continues to seek employee advice on how to improve classes. Workers and supervisors were interviewed at the outset of Owning's venture into education to determine skill needs for each job. Owning had a goal to enable its employees to master a new production process crucial to the company's competitiveness and survival. Owning sought the help of university specialists and adult basic educators. We are working now to form bridges with the public education segment here in the Twin Cities area, to attempt to instill an interest in technology, manufacturing technology. We are the customer of the educational systems in this country. We private industry. And if we are not speaking out to public education as to what we need in the way of people, skills, and so forth, then we carry as much responsibility as they do for the product that they turn out,

and the product is the educational level of the young people. Between now or the year 2000, business will be forced to dip into a receding pool of entry level workers. In 1995, two million fewer 16 to 24-year-olds will be available for hire. The baby boom is over. An era of worker shortages is beginning. Step down please. Next. Hi. How are you? Fine, how about yourself? Very good. A major branch of this size should not have people lined up for 20 minutes to make it possible. We paid the highest hours to tell us of all the major banks in the city and still we can't get people.

So it's not money, it's not the benefits. When you're dealing with other people's money, I don't think you can just bring in bodies. Because no one's going to bank with you if they come up to the window and they're short-change to 100 or they're short-change 50 because the teller can't count and one after the other has that problem, they're not going to come back here. 90% of the customers do not deal with the sales person. They deal with the teller. This is not your account. You can't sign his check. I come here every week to deposit that check and they always ask for the signature of the person who's depositing it. Okay, here's Jack. You should never have signed the check. Let's see if you can print this one. I have to see officer and they can get the number. Is that the front head? Okay, thank you. Come back up front. There's 9.99. In the check check.

I said this is no good. You don't want money from your checking in. There are only four types of endorsements that are acceptable for check cashing. You know me, I work around the corner. I'm not trying to pull anything. Chase is using interactive video disc technology to speed and improve the training of tellers. Trainers can learn at their own pace and Chase can learn sooner if they are unsuited to the pressures of the teller's job. What do you mean I have to go to management to cast this check and wait in line again? It's my money. I have been banking here for 20 years. Ten of it waiting in line. I'll get you fired for this. Good. Your answer is correct. Good morning. Be cool, nobody gets hurt. Put the cash in the bag now. Now I want to make a cash withdrawal from everybody's account. Move!

Armed robberies don't happen that often. But when they do, it's important to stay calm and follow some basic common sense procedures. Business cries to help people with training classes. You're hoping that the person that's coming to be trained at that point has already the basic skills. Perfect example, I had worked with a woman that they had hired a young woman to work in her department. She was going to do filing. I may have told you this. But they couldn't understand why it took her so long to file the files. She was a high school graduate of New York School. So they observed her one day and they saw her take the file and she went and she started at the beginning. And she went all the way along like she would find the M. And she would go to the M door and she would put it in there. And they asked her why she did that, why she went from the beginning.

That girl had never learned how to go directly to the M. She knew ABCDE and in her mind she was going ABCDE till she hit the M. That's the God's honest truth. Okay, what about that? What else? You've identified your customer, but what do you do to that account number? I'm going to punch it. Okay, do that before I sign it. With fewer young people in the labor market, the inadequate preparation of many of them is all too obvious to chase. Only one out of ten applicants for a teller's job gets past the initial screening test in basic math and English. There are two points to the test. The first part will deal with the estimation. The problem of finding skilled employees is expected to get worse. Minorities and immigrants who are traditionally less educated will make up a greater proportion of new workers available for hire. Of those who chase now hires and sends on to a 17-day teller's school, only 70% will complete the course and go to work in a branch.

The starting salary is about $13,000 a year. Several banks in New York got together with a group of Brooklyn high schools whose average dropout rate is 75%. The banks offered jobs to graduating seniors who had no more than five unexcused absences and who could pass each bank screening and testing process. Chase was prepared to offer 50 jobs but found only 17 who could make it through teller's school. There was a lot of kids interested in it. When they first came there, they was like, for real, you know, they was guaranteeing us a job at a bank that was like really surprising, you know. And they felt, well, they say, yeah, I can do that. I can get a get average. I can come to school every day. But as time went on, a lot of kids didn't make it.

You know, their average was too low or even they was absent too much. But it did help a lot of other students that was doing bad in school to pull that average up and to come to school every day. Because a job at a bank would really, you know, do you good? My first day, I was like scared, you know, going to a new place around new people. You know, our figure, as I go in there, everybody be like staring at me. She's the new one that's coming in here and everything. But it wasn't like that. It was really different. Everyone was friendly. I just felt it on the back. That's where they taught you in school. They might have changed the rules since I went. But I just felt it on the face that you should be close to. Her name is Latanya. She takes me step by step where she's doing. Even if I understand that she still go over it with me, because there's things that you can't forgive. Paying by cash? I need to know your mother's made in it.

If you have any identification with me, yes, you're right. My mother's made me. That's all I have to say is that card with that job. Okay, that's where I have to find out from them. Well, I think I'm ready now. But I have to learn just a little more before I be able to do it by myself. You can't go to work wearing jeans and a little t-shirt. You have to come dress proper. My way of talking, it did change a lot because I like to bug out or around my friends the way I talk to them is much different than what I would talk at bank. You have to be problem and you can't get smart with the customers. It's a lot of changing that you have to do. When I come out the train station, it's like I'm coming into a different world.

Because all you do is see people just sitting out there and doing nothing for themselves. And I'll be saying, if I can do it, they can do it. Because I had to start from the bottom. They started from the bottom, but they're not trying to get to the top. So I feel they should try to do more. But most people, they're not going to do more. I don't think I really would have been at chase at this point in time. Maybe later on in the future I would have probably took the opportunity to go. But right now, I don't think I would have been. If they wouldn't have took our time to help us. For Lorraine Fields and Chase Manhattan, it's a win-win situation. It's good business and good social policy to educate lower echelon employees. One third of the adult population has not completed high school.

