NMI educators deal with illiteracy

About 26 percent of the population aged 18 and above, who did not complete secondary education, will be the main target audience of Adult Education in the next five years.

In a draft proposal currently being studied by educators, Adult Education in the CNMI will face a daunting task in bringing in and taking the responsibility of providing literacy to the growing number of 18 and above who failed to make it during their younger years.

According to the 1995 CNMI Census, among the 47,000 adults for that year, over 8,000 did not go beyond 8th grade while over 9,000 reached 9th to 12th grade but failed to graduate from high school.

As defined by the National Adult Literacy Survey, a person is considered literate if he or she reads beyond the grade 4 level.

Using this 1995 count, the number who went to 8th grade and even up to the 12th grade does not necessarily follow that they read beyond 4 level.

Recent assessment examinations conducted in the Public School System recorded that majority of the students are reading below their grade level.

Adult Basic Education Director Fe Calixterio said the CNMI’s count of its possible illiterate group is about the same as the states across the mainland.

“We are not really lagging behind in terms of the level of literacy,” she said in an interview. “But we might have a higher level of drop-out percentage.”

Based on the recent report on drop-out rate provided by the Research and Information Center of PSS, 18 students among the 1,241 population enrolled in the 7th and 8th grades dropped out of school.

This increases by the time they reached 9th to 12th grades where in a population of 2,062 students enrolled, 225 or 11 percent dropped out.

Considering these figures, the Adult Education of the Northern Marianas College is proposing to offer four major programs which will benefit the educationally disadvantaged adults in the CNMI.

Under its Adult Basic Education, the school is aiming to provide students with starting and intermediate literacy skills.

For its English as a second language, it proposes to offer beginning to advanced ESL lessons.

Under its adult secondary education, it will tackle the GED challenge which will earn students the high school diploma.

The program will also have a new section, Family Literacy, which will cover parenting and literacy skills as well as adult second education to both older couples and younger parents.