Back when I was in high school (10 years ago), I regularly heard statistics quoted on how many students graduate from high school with little or no ability to read. The statistics showed that this was far more common than most people are comfortable admitting. I forget the exact numbers, but I seem to recall something around 5% to 10%. (If these numbers are not accurate, please correct me.) Frankly, even 1% would have been appalling. How does a student complete 12 years of schooling and not even know how to read well?
That was 10 years ago. I have not seen more recent statistics and I don't feel they are necessary, as I have plenty of evidence that this is still a common problem. First, no significant reforms have been made to education to fix this problem. Second, I know two people that graduated from high school in the last 1 to 2 years who can barely read. Admittedly, one was home schooled and his education was not well maintained. The state that he was home schooled in requires regular standardized testing to make sure that home schooled students are progressing at a satisfactory rate, but obviously failed in this duty. The other went through the public school system, was recognized as having problems and still somehow managed to graduate almost entirely illiterate. I find it pathetic and frankly almost criminal that the educational system takes our tax money to teach our children and does not manage to perform even a barely decent job.
One of the major goals of the public school system in the US was to increase literacy of the public. The goal was to make sure that every adult was literate. It seems that we have reached some sort of cap. This cap is not because we do not have the resources. It is because we do not, after 200 years of experience, know how to effectively educate.
One problem, which I have mentioned before, is that many schools in the US choose to use reading programs that have been shown inferior in various studies. This, really, is a minor problem though. If a student graduates from elementary school without good reading ability, the school system is not doing its job. Now, I am not just saying that they should have worked harder to make sure the student would be able to read by that time, I am also saying that graduating a student from elementary school without the ability to read is totally irresponsible. Some students do have learning disabilities that make reading difficult (I have a brother who is dyslexic, for instance). Instead of just sending these students to a class for people who are behind, for the hour that is spent on reading in the regular classroom, these students should be given more time to learn it, even if it is at the expense of other subjects.
Schools teach children a variety of subjects. Most of these subjects are only important in the sense that they must be learned at some point during schooling. Many of these subjects become easier to learn as the brain matures, good examples are math and language (what we often call English in schools). Reading is different. The more the brain matures without learning to read, the more difficult it becomes. Math is based on counting logic, which most people will inherently learn given enough time and experience. More advanced math requires learning new logic, but again, once the logic is learned, any problem using that logic can be solved, without the need to memorize every possible permutation. Reading is pure memorization. Logic is easier for a more mature brain to learn. Memorization of symbols and sounds is far easier for a very young brain to learn (some of the best and most effective reading programs recommend starting between 3 and 4 years old). This is why older people who have never learned a second language often have a much more difficult time learning a new language than children or teens.
My point here is that reading is more important than any other subject that a school can teach. I agree that math, language, etc... are very important, but without the ability to read, these subjects will be nearly useless. The early grades should focus on reading more than other subjects, because the students will have an easier time catching up in those subjects than in reading. If a student is not progressing in reading, that student should be put into a program that ignores other subjects and teaches solely reading until the student can read satisfactorily. Reading is that important.
To further make my case, no other skill can give a person access to as much knowledge as reading. This was true 50 years ago, when the internet was not even a dream. Now, it is many orders of magnitude more true. A person who can read well but has no math skills can find Khan Academy and learn math from the ground up. They can start with elementary math and work up through linear algebra (high level college math). They can continue on to chemistry, physics, computer programming, and much more. Many colleges are beginning to post educational materials online, including lecture videos, which can also be found and used for free (MIT has quite a good selection). Wikipedia is a vast repository containing huge amounts of knowledge, and the one skill that is required to gain access to this knowledge is reading. Nearly all high school classes and many elementary school classes require that a student read various learning materials. If that does not show how important literacy is, nothing will.
Literacy is more important than any other skill. To get a job, you have to be able to read and fill out an application. To keep that job, you have to be able to read training materials and other information. Even a job at McDonald's requires some amount of reading ability. In the US, it is nearly impossible to get and keep a job if you cannot read well. And these jobs are the lowest jobs available. If you want a good job, reading is even more important. Being able to read just enough to get by is not enough. You have to be able to read and understand complex documents, often using fairly large words. You also have to be able to write well and spell well. Many of these students that graduate from high school without having good reading skills will never be able to make enough money to support a family and will probably not even make enough to support just themselves without relying on welfare. Reading is the most important things that schools can teach.
My wife and I will be home schooling our children. The first thing they are going to learn is reading. My daughter is almost two and very soon we are going to start teaching her the sounds various letters make. Two years old might be a bit young for this, but as I said, memorizing symbols and sounds comes more naturally at younger ages. It is likely that she will have a difficult time pronouncing all of the sounds at this age, but she will be able to pronounce some. She is too young for gamefication to work, but we can give her more substantial rewards (small pieces of candy, extra trips to the park, etc...) for good performance until she is old enough to understand immaterial rewards. Our goal is for her to be able to read fairly well by the time she is ready to start learning more complex subjects, so that she will be able to use resources such as Khan Academy and Wikipedia effectively.
I know how important literacy is personally, because much of what I have learned was learned using the internet. I have learned many programming languages from the internet (when I began programming, the internet in its present form did not exist, so I ended up learning using the help file included with MS QBasic). I learned two years of college classes worth of electrical engineering from the internet. I learned amature rocketry, blacksmithing, techniques for manufacturing plastics and composites, basic chemistry, and all sorts of other things, all from the internet. Even 20 years ago, I would not have had access to any of this, but more importantly, if I were not literate, I would not have been able to learn any of this regardless of whether the internet existed or not. Literacy is the most important skill a person can have. Our educational system needs to be changed to reflect that.
Lord Rybec
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