And that's true even in a city like Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the two principal industries are Harvard and MIT. That's why Dr. Lloyd David started the Continuing Education Institute. Businesses need to understand that they have people who are not fully qualified and can easily be qualified. Because at this stage in time, the adult knows where the gaps are. You don't even have to test them. You go in with a test and they'll tell you before you hand them a piece of paper. I can't write. I hate to write. I never liked math. Since 1981, CEI has offered high school diplomas to Boston Area Corporate Employees who attend on-site classes. Graduates say they have gained confidence, opportunity, and a better quality of life. Common YH1. Companies say they have gained more competent, promotable, and loyal workers.

For Blue Cross Blue Shield, CEI's program is cost-effective. I can't imagine a more appropriate, more profitable investment in a service-oriented society than in the skills of the employees. Service, almost by definition, is communications, reading, writing, speaking. And to think that for a fairly modest investment, you can significantly improve the quality of those interpersonal skills in your employees. I can't imagine why people haven't jumped on the bandwagon faster. Unemployment in the state of Massachusetts, the last time I looked was under 3%. There was a sign in a cookie store window. They were willing to pay in excess of $6 an hour for somebody, time of their choosing to come sell cookies for them.

That says there's a manpower shortage. It says that you, in order to keep your business running, you have to employ whoever you can get your hands on essentially. And sometimes they're not going to come to you with the skills you need and you have to build those skills. And you're going to feel really good about yourself. Companies, families, and communities share in the pride of each year's diverse group of CEI graduates. Mary Ann Davis. She's a mother of four children. She's originally from Alabama, left school in the 11th grade. Throughout the program, there was so many times I felt like giving up, having to work two jobs, doing homework, two AM in the morning. It was very difficult to me.

Do you have any 2800s for continuity? To call out a state? Yes. She's been working at Blue Cross in a clerical position now for 10 years and needed, wanted to get ahead in her job so that she could earn more money. And she definitely has plans of going on to college. That is the color of Britain. This is originally from Barbados, who spent 21 years in the British merchant arena. Came to this country just a few years ago. I has been working in the children's hospital of Boston in the kitchen. I've been saying to further my education by going back to school to pursue the degree in full services. First, I had to get my high school diploma. Some of them were very soft, especially over here.

In meeting with his supervisor the other day, she mentioned the fact that he would not have been promoted if he had not gone into this program. And I asked her why since he's so competent. And she says because he didn't have the self-confidence. And that's what he needed. John David McDonough. John's a very interesting man. He has two small children. He's a typical childhood. He discovered very late in life just a few years ago that he was dyslexic. And that was the reason he could not read. He now works at the Chelsea Soldiers' home as a nurse's aide. And wants to go on to nursing school next fall. Do we want to put this on right here? Two years ago, John McDonough deliberately got a maintenance job at the Bank of Boston

because he'd heard that they offered the CEI program. John could have found the same opportunity if he'd been hired by a data general, digital equipment, the Bank of New England, Massachusetts General, or Beth Israel Hospital. Smaller companies could also take advantage of CEI's program. The people that have graduated from this program, we've maintained contact with. And we know that 27% got promoted within six months of graduation and they've continued getting promotion. And that 50% are now in college or taking courses in their companies. And some of the colleges these people go to are impressive. What is really unique about this program is that it awards credit for learning and gain through life experience. For skills and knowledge that a person has acquired from their jobs principally, from raising a family, managing a home, being active in a community, having hobbies.

Whatever the person feels is important to them where they've achieved. Most CEI students read at a fourth of fifth grade level and up. John McDonough is one of the few, less than 5% who were illiterate. My wife realized we were talking with her friend of hers who was doing her master's degree at Harvard. And they realized that it didn't know how to read it right. And I used to look at the newspaper with more of their pictures and stuff and interpret what I've seen in the picture. And then they realized it didn't know how to read. So they decided they were going to do a project for us. It was like a joke. They were going to teach John how to read. And all these other people that they were everywhere around was well-educated and stuff like that.

My best friend, Leo Goya. He first said, well, what do you mean you don't know how to read and write stuff like that? He sat down with me with the other two at Mars and Laura Osborne. And they just worked on the real basic simple ABCs. Imagine the A with the A and the B with the B. And then like a flashcard type thing. And now today, 70 years later, I'm doing the same thing that they did with me with my two children. And it's amazing that my kids can pick out that A because it goes with an ant or A because it's an apple. B goes with a B. A B goes with a can of beer. Or they can recognize a word and say, hey, that's my name. Stuff like that. To my classmates who are receiving their high school diploma tonight, I say congratulations. A new door has been open, never to be shut again. And again, thank you.

Every city, town and state and the United States has a program from the YMCA to the local high school to the Red Cross. Has some type of program. And just keep those funds coming because there are people, there are people who want to go back to school when all they need is a little bit of encouragement from their family, from whoever. I did it. And if I can do it, John Danna, you can do it. Well, the graduates of the class of 1987, please rise and be recognized. 72 million adults in this nation do not have a high school diploma. Their need is barely addressed by a federal budget of $100 million a year for adult basic education. That figure has remained static for the last seven years, despite an outpouring of volunteers willing to teach reading. Much more is needed.

There's a job to be done. The complexity of modern warfare has led the military to invest heavily in education. 18 divided by three to six. No, eight minus two. My older brother, he's in the Navy. He's got 15 and now I'm going to have my younger brother. I'm the me, he's in the Navy. My father, he did 20 years, he retired. Oh, he was my job. It's a whole different aspect from what they were doing. And mine is a more critical rating, a lot dangerous than what they are doing. We're doing it. Since you go to school, they teach you that your life expectancy is only four months, you know. That's about it.

