Can Our Children Write, and Who Cares?

In thinking about anything you have written today, it may be useful to note that one-fourth of America is illiterate. To say that seventeen to twenty-seven million Americans are functionally illiterate and another forty-six million only marginally literate means, by definition, that they cannot write. Literacy refers to writing as well as reading abilities; the two are intrinsically linked. Reading is the passive side of literacy, the intake of knowledge. Writing activates that knowledge and makes it productive: reading is the recipe, writing the cooking. Without the ensuring possibilities for transformation--in this case, words into food--reading offers pleasure to the reader, but gives little else to society.