Imagine if you couldn’t read a contract, decipher an email, or share a favorite picture book with your child. Imagine if you couldn’t sign your name on a birthday card, much less address the envelope. This is the reality for approximately 21% of the adult population in the USA today. 59% of the remaining 79% read and write below a sixth grade level (20% below a 5th grade level).1 And this lack of literacy in the United States is continuing to grow. We now rank 23rd in literacy in the world, behind China, Estonia, Poland and 20 other countries.
But, it’s not just the decline of reading and writing that is reaching critical mass, it is the joy, fun, and magic of literacy that is disappearing from our own and our children’s lives. So much emphasis in schools is placed on the mechanics of reading and writing that the amazing magic of the written word gets overlooked or short-changed.
In Wired for Story, Lisa Cron, points out that our brains are hardwired to appreciate, process and generate stories because stories let readers vicariously live other lives and try out actions, both positive and negative, without having to experience the consequences of those actions in real life.2
I believe this hardwiring is the key to making reading and writing appealing to children. All children struggle with these skills at first. The ones who persevere and master them often do so because they have been introduced to the enchantment of the written word through a beloved story. This motivates them to want to read similar stories and to aspire to write stories of their own.
How do we, as educators, parents and grandparents keep the enchantment of literacy alive for the children of today?
That’s a blog for another day.
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- https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%2079%25%20of%20U.S.,to%202.2%20trillion%20per%20year.
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- Wired for Story by Lisa Cron, Ten Speed Press; 40065th edition (July 10, 2012