You know, because of the dangers involved in landing aircraft on their flight deck. You know, the cable could snap and that would be it for you. Or a plane could crash and run you over. And that's it. Flight and everything. That's the lifespan if one doesn't read the manuals and learn to do his job properly. We're going to go on a journey. There's a profile of the name on that one. Without the skills, you could really make a big mistake and call it a lot of accidents and kill a lot of people. Business is beginning to learn what the military has known for some time. The best basic skills training isn't called that. It's called Functional Context Education. It's job-specific. It uses words and content from actual job manuals. It builds on a person's prior knowledge to introduce new concepts and information. All the definitions of the words that we have to do in class,

it's given us them now and then we the class will be easier to understand what it's about. Though I wasn't very good at reading before, it's helped me out. The thing is, he's learning to read by using the materials that he's going to be working around and with every day. And it's working. As one of my fellow educators put it, we've got a lot of stuff out of there, a lot of gimmicks, but this one works. And we're rather proud of it. We've done some follow-up studies on other students and we find that today, instead of having an 18% front-out rate, we've got about a 7% front-out rate. So we have, in essence, protected an investment in these young people and move them on through in the technical fields they're in. Before the program, if they flunked, they would be returned to what we call general duty. In some cases, we may have had disciplinary problems developing which the individual became a legal problem, and eventually it was discharged from the United States Navy.

At 205-206, this is X-ray Tango 1, standing by for control. When our people don't read technical manuals correctly, when they don't have the commitment to reading those technical manuals, you're talking about dropping $23 million airplanes into the sea. We can't afford that. We can't afford it from a Navy standpoint, but we can't afford it from a national standpoint in terms of the Navy's missions. Did you go to volume 8? I think you're 8-3-8. 8-3-8? Yeah. I think you're 8-3-8 in volume 8. That is where you will find a smaller diagram or this. So we're all the bolts down to 150-inch pounds using the proper sequence. And I emphasize inch pounds. All right, we had one individual to call up, and one of the wisest bolts kept breaking off, because he was using foot pounds. And every time he got up to X number of foot pounds,

it was great. No wonders. Inch pounds. You've got to put a value on reading those manuals and reading them right, and we've got to mean it. You know, and we have to have rewards, and we have to have punishment if people don't do that. I worry that we think once we've taught a person to read, they've reached some level that we think that's all we have to do. It's done for the rest of the time. Not true. I think the research that we've done that perhaps has the greatest promise is that you're aware of Tom Stitch, Dr. Stitch's effort in functional context training, where we try and build competencies on the life experience that people are having. If you want to teach a person to read better, you try and build reading programs around that person's everyday work environment. What Mr. Jefferson said 200 years ago is

particularly appropriate today that a nation that expected to be ignorant and free at the same time was expecting something that never could be. Desk Flipett, and that's that. Across the nation this year, Dr. Thomas Stitch held workshops to educate professionals concerned about adult literacy. One of the things I hope to get across today is that at least the understanding I have is that people are not illiterate simply because they might be reading between a fifth to a ninth grade level. And if we categorize them as functionally illiterate, we're going to come forth with solutions to the problems and by and large they will be the wrong solutions. Stitch is a psychologist who spent 15 years developing job-related functional skills programs for the Army, Air Force, and Navy. He now heads his own consulting firm in San Diego.

What I'm doing now is essentially given the results of a two-year study we did for the Ford Foundation in which we look at how the Armed Services has approached the training and utilization of lower aptitude, less literate people. In the middle of the Vietnam conflict, about 1966, the Armed Services lowered their mental quality standards and accepted up to 100,000 people a year whose scores had hurtier, middle scores had kept them out of the service. It was called Project 100,000, a fish thee. On a fish thee, there was another name that was given to it. It was called McNamara's Moron Corps. This group of people was castized in the press as the low aptitude, low literate people who would bring all sorts of problems to the Army. You will be given your clothing, be given your shots, you will be assigned to billets. This was a part that the military could play in the war of poverty,

to bring people in who have been excluded from opportunity and give them opportunity. Human talent is our nation's most essential resource. And that can't be mine from the ground and it can't be harvested from the fields and it can't be synthesized in a test tube. The 32 million Americans who are poor weren't born without intellectual potential. They weren't brain poor at birth, but only privileged poor, advantage poor, opportunity poor. To the extent that this nation loses the performance potential of these millions of human beings, to that extent this nation's element security is diminished. We found that about 12 to 15 years after they came in, about 8,000, of the project, 100,000 people were still in the military. Their aptitude scores were higher. Their years of education had gone up.

They had used the educational opportunities. And then we found people who had been tracked when they got out of the military. Again, they were earning more than people whose scores were comparable who had not come in the military. They had more years of education. They were using the GI bill. In fact, 68% used the GI bill. And that's a higher ratio of use than the overall use of the GI bill, which is roughly 50%. So I think what we have to do is we have to be very concerned that we don't declare half the nation nowadays illiterate because half the nation reads below a 9.6 grade level. And I can tell you this, we did research in the Army setting with we interviewed over 100 Army riders who produced manuals. And what they did, and most of them, by the way, were English literature majors who were hired to produce these technical manuals, what they did when we asked, well, how do you approach this? Well, we try to cover the topic. So the first thing you say is, well, they're topic oriented.

