Retraining in South Bend

It was an irrefutable bit of logic that forced South Bend, Ind., to open job-training schools: minimal relief for 6,900 workers let out by Studebaker Corp. last December would cost about $1,000,000 a year more than a big program to retrain them. Now, as a result of the economic blow that it suffered, South Bend is the patternmaker of a branch of U.S. education that could potentially enroll most of the nation's 4,000,000 unemployed.

Hidden Illiterates. South Bend's effort is a joint venture of the local, state and federal governments, plus the nonprofit National Council on the Aging. On a grant from the U.S. Labor Department, the council interviewed 1,348 of the dropped employees of 50 years and older, many of them Negroes and men of Polish and Hungarian extraction who had worked for Studebaker all their lives and had never before hunted for a job. Testing by the Indiana Employment Security Division showed that more than a tenth of the men had forgotten--or never knew--how to read and write with any skill. One cook, for example, had memorized the first letter of each item on the menu, and thus hid his illiteracy; his downfall came when the boss ordered him to get some wine and he could not read the labels. The first step, for many, had to be elementary schooling.

Now 96 students attend classes in a former high school for 61 hours a day. They start out by shuffling packs of 2-in. by 2-in. cards with a one-syllable word printed on one side and a picture on the other; they then go on to cards that must be phonetically arranged (low, row, blow). Some students have covered six grades in two months.

The stories in their readers eliminate Dick, Jane and Spot in favor of history, geography and Arabian Nights fantasy. One student's daughter was taunted by a neighbor who said her father was attending "dumb school"; she replied that she was proud of him. Kids surreptitiously aid parents. One homework book came back to school marked by a helpful child: "If you look on page six, you'll find the answer."

In Small Bites. Once they can read and write, the adults join 384 others in vocational training. At Studebaker's abandoned truck assembly plant, they are taught new skills--data processing, air-conditioning maintenance--by non-professional teachers who are experts at their trade. Says Harry Lane, 46, who gave up his used-car lot and repair shop to become a teacher: "It's like teaching a baby to eat. You have to do it in small bites." But the work is rewarding: "Three men out of my first class are now making more money than they ever made in their lives."

Since the vocational training center opened, three-fourths of the graduates have found new jobs. Recently a cooking class moved in, and after a week of lectures was doing so well that it will soon be feeding the student body. By the time the 48-week course ends, promises Instructor Charles Harper, the class will be able to turn out French, German and Italian specialties for the Florida hotel trade--and every student will be able to read the menu.

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