Top university – in the city with the most illiterates

 

The land of extremes
 

Next to the world's best university is a city of illiterates

Peter Kadhammar

Updated 12.06 | Published 12:00 p.m

No democratic country consists of such extremes as the United States – a superpower torn apart by politicla, religious and moral contradictions.
Aftonbladet's Peter Kadhammar traveled to the land of extremes.                                                Today : Illiterates in the same city as Yale – the prestigious university that has had 65 Nobel laureates .etet som haft 65 Nobelpristagare.

Grafik: Paul Wallander

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut. Yale is one of the world's most famous universities, it is at the top in every way, for example 65 recipients of the Nobel Prize have studied here.

Yale is located in the city of New Haven, which is also at the top, but in a different way. In town there are lots of illiterates and the majority of school children cannot read as they should.

That thing is hard to understand when I walk around the university campus. Yale is a little Europe on the American East Coast, the finest and best of Europe – old solid stone houses, tree-lined avenues, young people sitting on benches and traditional balustrades, studying and discussing.

65 Nobel Prize winners have studied at Yale. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

I could write that that world is out of sight for a little poor boy like Jerome James. Another planet in another universe and so on.

It isn't. Jerome's mother cleans at Yale, so he should have heard the name of the university even if he doesn't say it. He is very quiet and shy.

Today, Jerome is about two kilometers from Yale, in a room that the non-profit organization New Haven Reads, New Haven reads, disposes of.

There, children who cannot cope with reading at school receive extra help. 415 children are enrolled here, it sounds like a lot but is a fraction of everyone who needs help.

There are 20,000 children in the school district and 87 percent of those in third grade are not reading as well as they should, says Fiona Bradford, who is part of the leadership of New Haven Reads.

That's 17,400 children.

So when I look out over the classroom where Jerome sits and struggles with the letters, where Sara, 8, has to choose the right word in a computer game and Kalixmar, 8, rests from reading and eats apple wedges - I see a kind of elite.

But a different elite than that at Yale: the children in the classroom belong to the lucky minority who get to learn to read properly.

Jerome James' mother cleans at Yale. Here he is with his grandmother Tanya. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

AS a conscientious reporter, I contacted the Yale press office and asked to be given a tour of the university. They responded by sending a long, long questionnaire and then another with questions about what insurances Aftonbladet has. And then they said no.

So I booked a regular tour for tourists.

A charming young man showed around. He told anecdotes about the students' secret societies and if we wondered what it was like to live in the boarding school, we would think of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies.

He asked where we were from and when someone answered Madrid, Spain, he said:

- I was there last year. A wonderful city.

And then he told me that he just came home from Thailand and that there is at least as good Thai food in New Haven, at least as good.

He was very charming and inviting. He had the peculiarity of holding out his arms when he asked us to ask questions, any, as if he embraced our questions, and he would point to a house that was not really open to the public and say just walk in.

At Yale, people are relaxed and permissive.

Fiona Bradford belongs to the leadership of the organization New Haven Reads. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

Just go to New Haven Reads too. Enter through the archway to a disused factory that now houses offices and businesses. The elevator up to the second floor. The openness is greater than at Yale, because no one requires me to fill out endless forms about who I intend to speak with and how long it might take and in what context the interview should be published.

Fiona Bradford thanks me for showing interest in the town's children. The director Kirsten Levinsohn also thanks me for coming all the way from Sweden and invites me to her small office.

- One third of the adults in New Haven are functionally illiterate, she says. They can't handle everyday things like filling out a form, reading simple instructions on a medicine can, or reading to their children.

- Some parents have cheat sheets when they come here and have to write their names and addresses on our forms, says Fiona Bradford.

- It makes me crazy that children who can't read are allowed to continue up through the year groups. You just send them on. Children leave high school without being able to read! says Kirsten Levinsohn.

- It is easier to send them on, says Fiona.

