[NLA] Celebration of Veterans Day Nov. 11

[Thomas Sticht]

Longer message.

Research Note        November 11, 2001
Tom Sticht

Learning to Read With Private Pete & Sailor Sam In World War II

Across America in the early 1940s millions of children were learning to
read with Dick and Jane. For many of these children, their dads had gone
off to fight for the freedom Dick and Jane enjoyed as they played
joyously around the house with their dog Spot and kitten, Puff. But
before they got to the front lines, hundreds of thousands of fathers had
to do what their children were doing. They had to learn to read and
write. 

Like their children with the Dick and Jane readers, the men in uniform
who learned to read also had readers with fictional role models. In the
Army men learned to read with Private Pete. In the Navy they learned to
read with Sailor Sam. 

Private Pete of the U. S. Army

The "Army Reader" that men studied in the Special Training Units when
they entered the Army had four parts.  Part 1 introduced Private Pete
and talked about all the things that the men experienced when they
entered the Army and got their identification tags - "dog tags" as they
came to be called. 

Part 2 is entitled "Private Pete Writes a Letter" and it taught men how
to write letters home. In Part 3, "The Army Pays Private Pete", men were
taught about their pay, allowances for dependents, and the arithmetic
they needed to know to deal with their everyday needs in the Army.  Part
4 of the "Army Reader" focused on teaching the men about good
citizenship. It discussed why they were in the Army and what they were
fighting for. 

All the materials were of a functional nature and were based on
experiences most of the men in the Special Training Units had in their
backgrounds, so they could build reading skills on the basis of their
prior knowledge.

The functional approach was very similar to the approach used in the
Dick and Jane readers for children. In those readers, care was taken to
show children engaged in the kinds of activities with which most
children were likely to be familiar. The idea was to first teach a list
of basic sight words that were carefully chosen to be meaningful to the
children in terms of their every day experiences.

A similar approach to using the meaning-oriented, "word" or "look-say"
method was used in developing the Army program. First soldiers were
shown films strips that helped them develop a basic sight vocabulary of
meaningful, Army-related words. Then they moved on to further word
recognition and sentence reading and writing  exercises. 

The four parts of the "Army Reader" were carefully developed to start at
about a 1st grade level and then each part went up a grade level until
at Part 4, men could read and write with 4th grade ability. At that time
they were graduated from the Special Training Units and sent to the
replacement camps in preparation for battle. 

Sailor Sam of the U. S. Navy

The Navy started literacy programs after those of the Army had been
implemented. Like the Army, Sailor Sam also taught reading in a
functional context using the Navy Life program consisting of Navy Life
Readers Books 1 and 2, and corresponding Navy Life workbooks.

A similar approach to the Army’s meaning-oriented, "word" or "look-say"
method was used in developing the Navy program. The instructions for
teachers in "Navy Life Reader Book 1" illustrate this approach:

"Preliminary discussion of the pictures should be encouraged, both to
promote concept development and to stimulate the student’s oral language
facility. The "Words for Study" pages, which illustrate picturable
words, should be developed as a preliminary to reading the stories which
follow. "

The goals of the Navy’s reading program, like those of the Army program,
were aimed at getting men to a functional level of reading as soon as
possible. The "Navy Life Reader , Book 2" informed teachers that , "A
reader for Navy men should, in addition to its other functions, help to
create a permanent interest in reading, help the men to orient
themselves in the meaning and objectives of the War, build morale, and
create pride in the Navy." To do this, the "Navy Life Readers" presented
stories of Sailor Sam and others in a variety of battle action scenarios
at sea and ashore. 

Voices of Gratitude For the World War II Literacy Programs

In his history of the Army Training of Illiterates in World War II,
Samuel Goldberg talks about how much service men and their  families
appreciated the military’s teaching their sons to read. 

Writing in the July 1943 issue of "Our War", a newspaper for the
literacy students of World War II, Private Porfirio C. Gutierrez wrote:
"This is my first letter in English. I have learned to read and write so
that I can help protect our country."

A mother of a soldier wrote: "dear sir: I thank you all for Learning My
child to read and wright I don’t Know how to thank you all Because My
child did not know nothing it is realy high apprishated Because I did
not have the time to send him to school I did not have no husband I
raised him from a Baby By my self and now I am in my old stage and that
is all my help and I thank you and I thank you when you wrote me and
siad My Boy did that I was so glad I did not Know what to do and I realy
appreshated it. Very truly Yours, M___ W___"

Clearly, it takes more than guns, bullets and bombs to win a war. The
teachers working through Private Pete and Sailor Sam gave "esprit de
corps " and hope to hundreds of thousands of men and their families
through the power of literacy. 

Support Adult Literacy Work Today

Today, all across America, hundreds of thousands of teachers and
volunteers are struggling with woefully inadequate resources to help
millions of adults whose lives are stunted by the same kinds of literacy
and learning problems that earlier affected hundreds of thousands of men
in World War II.

This Veteran’s Day November 11, 2001, let’s make a special effort to
remember the hundreds of thousands of men who fought in World War II
despite their serious communication, literacy and learning handicaps.
Their strength of character, focus of purpose, and, yes, their new found
literacy contributed immeasurably to making our Nation great.  

In "Our War " for January 1944, the fictional Private Pete wrote a
letter saying: "Dear Mom: 
 I know what I am working for in this war. I
want everyone to be able to go to any church he chooses. I want everyone
to have enough to eat. I want to be able to say what I think without
being afraid. I want the right to do what I like. But I want to do the
right thing
" Love, Pete. 

Even though we have come a long way since World War II, we still need
lots of Private Pete’s and Sailor Sam’s (and all those grown-up Dick and
Jane’s ) out in the trenches fighting for literacy to help millions of
adults get enough to eat for themselves and their families, to learn to
speak up for their rights and fulfill their obligations as citizens to
keep our nation strong and free. Business, government, individuals - we
all need to support the activities of these adult literacy educators and
the adult learners they serve. We should do it because, like Private
Pete, we want to do the right thing, and it IS the right thing to do!



NOTE:  In the past I have had requests for copies of information like
this so I’m sending this early for those who wish to copy, print and
distribute all or parts of it in celebration of Veteran’s Day September
11, 2001.  A four page paper copy of this Research Note with photocopies
of Private Pete and Sailor Sam from World War II materials is available
free by contacting me at tsticht at aznet.net giving your postal mailing
address. I will be out of the country from Oct 27th through Nov 2nd. and
will reply after then. Tom Sticht.
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