Growing up in the Ozark Mountains, I learned the meaning of illiterate before I was old enough to understand what literacy meant. Though a beautiful place to live, the mountains had few residents and even fewer opportunities. Most people’s neighbors lived miles away and it was a thirty-minute drive to the closest store. I knew that there was a lack of quality education, but discovering illiteracy came as a huge shock to me. I suppose I had a preconceived notion that everyone knew how to read and write. At the age of eight, it seemed like these extensions were taught to everyone. To me reading and writing was something that felt like a natural extension of my ways of communication, in my mind it was something everybody learned, just as walking and talking. When thinking about literacy I had never reflected on learning how to read and write, only that was something known. Without this reflection it was hard to think about there being an adverse to literacy.
Over the years my father would spend time with his friends and I would accompany him. His
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It wasn’t hard to understand how their illiteracy happened. Living in the Ozarks, you must take the education you’re offered. The area is sparse in people and there isn’t enough wealth around to have private schools. I began to think of all the children that would have the same fate, all due to where they live and the examples of poor education that were in their surroundings. The emphasis my parents put on my education always let me know it was important in life. It made me proud to have parents that encouraged me to learn as much as I could and that would reward me for trying my best. Without that support from my family, I may not have found the need for literacy or may not have focused on my education at such a young