The walking paths at Yale are not straight – the idea is for students to experience unexpected encounters. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

They describe the social heritage. Parents who pass on their inability to the children. Parents who have several jobs to support the family and thus do not have time to get involved in the children's schooling.

Absenteeism has increased after the pandemic when schools were closed. Before the pandemic, 10-15 percent of students were absent. Now it is 30 percent who do not come to school.

- They got jobs as food couriers and helpers in the supermarkets and help support their families, says Fiona Bradford.

At Yale, the sympathetic student who was our guide told us about the importance of thinking freely. You choose which subject you want to study but no one expects you to stick to it. Search for yourself. When you find the right one, you will be the best.

He himself switched from cognitive science, which deals with the interaction between humans and computers, to environmental science.

- Everyone here is different, we have different interests. Dedicate yourself to what is interesting! Strive for the unknown!

We stood by a statue of former headmaster Theodore Dwight Woolsey, graduating class of 1820, whose polished bronze foot touched generations of students. It means luck. More important were the numerous and seemingly random walking paths across the lawn around the statue.

- They should not be straight. The students must bump into each other, experience unexpected encounters, take new paths.

 

Generations of students have touched the feet of former headmaster Theodore Dwight Woolsey. It means luck. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

It's a fine and creative mindset that trickled down to the poor kids in New Haven's public schools. It was called "balanced reading" and was the fashionable pedagogy of recent decades across the United States.

The idea was that if you gave children access to a lot of books, completely drowning them in books, they would learn to read by themselves. In the simplest books, there would be pictures around the words and the children would guess which word belonged to the picture and in that way learn to read as if automatically, much like when you learn to speak.

It was a dream about the undemanding learning. The knowledge would come by itself. The children would hardly notice that they were learning anything. They would have fun.

The result was more and more illiterates.

Fiona Bradford gets very involved when she talks about the "balanced reading". She talks about science and the need to learn to read structured step by step. To learn to assemble letters into words, to sound out and connect the letters into a meaningful whole.

In 2021, the state of Connecticut enacted a law that abolished "balanced reading" and mandated that all schools must base instruction on science. As always in the United States, the law was given a powerful name: Right to Read.

It will take years to get the teaching in order, says Fiona Bradford.

And as always, it is the underclass who lose out from the experiments of the powerful.

 

         

I ask what Jerome wants to do in life. "Fireman" he finally answers to put an end to my nagging. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

Nine-year- old Jerome is accompanied by his grandmother Tanya James to reading lessons. She is a quiet and taciturn woman. She used to clean schools, her father worked at Winchester's famous gun factory which was the major employer of unskilled labour.

When the Winchesters struck again, Tanya's father got a job at a car dealership. He washed and waxed the cars.

It was a downward journey for the former factory worker.

And Tanya cleaned schools.

And her daughter, Jerome's mother, cleans at Yale and in hospitals to make ends meet.

And Jerome – what is he going to do? What is he dreaming about?

He thinks for a long time and then whispers that he doesn't know. Fire-fighter? I say. Police? Locomotive driver?

- Fireman, the boy whispers to avoid my nagging.

Yale has a budget of 5.57 billion dollars, 64 billion kroner. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

The state of Connecticut is one of the states with the greatest class differences in the United States. And the United States is the country with the greatest class differences in the Western world.

If the poor are unable to organize themselves, they are helped by the kind-hearted well-to-do. Fiona Bradford's husband is a professor in the Yale Department of Environmental Studies, Kirsten Levinsohn's husband is a professor and dean, chief executive, of the Jackson School of Global Affairs, the department of global studies.

Yale owns large parts of the city and leases a couple of premises rent-free to New Haven Reads.

The organization has a budget of 1.8 million dollars, approximately SEK 20 million. The teaching is free for the children and young people who are lucky enough to get a place.

Yale has a budget of 5.57 billion dollars, 64 billion kroner. The annual fee for students is one million kroner.