Senior2315
09-10-2010, 02:19 PM
In a recent article, Karen Utley says that literacy is the answer to so many of our society's woes. Here's an excerpt:
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"Ideally, every child would enter school with a sound literacy background cultivated in homes blessed with hundreds of books and expanded through hours of one-on-one picture-book reading -- and each child would learn to read the way a fish learns to swim. Some kids, however, emerge un-read-to from virtually bookless homes.
Since it's impossible for them to acquire instantly the skills and habits better prepared children have been developing since infancy, they are handicapped at school from before the beginning.
And some never catch up. They struggle through grade school, spend middle school dodging trouble and eventually reject education completely to join the 20 percent of adults in this country who read at or below the fifth-grade level.
When they, in turn, fail to prepare their own children for reading, the cycle repeats and illiteracy -- with its usual companions, poverty and crime -- haunts our society like a genetic affliction destined to populate and perpetuate a permanent lower class.
Books, reading and literacy, however, can open the door to a better life.
In the novel, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," an illiterate immigrant grandmother urges her horribly poor, barely educated daughter to buy a book and with it to rescue her own little girl. "Every day you must read to your child," she says, "though you yourself do not understand the words."
Unfortunately, not all underprivileged children have wise grandmothers. However, almost every one of them -- even the least of them -- could become a reader if given the opportunity to prepare for school through a book-rich, personalized introduction to literacy at a community-supported free preschool.
Eliminating illiteracy is possible. First, we can hand every child a book."
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I completely agree. Literacy and education can solve so many social problems, from poverty to crime. Unfortunately, as a society we need to realize that not every parent will teach their child to read and such. Thus, we need to create community-based action plans to successfully raise all the children of all of our communities, through non-governmental organization and voluntary cooperation.
How can we expect to have a happy, peaceful, or loving world when so many people cannot even read?!
What do you think?
*****
"Ideally, every child would enter school with a sound literacy background cultivated in homes blessed with hundreds of books and expanded through hours of one-on-one picture-book reading -- and each child would learn to read the way a fish learns to swim. Some kids, however, emerge un-read-to from virtually bookless homes.
Since it's impossible for them to acquire instantly the skills and habits better prepared children have been developing since infancy, they are handicapped at school from before the beginning.
And some never catch up. They struggle through grade school, spend middle school dodging trouble and eventually reject education completely to join the 20 percent of adults in this country who read at or below the fifth-grade level.
When they, in turn, fail to prepare their own children for reading, the cycle repeats and illiteracy -- with its usual companions, poverty and crime -- haunts our society like a genetic affliction destined to populate and perpetuate a permanent lower class.
Books, reading and literacy, however, can open the door to a better life.
In the novel, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," an illiterate immigrant grandmother urges her horribly poor, barely educated daughter to buy a book and with it to rescue her own little girl. "Every day you must read to your child," she says, "though you yourself do not understand the words."
Unfortunately, not all underprivileged children have wise grandmothers. However, almost every one of them -- even the least of them -- could become a reader if given the opportunity to prepare for school through a book-rich, personalized introduction to literacy at a community-supported free preschool.
Eliminating illiteracy is possible. First, we can hand every child a book."
*****
I completely agree. Literacy and education can solve so many social problems, from poverty to crime. Unfortunately, as a society we need to realize that not every parent will teach their child to read and such. Thus, we need to create community-based action plans to successfully raise all the children of all of our communities, through non-governmental organization and voluntary cooperation.
How can we expect to have a happy, peaceful, or loving world when so many people cannot even read?!
What do you think?