That's funny because jobs are task oriented, but these are topic oriented. So we're going to cover the topic. We got manuals where the people are supposed to read this to change tires. The manuals start with the history of rubber. Why? We must cover the topic. And they continue to produce topic oriented writing when they should produce performance oriented writing. And there is a great difference. What I'm saying in that case, that it is possible to take the job reading materials and teach people how to use those materials. You can improve their reading skills by having them read that which they are supposed to read. It's pretty straightforward. For instance, if you send them to a basic skills course, they're going to make them read something anyway. You don't learn to read without reading something. That's one of the biggest misconceptions in this whole business is that somehow or other, reading takes place in some free-floating, generic, content-free manner. But it doesn't.

You always read something. You read some ideas. Well, a job is a content area. I think a major management problem. It's a problem of the managers in business and industry is that they don't require people to continue to develop their literacy skills in a workplace context. They permit them to avoid the use. If that isn't bad enough, in technical training programs, we hear people say the way we accommodate lower capability people is we make everything hands-on. It's as trippy, but when does heads-on come back? Well, you know, it is the serious truth that if you do not use your cognitive skills, you'll lose your cognitive skills. Northern Alabama has sufficient reminders that without education, opportunities are fuel. With education, new industries are born.

Local economies prosper, and the outside world is seen as less threatening. The workforce will be the first to target it. We've got to be competitive. This is jobs. This is my job. My son's job. My daughter's job. We don't remain competitive here in Alabama. General Motors will find some other plant that can manufacture the products that we make. Steering gears are made at Sagano Division General Motors in Athens, Alabama, and shipped to customers around the world. People are part of a process, a total process, control. It really involves a well-trained workforce that they understand these things. So it's all of these variables, and if you control all the input variables, the significant ones, then what comes out the end is academic. It's going to be good. We started using it in the classes,

and it was fantastic. The words education, training, and development are not included in Dan Cameron's title. But the superintendent of quality assurance and statistics is involved in a lot of teaching at Sagano. The quality of his products, so I did. At this point, we'll have to have our safety glasses on and loud just kind of lead the way. It attended a course at the University of Tennessee, what they call a quality productivity institute. They said, Dan, you've got to go out, and you've got to get the community colleges involved. And I walked across the street. I went over, and we are fortunate to have a community college across the street. The dean of the technical college, he listened to me for a while, and he said, well, Dan, he said, what does it think we should do? I said, let me put a bayage on you. I put a Sagano bayage on you. That means you walk in our plants anytime you want. And you go out and look at the things that we're doing today, and then let's sit down and talk about how we can take

the academic tools and convert them to things that we can use right now. We hired our first instructor, Bill Floyd. He became a Sagano member, and he actually worked in our shop. And I think that I've learned is that you've got to learn and do. If just a formal training course, you just don't cut the mustard grid. You've got to take that information that you get and apply it. And I think this application is really where people get to get the most learning. You want to take that one, Dan? Scott. Scott, we developed the Fundamentals of SPC course, a problem-solving course. Then you have the possibility for contaminated pump. Still be sealed up may have function. But one thing that we soon learned in our efforts was that the workforce told us that we started too far upstream. They said, hey, this is really neat stuff.

We like it. We're pumped up. We're ready to go to help you run the business. But you guys assume too much. You guys, you managers. You assume, first of all, that we understand how to read gauges. You never taught a set. Many members of the workforce were coming in and saying, hey, I've been at a school of 20, 30 years. And I'm pretty fuzzy on those things. And some of these very simple or basic mathematical functions. They said, give us a refresher on that. Other things like how to read a blueprint. We make that assumption in our business. Everybody out in the how to read a blueprint. And they really didn't. They really needed us to back up and provide some more of the basic tools so that it would set the stage for the tools of prevention. And that's how we ended up actually developing a course called Principles of Manufacturing. I think I've got time.

It's been a long time since I've done it. It's about 20 something years. Well, it's tucked away in there somewhere. You just have to be able to find out where it is. Did you have any blueprint reading at all? Other PDQs? Okay. Set up sheets and blueprints. A lot of people don't know how to read them. I ain't world-based, but I can get by. Okay. Give me your background. Both industry-wise and education are training-wise. What areas you've worked in. And what kinds of training and or education background you have. We're talking about an adult worker who already has some measure of self-esteem, some importance about himself. And he's working in an industrial environment, which means when he comes to your class, he's getting time off from his job.

And you're usually doing it in plant type of thing. So you have a whole different animal compared to a kid that tried out a high school over here taking first year English. You know, you can snow him. This guy you're not. You better know what you're talking about. And you better be able to get it across to him, because he's not going to sit in there too long. He'll tell you right up front. This isn't working. I'm leaving. Goodbye. In the factories of America, the new emphasis is on prevention of problems, on getting a process right. The new manufacturing buzzwords are just in time. No inventory, zero unplanned downtime, reducing the variable, and continuous improvement. At the heart of new systems are computers. At Saginaw, some 200 personal computers are used in the plants to chart the performance of other computer-controlled machines. The program's in the, what we refer to,

is the latter, side-ground, four-hats. A real good two, and deep hug in the machine. Here on the CRT, you slay the part program being executed. Training at Saginaw is ongoing and omnipresent. A joint United Autoworker's General Motors Fund pays for much of it. The Union Support Role is vital. I serve on a committee college, joint human resource committee, which is composed of both UIDA and management people. We have GED class that's going on, and we had them here at the UIDA trying to center. I came in Robert, she's the one with over it, and she worked with things for a long time, and she really seemed like she was concerned, you know, as far as getting people better their staff, because she just wouldn't leave me alone. And I talked to him a whole lot, and encouraged him, telling him that what we're fixing off of the GED classes,

and I'd love, you know, just love for him to go and try it for two or three days. He took his GED test, I think about two weeks ago, and passed, and he made real good on it. I was pretty smart, it was just, people think, you're a real smart, you know, you're sort of a nerd or something. When I was growing up, we didn't have a whole lot of money. My father was dead, and my mother did the best she could, but, you know, I guess I got tired and not having the things that other kids have, so I just quit, and you've got me job. I really hope, you know, maybe better my sister, and maybe go to college a little bit, learn a little computer, and math. As far as my job right now, it's not really required that much math. You know, it's a little, you know, mostly as a track, you know. Nothing major. You know, I don't plan to be what I am right now, the rest of my life. I try to plan, try to better my sister, if I can. I got a kid.

