If you’re online as much as I am, you’ll see dozens of comment sections littered with the same shameful remarks claiming we’re in a literacy crisis. At first, I simply waved off these silly remarks, for TikTok comment sections aren’t always the most reliable sources for facts. Yet, when I kept seeing these same comments appearing across videos, I couldn’t help but wonder if this actually was true.
But before we dive into literacy, we first must tackle the obvious: what exactly is it?
Literacy is more than just your ability to read and write paragraphs — it’s your comprehension skills, your interpretations, and your ability to make reasonable conclusions from information presented in front of you. It’s more than reading words off a page; it molds your communication skills, shapes how you see the world around you, and how you plan to impact it.
Alarmingly, Harvard professors who have analyzed the data on children’s literacy rates have revealed that 40% of fourth graders are failing to meet basic levels of proficiency, with a third of eighth graders following suit. Many people reading these statistics have wondered if COVID-19 has perpetuated any of this. In reality, there appears to be a steady linear decline, regardless of the pandemic.
Articles discussing this issue, like those of The Atlantic, have even debated if school funding has anything to do with this. But as The Atlantic cites, school funding hasn’t decreased; it’s actually faced a significant increase under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan: $190 billion. Unfortunately, schools that received this funding allocated it to capital expenditures.
Teachers are constantly leaving the profession due to classroom management issues, lack of parent support, and students’ high social media usage. This leads me to believe it’s more than just a school issue; it’s an at-home issue as well.
In a conversation with Interview Magazine, popular TikTok influencer Alix Earle was asked about the last book she read. Her response? Dr. Seuss. Honestly, I felt the validity of the statement was questionable, but some viewers didn’t bat an eye. In fact, one claimed they don’t believe their kids have ever picked up any books other than school textbooks.
Now listen, I’m not one to slander Earle, but I will say, I don’t think this is a good thing. