[Reading-hall-of-fame] Functional Literacy and Literature in WWII

[tsticht at znet.com]

2015 is the 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII

January 1, 2015

Functional Literacy and Literature in World War II:

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education

Looking down over the edge of Saipan’s Suicide Cliff I thought about the
desperation that the Japanese soldiers and civilians living on the island
must have felt in June of 1944 knowing that the battle for Saipan was
moving toward an American victory. No one knows for sure how many Japanese
threw themselves off Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff on the northern end of
Saipan to avoid the Americans, but they numbered in the thousands.

I was in Saipan in December 2003 to give workshops on adult literacy
education and I featured the concept of Functional Context Education which
focuses on the development of programs based on the contexts in which
adults function. During World War II the U.S. Armed Services endorsed the
concept of functional literacy and implemented adult literacy training
which integrated reading, writing, and arithmetic education with the
teaching of military subjects, such as the vocabulary for military
facilities (e.g., barracks, mess hall, etc.), rules and regulations (e.g.,
military justice, general orders for guard duty, etc.), and health and
safety (e.g., care of feet, handling weapons, etc.).

Additionally, the Armed Services understood that the reading of literature
by outstanding writers could also serve functional purposes by inspiring
patriotic and other inspirational emotions for improving and sustaining
morale and generally providing mental breaks from the stresses of war. To
this end, the military helped support the provision of special books called
the Armed Services Editions. These were editions of fiction and nonfiction
books specially designed as pocketbooks small enough to be carried in a
backpack or in a hip pocket so service members could tote them into
different settings, both camp and battleground.

The Functional Context of Reading Literature

The history and uses of the Armed Services Editions during World War II are
discussed in detail in Molly Guptill Manning’s book “When Books Went to War
(2014). Given my past work in Saipan I was struck by Manning’s recounting of
what one Marine said about coming upon the face down body of a young
fair-haired private during the battle for Saipan: “As I looked down at him
I saw something which I don’t think I shall ever forget. Sticking from his
back trouser pocket was a yellow pocket edition of a book he had evidently
been reading in his spare moments. Only the title was visible---Our Hearts
Were Young and Gay” (Manning, 2014, p. 116).

Functional Context Education for Learning to Read in the Military

In her book, Manning describes the work of a War Book Panel which operated
before the Armed Services Editions were developed. The purpose of the War
Book Panel was to select good books for reading by armed services members.
Two, of only six books that were selected before the War Book Panel was
discontinued and the Armed Services Editions were developed, were books
written by John Hersey. Hersey was a journalist who went into battle with
the troops and wrote about their experiences in war.

Before coming across Manning’s book,  I had picked-up a copy of a 1989 book
by Hersey which included a chapter about an illiterate soldier who had
entered the Army in early 1945 and had attended a Special Training Unit
(STU) in Pennsylvania where he learned to read and write. Hersey details
the life of Private John Daniel Ramey and describes the Army’s functional
literacy program that taught Private Ramey to read. The primary textbook
for the program was Army Technical Manual 21-500 The Army Reader of May 14,
1943.

The Army Reader taught reading following the Functional Context Education
method discussed above in which reading lessons used Army contexts as the
content for teaching literacy and math. Hersey describes a letter written
by Private Ramey in which the newly literate soldier proclaims: “I would
not take all the Furloughs in the Army for what I learned at STU. I tell
you when they let me out of this Army they can take away my Gun also my
Uniform but they wont (sic) ever take away how to read and write” (Hersey,
1989, pp. 118-119).  Private Ramey was one of some 250 thousand service
members who learned to read and speak English in the military during World
War II. I don’t know if Private Ramey or any of the other hundreds of
thousands of new literates ever went on to read the millions of copies of
the Armed Services Editions during World War II. But they could have.

Close to sixty years following the end of World War II, on December 11,
2003, on the island of Saipan, where one of the fiercest battles of WWII
had taken place, I conducted a workshop called Focus on Reading: Policy,
Research, Practice. In that workshop I discussed Functional Context
Education which integrated reading instruction with important content
knowledge as was done in WWII. I discussed the history of adult literacy
education including an experiment with the Opportunity Schools of South
Carolina in 1932.

In this research the results clearly showed that “
agencies of adult
education may render invaluable service to adults of limited education.

Virtually millions of adults, both white and colored, are eager for the
advantages which opportunity schools afford. It is imperative that
provision be made for such people so that they may become more efficient
socially and may live richer, happier lives.”

This finding from 1932 was confirmed just over a decade later by the
experience of the armed services during World War II. With their functional
literacy programs and Armed Services Editions, the military showed that
learning to read and engaging in reading can help adults live richer,
happier lives
even in the throes of war.

References

Gray, W. S., Gray, W. L., & Tilton, W. (1932). The Opportunity schools of
South Carolina:  An experimental study. New York: American Association for
Adult Education.

Hersey, J. R. (1989). Private John Daniel Ramey. In: J. R. Hersey (Ed.) 
Life sketches. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (pp. 94-119).

Manning, M. G. (2014). When books went to war: The stories that helped us
win World War II. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company.

tsticht at aznet.net