For the majority of the people, we've got to bring, start focusing our attention in the educational system, on making them fit into the workforce, in the needs of business and industry, which is going to entail, getting the basics behind us, and a lot of these basic tools. And I even go beyond that. This, uh, things like communication skills, very important, how to work effectively as a group, thinking skills, how to think through a problem, the communities that address those issues, those are the communities, and those are the states that are really going to experience the growth in the future. When we met a few years ago, when Dan made the trip across the street from GM to the college, we need to take heart in what is accomplished, what has been able to accomplish by a few people. Saginaw and Calhoun community college have joined with local businessmen and politicians to found the Alabama Center for quality and productivity,

to carry on the work begun at Saginaw. The State Chartered Center has been operating since last January, advising other area businesses, and encouraging educators to better prepare students for the new realities of the workplace. The job to be done is considerable, but the center believes that investing in people is crucial to future economic development. Our first real close work in relationships with the college was, uh, had its roots about five years ago, and uh, it's taken that long to really build to what it is today. The word is spreading throughout the business world. I don't think all of our businesses and industries yet know where to go to get the help and how to get it started, and that you just learn by jumping in and getting your feet wet. American business is just beginning to pay attention to the education

of the non-college bound student, and to communicate industry's needs to the public education system. And it's just beginning to realize what power lies in the hidden potential of its current workforce, if tapped through proper education. Because of the international competitiveness situation, the shrinking workforce and all that, business and industry will have to get involved. I think it's important that they don't get involved in the wrong way, that we don't misdiagnose the problem of one of ill literacy, bringing in then a bunch of academic-oriented literacy programs that would promote you to the grades, but these people are no longer in the grade school system. They need to be promoted in life, so we need to have them work with the demands of life. It's been said that the secret of Japan's success is having the best educated bottom 50% in the world. The American dream will grind to a halt unless we become a society that truly values education for all.

New technology demands action. If we try to just get by, we'll watch the sunset on the American era. We as a nation must bring our businessmen and educators together to focus on this issue of survival. The techniques for tailoring learning to the needs of the individual are known the commitment to using them to educate all of America's workforce now and in the future must be made. It is a job to be done. Our job to be done is made possible by Nabisco Brands. We're proud to join Project Literacy US in an effort to close the book on illiteracy. Let's go! And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which asks you to join in efforts to help people learn to read.

If you would like more information about plus and about literacy activities in your area, please call this toll-free number 800-228-8813. Welcome back. That's what some businesses are doing to confront this problem of national illiteracy. In our studio, we have people who can talk about what's happening in the Dallas-Port Worth area. Here to discuss the issue of illiteracy in the workplace are Lila Marshall, a member of the North Texas Task Force for Project Literacy US and the Junior League of Dallas, Norman Robbins, Manager of Community Relations with General Dynamics in Fort Worth, and Henry McHenry, Regional Vice President for the National Alliance of Business. We also have with us many aerial literacy experts and business people who are in our audience and I want to thank all of you for joining us tonight. Let's begin with you, Lila.

What has this project done in the past years since the last time we did this? I think the North Texas Plus Task Force has been successful in three areas. One was to provide a forum for convening various groups that are interested in the literacy problem and can contribute to a solution of it. The program providers of literacy training, the independent school districts, community groups interested in this problem, and businesses and other interested individuals. And it was a wonderful way for them to meet and discuss the issues involved. The second was the Brazing of Public Awareness. And the last is that in many of the areas of the Metroplex, a literacy councils do exist to coordinate the efforts in their communities. Dallas did not have such a council and as a result of a subcommittee that was formed in the spring, we are in the formative stages of a Dallas County Adult Literacy Council. What took Dallas so long?

I'm not so sure what tickets so long. There are many different programs operating in this area which are quite good and it's going to be wonderful to have a coordinating body to facilitate the access to these programs. Norman, what is General Dynamics doing with literacy and Fort Worth? Bob Ray about a year ago, we had a corporate-wide meeting of the community relations effort for General Dynamics in Fort Worth. And after a day and a half or two days of discussion, emerged that the number one area that we would like to place our community efforts and would be having to do with literacy. At about that same time, we became aware of an opportunity to adopt an alternative school in Fort Worth, the Metro Opportunity School, which is a school where students that have experienced difficulties or sent from their home school settings. Many of them have truancy problems, some are returning dropouts, some of them have disciplinary problems.

And we figured that a lot of them probably couldn't rewrite so well and probably couldn't compute very well. And to an extent that is certainly the case. We adopted that school. We found some very, very bright students there as well and probably bored and got into some disciplinary problems because of that. But nevertheless, we are providing teaching assistants in areas of math and English five days a week throughout the school year. We also strive to let each of the approximately hundred students at this school have a mentorship relationship with an employee at General Dynamics that utilizes an aptitude that a particular student may have in their career. Again, we're trying to focus on written communication, spoken communication, computation. And we would also like to try to help them become employable when they do graduate. Okay, now that's out into the community.

What about inside of that giant General Dynamics Planta on the west side of Fort Worth? Bob Ray to date, most of our efforts are community-oriented. I mentioned a high school effort from there. And remember, we've only been doing this for about a year. We thought we would like to try to do something at the early grades before students end up in alternative schools. So we provided the private sector funding component of the local Readiness Fundamental program within the Fort Worth Independent School District. That provides books to some 12,000 students. And in many cases, these are the only books that some of these students have in their homes. Finally, we're just entering into another component of our literacy program, which has to do with adult basic education, working through, again, the adult basic education, the vision of the Fort Worth Independent School District, we will be providing literacy aids and tutors to work with individuals in the community. And I myself plan to become a literacy aid. All right.

