Illiteracy

PARENTS, RELAX. If you haven't played Mozart in the nursery or read 300 books to your children by the age of 3, they are not condemned to a life of illiteracy.That's the message in a new book generating controversy even before its publication this week.In "The Myth of the First Three Years," John T. Bruer, president of a St. Louis foundation specializing in education and child development, takes aim at the view that the first three years of life are critical for optimal brain development and that children (particularly poor children)

Some 650 faithful fans of Cokie Roberts weren't about to let a little snow keep them from a recent breakfast with her at Marriott's Hunt Valley Inn.The ABC-TV and National Public Radio news analyst made the trek worthwhile, as she regaled the group with some stories she recounts in her book, "We Are Our Mothers' Daughters." Roberts got a good laugh from her primarily female audience when she derided the computer term "multi-tasking" as "a guy word for something women have always done."The women who helped organize the affair included: event chairwoman Malinda Small; committee members Nancy Cohen, Elayne Hettleman and Sandy Newman; and Literacy Works executive director Helene Waranch.

Mission: To coordinate, promote and support the provision of adult literacy services throughout Baltimore County and to support efforts to reduce illiteracy and to ensure there is a well-educated work force to support economic growth and development. Organizations that work with Literacy Works serve students in a variety of environments, including adult education and a class in English as a second language; on-site business and industry contract classes; family literacy programs; community-based volunteer groups; classes in homeless shelters; and classes in correctional institutions.

IT TOOK WILLIE B. Lamouse-Smith the better part of a decade to make a small dent in Africa's book famine.But finally, the precious consignment arrived one day last fall at Makerere University in Uganda -- about 250,000 books and journals, with 34 typewriters, collected by Lamouse-Smith from generous Marylanders and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County library.Lamouse-Smith, 63, professor and chairman of UMBC's department of Africana studies, began collecting the books nine years ago because he saw a connection between illiteracy in post-colonial Africa and its bloody conflicts.

Stan Stovall remembers being quizzed on simple phrases in French at age 3, learning to read by following the adventures of his favorite action heroes at 6, and perusing the newspaper each day when he was 9.The WMAR-TV (Channel 2) anchorman grew up in a household where reading was a regular activity and school considered a challenge best tackled head-on, with gusto.It's no surprise that illiteracy is one of Stovall's pet peeves."Quite frankly, I don't see how anyone can get anywhere today without being not only a reader, but a good reader," Stovall says, perched on a stool in the studio where he reads the nightly news.

"This is not what black English sounds like. I know people who speak black English. I know what black English sounds like."Kia Corthron still bristles when she remembers this written comment, received after a workshop production of one of her plays before a predominantly upper-middle-class white audience."I found it so offensive because I feel that when white writers play with language it's poetic, but when black writers play with language it's wrong," she says.If Corthron's reaction sounds politically charged, it is. As one of the country's most in-demand young black playwrights, she entwines politics, poetry and playwriting.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton needs the Supreme Court ruling that Paula Jones can proceed with her sexual-harassment suit against him while he is in office like, as Jack Benny used to say, a moose needs a hat rack.With the Whitewater case still being investigated by independent counsel Kenneth Starr and with Senate and House committees delving into the excesses of his 1996 re-election campaign fund-raising, Mr. Clinton already has enough personal distractions.What makes this court decision particularly troublesome for the president is that it keeps before the American public his political soft underbelly -- the nagging suspicion that he was, or even still is, a man of weak character and untrustworthiness with a lack of respect for women.

Tara Dawn Holland, the reigning Miss America, visited the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup yesterday to promote an education program for inmates."

THE LITERACY RATE in Howard County public schools is not nearly as high as it should be. Only 68 percent of second-graders were able to read and understand grade-level material at the end of the 1994-95 school year. So a proposal to spend $75,000 on a new program to improve the reading skills of elementary-school students is a welcome part of Superintendent Michael E. Hickey's $252 million budget request for the next fiscal year.This small portion of Dr. Hickey's budget is in the spirit of President Clinton's campaign initiative to spend $2.75 billion to help every child learn to read by the third grade.

I SPENT AN HOUR Sunday morning sharing a condition with roughly a quarter of my fellow citizens.By forgetting my glasses when I went to church, I became a functional illiterate.The traditional Lutheran liturgy with its mostly sung responses and recitation of the creed and the Lord's Prayer posed no problem because it's familiar.Contemporary serviceBut what if it had been a contemporary service, with a spoken liturgy printed in the bulletin and changed frequently to encourage spontaneity?I'd have spontaneously opted out because my uncorrected vision put me in the position of the man or woman who's been exposed to reading without being infected by it.That is, the words weren't totally obscure.