For many Inland residents, illiteracy remains a
daily struggle, but libraries and others are trying to help.
Press Enterprise: 6.10.2016 by Patrick O’Neill
For the first 80 years of her life, the sentence
you are reading would have been nothing more than indecipherable symbols to
Eleanor Miller.
Born in
1932 to young, adventurous and largely absent parents, Miller was raised by her
blind grandmother in a small Pasadena home. Her family never noticed she
couldn't read, and teachers passed her "because I never gave them any
trouble," Miller said during a reading lesson at the Corona Public Library.
Now 84,
the neatly dressed mother of seven sat, hands folded in her lap, recalling the
difficulties of a life void of the written word. Like the time her son needed a
doctor's note for school. Miller told him to write it up himself, then copied
the letters on a separate sheet.
"People
that can't read or write, they memorize stuff to continue this illusion,"
Miller said. "You avoid situations where you can't fake it."
Twenty percent of Inland residents older than 16
can't comprehend basic texts. That 2003 figure, the most current available, had
more than doubled since 1992, National Center for
Educational Statistics data show. READ MORE @
