National Adult Literacy Database

By Tom Sticht

During the Second World War in New York City, Broadway theatre performers and associates got together and designed a special club where military service members could get free food, non-alcoholic drinks, and entertainment by the best actors, comedians, and musicians in the United States. The club was called the Stage Door Canteen.

Today, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, has constructed a new theatre and hall named after the Stage Door Canteen. On September 27, 2010, the Canteen will host an evening in support of a more literate New Orleans in partnership with One Book One New Orleans (OBONO) and the New Orleans Literacy Alliance (NOLA).

On this evening at the Stage Door Canteen, a lecture and discussion panel will examine contributions to literacy instruction from the military services during times of war, actually starting before the nation was formed, during the Revolutionary War at Valley Forge, when General George Washington ordered chaplains to teach troops with low literacy levels to read and write.

In the First World War, many illiterate and non-English-speaking recruits were taught using materials developed under the direction of Captain Garry C. Myers. Myers was concerned that the military teaching of adults should “stimulate sentiment in favour of better educational opportunities for coming generations.” This was an early interest in the intergenerational transfer of literacy that today underpins many family literacy programs.

Long after the First World War, in 1946, Myers and his wife Caroline, the first woman hired to teach illiterate adults in the Army in the First World War, started a magazine for children called Highlights for Children. Like the First World War materials Myers developed, the magazine uses lots of illustrations, puzzles, cartoons and stories aimed at catching the interest of both children and their parents. The latter group is encouraged to read to their children in keeping with the earlier idea of the intergenerational transfer of literacy from parents to their offspring.

During the Second World War, the armed services once again faced the need to utilize hundreds of thousands of men who had low literacy levels. The job of developing literacy programs fell to Dr. Paul A. Witty, whose work before his Army job, emphasized the importance of meeting children’s interests when teaching reading. This emphasis was brought into his work in the Army when, in May of 1943, the War Department published the Army Reader. In this book, produced under Witty’s direction, soldiers in the Army’s literacy programs were introduced to Private Pete, a fictional soldier who was also learning reading, writing and arithmetic.

The idea was that soldiers would identify with Private Pete and be interested in what they were reading because they shared common experiences, such as sleeping in the barracks, eating in the mess hall, and so forth. He used this novel approach along with the use of various media, film strips, comic strips, photo novels and other innovations.

Today, the International Reading Association, which Witty helped found, offers the Paul A. Witty short story award for writers of children’s literature. This reflects his enduring concern that teaching reading, whether with adults, adolescents or young children, should be built on matching the interests of these groups.

As indicated above, ideas and innovations produced by adult literacy educators for military personnel have found their way into the literacy education of children, adolescents, and adults in civilian literacy programs. Three of these ideas are:

• Program developers should take stock of the functional contexts of the learners, under what circumstances they live, etc., and draw upon this context in developing materials and methods.
• Programs should focus on meeting the interests of students and use a variety of media, methods and materials to meet these interests.
• Educators should be aware of the intergenerational transfer of literacy and teach their adolescent and adult students who are or are likely to become parents that they can assist their children to achieve higher levels of literacy by reading to them a lot.

One Book One New Orleans (OBONO) and the New Orleans Alliance for Literacy (NOLA) strive to encourage the practice of literacy in families and communities by having a city-wide book reading activity.

In 2010, the book to read across New Orleans is a biography by Louis Armstrong, New Orleans’ famous “Satchmo.” During the Second World War he was among those many celebrities who volunteered their talents through the recording of Victory (V) Discs and performances at the Stage Door Canteen to maintain the morale of the troops fighting for our freedom.

This September 27, at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, he will once again contribute to the freedom of our country, this time through the book about his remarkable life and the encouragement of a literate citizenry at the Stage Door Canteen.

Tom Sticht is an international consultant in adult education. He can be reached at tsticht@aznet.net.

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