Now, Henry, you keep up with what businesses are doing. What are businesses in this area doing the area of helping their own employees who may have a problem? The major thing that we see them doing right now is becoming aware of the productivity problems caused by workers who really are faking many of the things that they should be doing for real. So the first thing I think we see happening is they're trying to find out why are we having mistakes from very intelligent people and they're finding that reading, computation, and understanding. So major part of it. So that's the first thing. I think it's an awareness thing right now. We saw the hidden this problem from ourselves, even. Okay. And including in business, I mean, you would go along without even identifying the problem even though you may have suspected it. I'm guessing. That's true. That's absolutely true. Many people make mistakes that you know they're intelligent people. So if that mistake happens,

if someone writes a work order that doubles the amount of materials delivered to a site, then that's going to increase the cost of the project. So we hide it by not coming straight back to the company to the warehouse. We get rid of that excess. So no one knows we made that mistake and there goes the cost of the project. Okay. Now Lila, I mean, I know statistics can be strange, but what percentage of the population again would be illiterate? A generally accepted figure is about one in five, about 20 percent. And this is sort of across the board. In Texas, that's what they say and they apply that to the North Texas area. How many employees know I'm in a general dynamics? More than 25,000, Barbara. Okay. More than 25,000 people. And now if we take that and apply it to general dynamics, one in five, there are possibly some functionally literate people at general dynamics. That could very well be. How do you identify them? And what do you do to deal with the problem that Henry just talked about? That's a good question. And I've spoken with some people and other companies that have worked in this area.

I think Polaroid, for example, has been a leader in this field on-site literacy training, they're basic skills kinds of training. And they, in most cases, related to the technical jobs that the employees are involved with, in terms of identifying the needs, Barbara, I think it could probably be done working through supervision, could probably also be done by working through labor organizations and in other ways. That is something that we're we to pursue an in-house literacy program. We would need to better identify what the needs are. There's one thing that some companies are now trying, Barbara. I think that's worth talking about. Traditionally, if you made a mistake on a job and there were 10 people outside the gate wanting your job, you fire the person that made the mistake and then hire someone else and hope they won't make that mistake. So therefore, there's the blame mentality going on on the job. If you look at the blame mentality,

throw it away and start talking about, how can we make this product better the first time? How can we get what we need the first time without mistakes? And we want to help you tell us how to do that. Then you have a total other issue on the job. And that's where you start to identify the real reasons that productivity and that products are not as competitive as they should be. And you're saying literacy is the part of that problem? I absolutely think so. Yes. What is the project plus doing, project literacy, US doing, to work with businesses to help them identify some of those problems? To get them started, but doing some of the things that you're doing in the community? The main thing I think that the plus effort has done is just raising the public awareness of this whole issue and making it acceptable to come forward and saying I need help in this area and making it the awareness of the community of the problem.

Almost all the community problems I can think of, whether you're talking about the business community or the community is at large, this is one that the 80% have the skills to solve the problem that exists. And it doesn't require a lot of money. It requires people's time and their willingness to help another individual. But you know, a big company like General Dynamics, and we're picking on General Dynamics because they're here, you know? But I mean, the big company like General Dynamics, I mean, they're not going to have, I mean, I was joking a minute ago. They're not going to have the literate people in there because they're going to get screened right at the application line, right? You know, if I can't fill out the application, I'm not going to get hired at General Dynamics. You're not going to have any functionally literate people there. Are you? Bob Rae, you saw the show, and there were some functionally literate people on the show. Well, I get, and we've got somebody else in the fourth ISD here. We've got other people in, yes, ma'am. I'm Carolyn Cribs with Operation Lift, and we have 31 locations in Dallas County

where we teach adults to read. One of the things I've been with the task force and the forming Dallas Council on adult literacy, and one of the things that I would like to see is the business community become more involved. That was the thing that we had a great amount of problem, getting not just the service providers, the meetings were heavily supplied with people interested in literacy, but the business community needs to have more input, not only in the council, but also in helping the service providers tailor the lessons and the material that we have so that it is job-specific. Bob Rae, let me ask our question. Yes. How did you go after the business community? What were the reasons you told them they should be involved? We sent letters initially to many different areas of business that had subscribed to the Business Council for Effective Literacy.

We had a mailing list, and that was the only thing that we really had was people that were on the Business Council's newsletter. And from that, we made our recommendations to come and get interested, get involved in literacy, and very, very few came, and if they did come, they came very few times. What were the selling points you used in your literature? A couple of them. Not exactly sure, except that it was a new council forming for the purpose of adult literacy, and we wanted their help. May I make a suggestion? Certainly. Please. Talk about how their products would be more competitive, how their cost, how their productivity could go up. If they had a more literate workforce, then give some examples, such as you saw on the film tonight, you'll get, I would almost guarantee you, a 25% higher interest. Okay, well, I know, I mean, you're, I mean, hey, I know, I'm sorry I can't. Henry, we got a guy here today, hey, forgive me, but the National Alliance of Business,

what are they doing to do? I mean, should these people be out there soliciting, knocking on doors, or should the people who know business best be doing it? We are doing, we are doing just that, we are appealing to their pocketbooks. Right now, we are saying your products are going to sell better. Let me give you one example in Texas. The Exxon Foundation, Exxon USA is based in Houston, used to give primarily to higher education with the education grants. They are now moving it down, and they're taking two thrusts. One is, we want to make an impact where we have facilities in the United States. We also realize that it is the basic literacy and the basic education, basic skill achievement in the workforce that's going to make us a better company in a better community. Okay, earlier I said we were picking on GD because they're here, actually, they're here because they're doing something. Right.

