New phase begins in literacy project Learning: The thousands of Cubans who learned to read in a national campaign in the 1960s, then proudly wrote letters to Fidel Castro to prove it, are inspirational.

NEXT TIME you're passing through Havana, stop by the Museo de la Alfabetizacion.

There you'll see people in their 50s, 60s and 70s, some with grandchildren in tow, proudly finding the letters they wrote to Fidel Castro some 35 years ago.

Permanently stored in the museum, the letters have a common message: I've learned to read, and here's the proof.

More than 700,000 Cubans dispatched that message in the early 1960s. In one of the most remarkable literacy campaigns in history, cadres of literate Cubans took to the sugar fields and city streets of the island. Cuba's literacy rate tripled in less than five years. When Cubans learned to read, they certified themselves with a thank-you note to Castro.

"The learning material was simple," Johana Tablada, a Cuban diplomat, said the other night in a talk at Barclay School in Baltimore. "It was the a, e, i, o, u. You have to use the phonic, always."

When Cubans visit the Museo and find their letters, Tablada said, "They very often cry with joy. Learning to read was one of the great accomplishments of their lives. Some of them were older people taught by children 13 to 15 years old. Some of them went on to be doctors and teachers.

"We knew then, and we know now, that if you don't know how to read or write, you are lost."

It's in the spirit of Tablada's dual messages -- that reading is at once an epiphany and a necessity -- that we launch this new phase of The Sun's Reading by 9 project.

Each Sunday, this page will look at reading instruction that appears to be effective and try to determine why. We'll look at unusual approaches to and philosophies about the teaching of reading.

We'll discuss tutoring and put volunteers in touch with tutoring agencies. We'll publish "question-and-answer" articles, and we'll profile excellent reading teachers and leaders in the reading field.

Some of what we'll be writing about can be classified as ceremonial. Reading is getting a lot of public relations these days. Governors and professional groups are shining spotlights on the importance of early reading. On March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss -- Theodor Seuss Geisel -- the nation is to pause for a "Read Across America" celebration.

But as we documented in our first Reading By 9 series in November, this celebration masks deep underlying problems that urgently need attention. We know that 70 percent to 80 percent of youngsters taught in urban schools -- and a disappointing number of suburban kids -- leave elementary school without a basic reading foundation.

We know that the nine months of first grade are crucial to a student's learning to read, but first grade is also the time in which instructional practices are most inconsistent with research findings. We know that many teachers get little or no training in the teaching of reading.

But this page won't be all about problems. We'll have fun with reading. We'll take it away from the classroom. We'll find out what kids and their parents are reading. What's happening with book clubs? Will the reading of R. L. Stine, the wildly popular author of children's horror books, destroy the republic as we know it?

What a kooky language to have fun with! Look at that safe, always predictable Spanish in the first sentence above. Spanish has simple and uniform orthographic rules. (That's why you took it in high school.) Why did the English have to come along and change the "f" in alfabet to the much more confusing "ph"?

Reading isn't only fundamental. It's fun.

Pub Date: 2/22/98