Rx for "Infectious Ignorance"

His forehead furrowed with the effort of concentration, a massive, middle-aged Negro sat scrunched at a fourth-grader's desk in a Chicago public school. Bent over a ruled notebook, he slowly scrawled one letter, then another. Finally he leaned back and smiled. "Look at that," he beamed at his neighbor. "Look at that."' It was something to see. For the first time in his life, the man had written his name. Joyfully, he wrote it again, and then again.

Climbing Costs. Last week such humble dramas of achievement were taking place at ten schools scattered all over Chicago. In a mass attack on illiteracy, the first of its kind in a big U.S. city, Chicago has set out to cure thousands of men and women of what Raymond W. Hilliard, director of the Cook County Department of Public Aid, calls "infectious ignorance" -- uneducated, unemployable people breeding ever greater numbers of children who in turn grow up to be uneducated and unemployable.

The measure of Chicago's unemployment problem is that last month Cook County doled out $15.7 million in relief funds to 269,370 recipients, most of them physically able to work. Currently on re

lief are 7.7% of Chicago's entire population, 25% of its Negroes. The people on relief are no longer mostly dazed newcomers from the Deep South, but longtime Chicagoans, many of them squeezed out of jobs by technological change. As more and more of the economy's jobs require education and skills, fewer and fewer jobs are available for the ignorant.

No sentimentalist, Director Hilliard be came alarmed at the high cost of ignorance in 1959, when the recession receded but relief rolls kept climbing. In a survey of able-bodied reliefers, he discovered that 50% were "functional illiterates," incapable of reading street signs, want ads, or the simplest instructions, and therefore unable to perform even most "service" jobs.

"Beyond Belief." Hilliard decided that "the only effective way to get these people jobs is to educate them." Earl)' this year, he launched his assault on ignorance by ordering 381 reliefers back to school on penalty of losing their relief checks.* Enthusiastically supported by the Chicago board of education, which provides 210 teachers, the program offers four hours a week of evening classes, from elementary grades into high school. Enrollment has already soared to 7,290. On their own, mothers set up a baby-sitting system, enabling all to attend class on alternate nights. One school invites children, gives them lessons in one room while parents study in another. Of more than 17,000 people put on the eligible list for the program so far, only six have refused to join, and of those who joined, only two have been dropped for cutting classes. The overall attendance rate is 75%. "Our students," says Hilliard, "have shown eagerness beyond belief."

Hilliard's program has already shown striking successes. Last year a local garment factory tested 25 women on relief for jobs as power-sewing-machine operators. All flunked, many unable to even decipher the application blank. After attending classes for six months, they retook the test; 18 passed. Nine months ago. a cab company rejected five reliefers as drivers because they could not fill out trip sheets. Last week, after Hilliard's treatment, all five were hired; one man earned $20 his first day.

A $2,000,000 Bargain. Though off relief, the new cabbies decided to keep on with their schooling. For a model they can look to Hilliard's star pupil. Laborer William Rhymes, 53. jobless since 1959. who recently outshone hundreds of rivals in a stiff exam for high school entrance. Now he aims to earn a diploma in three years. "No kid of mine is ever going to drop out of school," vows Rhymes. That's saying a lot--he has 14.

The biggest single educational problem in Chicago's program, which is now being eyed by other big cities, is a lack of suitable primers for adults. "We can't have these grown men and women reading about the little red hen," says one official. To meet the need, teachers are writing their own readers, inventing new educational tricks. They are winning the confidence of their pupils, some of them so self-conscious about their lack of education that one man, for example, habitually carried a newspaper with him to mask his total illiteracy. Next month, enrollment will reach 8,000, and 10,000 more people are waiting to sign up. If he can find the money. Pioneer Hilliard hopes to expand to 60,000 students. All he needs is $2,000,000 a year--not so much compared to Cook County's $16 million monthly relief bill.

* After acrimonious debate, the Illinois Public Aid Commission last week voted 6 to 4 to use public funds to provide contraceptives for women on relief. Eligible: "Any recipient with a spouse or a child, who requests such assistance."

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