In the U.S., high profile advocates, no funding

Illiteracy, American style, where caring is much more effective than money and there may not really be a solution. It's a hyped-up debate where the suggestion is that only perverts or Commies wouldn't read to their children. But some experts fear the publicity overkill pushed by Hollywood and the president will quietly evaporate as have previous battles to eradicate crime, poverty and drugs.

Under a poster that declares "America, Reagan Country" in red, white and blue stripes, Lynn Wood pantomimes a waitress, demonstrating how an Hispanic office cleaner was taught to read from menus.

Wood, a former staffer in the Reagan White House, is executive director of the National Advisory Council on Adult Education. She is also the woman who played waitress in her office after hours, taking make-believe breakfast orders from the Hispanic illiterate cleaner.

Welcome to illiteracy, American style, where free enterprise is the best solution and caring is much more important than money.

"If money is supposed to correct the problem," demands Wood, "then how can we have so many illiterates who went through the schools in the '60s and '70s, when money poured into education like an open water tap, in billions and billions?" Money matters, concedes Karl Haigler, the bureaucrat in charge of federal literacy funds. But what's really important is publicity and the backing of the top people.

"People say that the president is only giving it lip service. My answer is that it's the president's lips. At least he's talking about it." Everyone is. America is once again hurling war rhetoric to "combat our silent enemy." And what a celebrity cast of warriors: Sylvester Stallone, Paul Newman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Goldie Hawn, Walter Cronkite, Malcolm Forbes, Dennis Weaver, Lee Iacocca, former chief justice Warren Burger, David Bowie, Erma Bombeck, cartoonists, newspapers, paper companies, the Library of Congress, IBM, Xerox, the U.S. Marine Corps . . . Illiteracy even made it to the Academy Awards last spring with a plea by producer Steven Spielberg 'to renew our romance with the word.'
"Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers," said the Star Wars producer.

Relaxing at the Harvard Club in New York, author David Harman reflects on the hyperbole.

"Illiteracy isn't the real problem in America. The problem is that they're eroding the culture of reading in this country. Did you ever see the president read a speech from a sheet of paper? No.

He reads from a teleprompter that's invisible to everyone else but him. No popular character on TV ever reads . . . He pauses, thinking. "Except on The Cosby Show." That tendency to balance both sides is why few in Canada have ever heard of David Herman or his thoughtful book Illiteracy: A National Dilemma. Even in the U.S., rival author Jonathan Kozol gets the invitations to tell congressmen why illiteracy lies behind everything from airline disasters to the eclipse of American supremacy.

U.S. illiteracy tends to be black and white, off or on, worlds of either priests or proles. Only perverts or Commies wouldn't read to their children is the suggestion.

Some experts are disgusted.

• Judy Koloski of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education: "It's not much use saying that you should read to your child, as our education department does, when the parent is illiterate."
• Paul Jurrno of the Business Council for Effective Literacy: "People try to oversimplify illiteracy. If you talk about the complexity, then their eyes glaze over."

Finally, Michael Fox of PLAN (Push Literacy Action Now): "We've drawn the attention of the nation to this problem. Let's be a bit more honest now. Let's put aside the desire for public attention and get down to programs that can document some real change in people's social and economic life. The literacy effort needs to grow up." Fox is speaking at PLAN's rowhouse offices on the black side of Washington's invisible, but very real, racial demarcation line. While keeping up an hour's running commentary for a visitor, the executive director of this community-based group also helps a Jamaican youth with fractions; gives tips to two tutors about literacy instruction in a power station; and occasionally pops into a classroom next door.