My sense is that the majority of businesses are not doing anything, but correct me if I'm wrong. No, you're right, majority means a lot of confidence. That's okay, we're right. Bob Ray, let me go ahead or hitchhike on something. Henry said, if you look on the cover of the most current general dynamics annual report, you'll find that the focus is on cost competitiveness. And to be cost competitive, you obviously have to be productive and efficient. And to be productive and efficient, you need to learn how to be trained and retrained and untrained and trained again. So our desire to focus on literacy as a community relations project is not altruistic, by any means. We derive the majority of our labor force from the local area. We must have people that can rewrite and compute well in order for us to be competitive in the future. Our business is growing more competitive each and every day.

We need people that can be alert to how to save money, how to do things more efficiently, in order for us to retain the predominance that we now enjoy in that particular business. And so it makes, it's very logical for us to focus on this issue and we do expect to have a return on this kind of an investment, both personnel investment and financial investment. I'll come back to that, I think. I'm part of LDLVA, the 25-year-old literacy program that was started in Syracuse, New York. We had an anniversary of this event at the Reading Conference this year. Dallas has only had an affiliation for, well, we only got our papers this last time, but we've been underway two and a half years. We work a little under the auspices of the public library. We have only one paid employee, Lindy McCray, who's on the other side. And the rest of us are volunteers who make this program work. I don't want to take a thing away from lift

and they're having classes, but there are people who need one-on-one instruction, a lot of them. In fact, of the business, I resent it always being referred to as the lower echelon or the lower income person that needs this help, because I've had three students who, in no way, fit this situation whatsoever. My first student makes 40 to 45,000 a year. His people did not know he could not read for 13 years that he was with them. And he is now ready for his GED. The young woman that I am working with now works for an electronics firm in Garland. And she said to me, I want to read, because the people I work with are college people, and they will not talk to me. They will not have anything to do with me, because they make me think they are, I am beneath them. And I want to read, and please take care of yourself when you go up there, because I want you to come back. I'm learning. Now, that's rewarding enough for you to work on a one-on-one basis.

And I love it. It's very rewarding. Okay. The question is, can we reach everybody on the one-on-one? And what can we do? Lila, I mean, I know that you're coming up with some recommendations. Some of them. What are they? There are many good programs in town, and there are many opportunities for involvement. Adult tutors are badly needed. In every program, there's a waiting list. And so these programs need to expand. They also need to start new satellite or outreach centers of what they're doing. And we can even start new programs in parts of town that don't have the tutoring going on in their specific area. Businesses could do several things. They could fund specific service providing programs, specific literacy programs, and help buy the materials, so that when the volunteer tutors come aboard, the materials will be there. They could provide sites for the classes or one-on-one tutoring to meet at their location.

They could encourage their own employees to become involved in the effort through one of the local programs, or they could set up an in-house program where they use their own employees and help their own employees who need the help. And aren't there going to be more adult literates who are graduating from high school? If we're here, it's true. We got 6% of the high school kids in urban high schools graduating and can't read about the fourth grade level. Now, isn't that going to be part of the problem? I know that probably wasn't your question. But I hear somebody say, sure. Are there a lot of head shaking? That's quite a subject to take a bite out of it. Can I back up one subject? And you were asking before about selling points to get the business community more involved in what we're doing. And I think what we were seeing on the television tonight, as part of this program, made it really clear that nationally, our product from the business community has got to be people.

We have got to have people who are capable of moving into a more technical job market and we're no longer going to be one of the most highly industrialized and advanced countries in the world. I think that was made fairly clear. Certainly, the Navy realizes what's going on, certainly general dynamics does. And there are other corporations that do. At this point, I think it's important to begin to give companies concrete, yes, this is what you can do, types of recommendations. One of the things that is a massive problem, not only in Dallas, but all over the country, is that there is a huge pool of people who are going to be the future resource of this country. And they are, as was brought out in the programming, they are what we're going to talk about as the low-income people who are out there, the minorities, they talked about immigrants. And what happens is that we have a huge pool of people out there who have the intelligence, but who don't have the skills.

Now, it really doesn't matter at this point why they don't have them. What matters is that we find some way of providing the opportunity to these people to get those skills. And I'm sorry, I'm Jane Parklington from the STEM Foundation. I did that backwards. That's fine. Go ahead, sir. My question is directed to the gentleman from General Dynamics. My name is Phil Tarvis from Texas Education Foundation. And the service project with the school that you undertook. What type of incentive does that individual expect when he or she finishes that school? You mean the alternative high school? That's correct. Well, they receive a high school diploma. Now, we provide incentives to them as they go along the way. For example, for attendance or for making the honor roll, behavioral improvements, that kind of thing. We do provide them with certain incentives of that type. Did they eventually get a job with General Dynamics?

That is possible. Our goal is to make them employable, not necessarily not exclusively by General Dynamics, but to make them employable. Teach them, we actually have career days for them. Teach them how to apply for a job, how to address, how to address an interviewer. We actually go through mock interviews with them. And the goals are to make them literate and to also make them know what is required, what will be required of them in the workforce. Are there programs set up that would hire people who've gone through a program similar to yours so that they will not be discouraged after they go through that and then they still don't have a job? McDonald Douglas has one in the St. Louis and the corporate area. They go to some of the schools in that area that have the most at-risk students and start very early. And they take the students who successfully stay in their program will get a summer job.

