Literacy Can’t Be Taken For Granted

We drive past a police checkpoint into a gang-controlled neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Following accepted security protocol, our windows are down so gang lookouts can see from our tan vests that we are part of De Lectores a Líderes (“from Readers to Leaders”), a program to improve reading and literacy in Honduras. Our destination is an elementary school that has been using the new reading curriculum for two years now.

At the school, we sit in on a second-grade classroom where we observe the teacher working with her class of 30 students on new vocabulary words. All the children seem engaged (at least when not gawking at their visitors) and capable of using the new words in sentences—quite good for second-graders. …………………..