Can’t Read, Can’t Write - tonight
Monday, July 21st, 2008Illiteracy in the UK
Believe it or not, 5 million adults in the UK have a reading age below 12 or, worse, can’t read at all. Even the simplest of tasks – paying the bills, going shopping, applying for a job, helping the children with their homework – become a daily struggle, and many illiterate or partially literate adults are too embarrassed to confront the issue, hiding it from even their own families.
In tonight’s documentary, the first of a three-part series that addresses the topic of illiteracy in Britain, “controversial and award-winning teacher” Phil Beadle takes nine illiterate adults through a six-month reading course. All of them have spent over ten years in the British education system but have failed to learn even the most basic skills. Beadle, a trained adult literacy teacher, describes Government adult literacy materials as “worse than useless”.
Though he hasn’t been in the profession for long, Beadle is a born teacher. Charismatic and encouraging, he believes all his pupils can achieve their goal of literacy and never gives up on them. One particularly moving moment is when 58-year-old Teresa, who burst into tears when first asked to read out loud, manages after three weeks of lessons to stutter her way through a children’s book.
Can’t Read, Can’t Write, tonight Channel 4, 9pm.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 am
I should love to be able to offer him some skills around visualising and keeping his students looking up, it dramatically reduces their misery. Seeing Spells Achieving is a great tool for further accelerating adult literacy.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
This was toe cringing! A misrepresentation and highly offensive to the teachers and adult learners alike. This self styled “expert” appears to be on an ego trip. Delivering Adult Literacy and Dyslexia tuition over 25 years, I would recommend he gives up the job before he does more damage. Learners should not be TV fodder.
It’s true the curriculum allows little time for individual work at “sound/symbol” level (even with classroom adjustments).
But his approach was that of a bull in a chinashop - apparently “learning on the job” that students are sensitive (especially with a camera relentlessly trained on them), they have individual learning styles, that you need more than just a “phonics” package and a story book designed for children (how patronising is that!).