Reading Sets Them Free : Literacy: Adults who can’t read are finding new joy as they conquer the written word in an innovative program run by the San Diego library.

Irma Magana prayed that her two young children wouldn’t ask her to help them with their homework.

Annie Matthews quit job after job as soon as her employers asked her to take phone messages.

Howard Smith spent eight years in the Marine Corps dodging desk jobs and written work.

The shame these three kept hidden? Something shared by perhaps as many as one in five Americans and about 350,000 adult San Diegans. Something as basic as not being able to read.

“I don’t think it’s possible to convey the agony and the pain you live with for years when you can’t read,” said Steven Pilling, a local businessman who used his social skills to hide his inability to read past the fourth-grade level.

To be functionally illiterate can mean not being able to write a check, fill out a job application or read to one’s children. It could mean not being able to figure out a bill or the instructions in an appliance manual--or read this newspaper article. To be an adult who cannot read is to be cut off from much of society.

“Not being able to read leaves you so vulnerable and none of us wants to be that vulnerable,” Chris McFadden said.

McFadden is director of READ/San Diego, the largest program in San Diego County aimed at helping adults learn to read. Run by the San Diego Library, the program utilizes more than 700 volunteer tutors to teach nearly 750 adult students one-to-one.

The students learn much more than how to read.

“Before, I was very shy. Now I have more confidence to be able to go and ask for what I need, especially at work,” Magana said.

Magana and her tutor, Gloria Whitson, meet three times a week. Together they make their way through grade-school work sheets and children’s books Magana plans to read to her children.

But Magana has done much more than tackle “The Ugly Duckling.” With Whitson’s help she was able to complete the formidable history test requirements to become a U.S. citizen. She also learned to weld, struggling through technical books, to promote herself at work, where she repairs airplane and missile parts.

And she found something else.

“She’s a good friend. When I have a problem, I know I can go to her,” Magana said of her tutor.

The program, which started in 1988 with seven students, has grown to nearly 750 students and is a model for the other 83 library-sponsored adult literacy programs in the state.

One measure of READ/San Diego’s success is that it was recently awarded a $69,000 federal grant to launch a pilot project aimed at recruiting minority tutors.

“About 70% of our students are minority members, (but) more than 80% of our tutors are white,” McFadden said. “We’ve done really well at recruiting minority students; now we need to attract the minority tutor. It will only make us a stronger program if we are more diverse.”

“San Diego was chosen for the grant because of the excellence of its program,” said Paul Kiley, coMMunity organizer and communications specialist with the California State Library.

Kiley said the recruitment campaign, which begins this month, is the first of its kind statewide, possibly nationwide.

“It’s not a joke that the typical volunteer is the blue-haired lady from La Jolla,” McFadden said, adding that “many people feel more comfortable with a person from their own ethnic background and culture. Role models are very important. We need to go into the ethnic neighborhoods and recruit the minority tutor.”

The recruitment drive is just one of the ways READ/San Diego hopes to attract both tutors and students. In October, the program will offer a computer reading lab in its Euclid Street office. Funded by The Times and the Times-Mirror Foundation, the computers will use educational software to assist tutors as well as to keep track of students’ progress. The program will also offer on-site job training.

“Some people have been so turned off by books and libraries and institutions that computers are a refreshing way to learn skills,” McFadden said. He hopes the computers will attract “at risk” high school students and those who have dropped out of school.

READ/San Diego tutors now meet at more than 100 sites throughout the county, including branch libraries, drug rehabilitation centers, the CoUnty Jail and classes for the learning disabled. McFadden also said that tutors are not hooked on any one technique of teaching reading. Sensitive to adult needs, McFadden discarded the usual “See Dick Run” fare. Students can now borrow racy romances, mysteries and bestsellers with abridged texts.

“Fifty percent of what we teach is self-esteem,” he said. “People who cannot read are often treated as if they are stupid. If enough people tell you that, you begin to believe it.”

Teaching adults is much different from teaching children. Adults, for instance, learn extraordinary survival skills to cope with their illiteracy. They learn to lean on others, to compensate and to hide.

Businessman Pilling is a good example. He graduated from high school and received an MBA but couldn’t read a book. He learned to avoid those professors who relied on essays, joined study groups where students shared their knowledge and became brilliant at speaking. But, three years ago, the shame at not being able to read better than an elementary school student finally propelled him to READ/San Diego.

“Most people are so caught up in denial they can’t admit to themselves they have a problem,” Pilling said.

Annie Matthews has a simple goal: she wanted to read the Bible. As a girl in Mississippi, she didn’t go to school because of severe hearing problems. As a widow in San Diego, she raised five children and worked in restaurants and as a housekeeper.

“I always did want to read and write, but I was just so far behind,” Matthews said in a lilting Southern accent.

Now, after two years with tutor Kathy Negaro, she can read simple passages from any one of her 12 Bibles. “I really admire Annie. She told me she wanted to give up, but she didn’t. She had such an earnest desire to read,” said Negaro, who recently gave up tutoring to return to work full-time.

Like many READ/San Diego students, Howard Smith graduated from high school, but he couldn’t read past the fifth-grade level. And, like many students, he said there were no books at home and little encouragement to read by his parents.

While in the Marine Corps, he concentrated on physical tasks.

“If I ran across something in print that I didn’t understand, I would just bypass it,” he said.

After two years of tutoring in reading, he says his writing has improved and “I’m not so put off by books now.”

He is taking classes at City College and is an intern at Channel 8. His goal is to find a job as a TV or movie writer or producer in Los Angeles.

Many tutors in the program say they have learned as much as their students--whether it’s lessons in courage and perseverance or that some very bright people are also illiterate. Tutor Negaro says she now places even more value on being educated.

“One thing I’ve really learned is that reading is freedom. When you know how to read, you are independent.”

To volunteer or for tutoring throughout the county, READ/San Diego can be reached at 1-800-231-0959