And if you can't help your own kids, odds are they won't be able to help their children.
It's a frightening prospect, but in Philadelphia, not being able to read is a lot more common than we'd like to believe. Sadly, 550,000 adults do not have the literacy skills to apply for a job, Mayor Nutter said last week.
"Philadelphia is in a crisis," the mayor said before announcing his intention, along with the Mayor's Commission on Literacy, to make Philly one of the most literate cities in the nation by 2016. For the first time in the city's history, Nutter plans to pump $1 million into adult literacy programs.
The money will go to support programs like the Center for Literacy, the nation's largest nonprofit literacy provider, with locations all over the city. Since 1968, CFL has helped tens of thousands of adults through all kinds of literacy programs, from reading to work skills.
It was CFL that provided Anita Caleb a safe haven to raise her hand.
Going through school, you probably knew plenty of students like Caleb. On second thought, maybe you didn't.
Caleb was one of the invisible ones. She'd sit in the middle of the classroom, head down, never saying a word, never raising her hand.
In typical public school fashion, she'd get passed from grade to grade making C's and D's.
Problem was, she could barely read.
Advancement blocked
"I almost thought I had a mental block, that I couldn't learn," said Caleb, who figured that out of her five sisters - graduates of Villanova and Hahnemann School of Nursing among them - she was the dumb one.
Pregnant at 15, Caleb decided, what's the use? She dropped out of Overbrook High School before attending a single class.