They will even support a certain number of college scholarships and offer those people a permanent job back if they stick with it. I believe Vashon High is one of their target schools in the St. Louis area. All right, Laura. Boston has also gotten heavily involved in a similar effort. They call it the Boston Compact and the business community guarantees high school graduates a job if they will complete all the requirements and pass all the necessary tests. Okay, St. Louis, Boston, Fort Worth. What about Dallas? I just have to keep coming back. I mean, these great corporate headquarters and all that. Tell me something, Henry. Name some of them for me. We're doing some great things. I'm going to name one company while you get to her. Okay. That has gotten involved in placement activities which would include all of the work readiness thing. The Southern Corporation in the Houston area initiated a major program with the private industry council in the Houston area

to bring people, they even altered their training program so that persons who ordinarily they would screen would not get in, would have a chance to get in and become a Southern employee. So that company is aware of those with deficiencies and they are starting in some sections of the country right now to take advantage of that. My name is Bobby Berger and I represent Women's American Award on the literacy council or on the formative literacy council. And what I would like to see business do in the Dallas area in particular is to get in and help us start this council or get in and help the literacy providers. We need money. We need because the kinds of things we need money for it wouldn't it be nice instead of having the 800 number if we had a local telephone number that people could call we don't have that service. They told us they didn't have the money to do that.

Right. And the thing is that we have tried in the formation and the formative stages of this literacy council to get business involved as Carolyn said and we have not been successful. I wonder if it should be us, the volunteers who are knocking on the doors of business. It should be business knocking on our doors. And we need business people who will knock on other business doors. That's, you know, the old saying of money talks to money. I'm sure business talks to business. And we have not been able to get the cooperation of business. While you were talking, I felt like I was in my Baptist church because I saw these heads shaking. Eight men's. What about it? Yeah. By the end of this week we ought to be able to find somebody who will have paid for that number. Don't you think? Don't you think we ought to be able to find somebody who can help pay for that? I would think we would have to sell business that issue just like we sell them on changing computers. And when we start to make the points that connect to their livelihood, I suspect some will get interested.

One company in particular, the ex, not the ex-son, American Express Company, is providing specific grants to 11 cities to do specific things in developing courses for people who are interested in finance. We just have to find what these businesses' foundations are doing. And people have to know they've been able to apply for those grants. Absolutely. They have to first know what the resource is. Then shape their proposal to fit what that resource has been allocated for. Quite often, we say it's good so you ought to do it anyhow. Well, unfortunately, many people don't react like that. Speaking of proposals, you've got one, don't you? The subcommittee of the plus task force, which is forming this Dallas County Adult Literacy Council, has submitted a request to the junior leg of Dallas for initial three-year funding of the basics. We could always use that basic budget supplemented and it remains to be seen, of course,

whether we, whether that will come through from the membership, but I'm most hopeful that it would, but at any rate, the business community can get involved in the formation of the council. And I'd like to say just a couple of things about what the councils do, because it sounds like it might be a city council. These are cities across the nation, nonprofit agencies, which are formed to support, promote, encourage, coordinate, and facilitate access to the various programs that already exist to teach the literacy programs, so that they also recruit the volunteer tutors and help the students get placed in the various programs and generally raise public awareness. All right. I've asked one of our audience members to stand because we promised earlier in this broadcast that we were going to reintroduce you to Johnny, because you saw him in that film, that last scene where you're reading Johnny,

after you've gone through all of that whole ordeal, how's it going? How does it feel now, as Mia reported earlier that you are now able to read the street signs, you're able to read your direct schedule to fill out your own forms? I know filling out forms may not be fun, but you got to feel good about that. Oh, yeah, I feel real good about it. The more you do it, you know, the easier it gets. And we saw you reading from a book. Have you graduated from that? I know you've got a new teacher now. Yeah, we don't even do the books, and we'll just make up some of the seasons to work from there. And are you having a hard time or easy time? Ah, let's get an easier. And she said that you were reading the sports pages. Well, I don't like it. Well, you're in Dallas, Texas, and you don't like the sports page? No, I don't care for sports very much. And what about your salary? Oh, I guess it's all right. Did it go up after you learned to read?

Not yet. Oh. So it just depends. But you don't have anybody there helping you do it anymore, so you've got to do it by yourself now. All right. You brought somebody with you? Amanda, I know you're shy, but how do you feel about your daddy reading now? Very good. All right, I just wanted to see that, because that's the example that we've been talking about. We got a time for a couple more questions. You wanted to say something. His employer is the person who got him involved in the reading class, and I think that's an important point for this whole program. Yeah, that's the idea. I mean, finding somebody who can get it. The thing that I would like to impart is that there are many reading literacy programs, and for a person that's joining, there are several students that are attending more than one, so don't just get your heart set on one. Attend them all. See which one is the best for you. All right.

All right. Go ahead, Da. There are many employers that would love to have a person like Johnny working for them to complaints I hear from employees. We can't find anybody that is dependable. We can't find anyone who wants to work. We can't find anyone with a desire. They are employers that is more than just his boss. There are a lot of folks who would love to have that much intelligence, that much inspiration, and that much motivation on their jobs. And this counsel, in addition to teaching to read, he may be the best selling point they can make to employees that they want to get involved in their programs. Sam Keiker, the fourth ISD, very quickly. I'd like to mention that, of course, Fort Worth has had a literacy council now for some 15 years or so. In fact, that was the way the fourth independent school district got to be the prime sponsor of the Delta Basic Education Program when this actual council went to the school district. And so they have been our advisory and said PR and have helped us.

Sam, I had to do this, but I'm getting a signal that we're out of time. It always goes too fast, but I do want to thank everybody who has joined us. We're going to put another number that 800 number on the screen so that you can take a look at it. If you have any other questions, call us. Thanks to our very special guest for joining us. Thanks to our audience for being here. You've been great. We think we're going to do it in Dallas and Fort Worth with your help. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you.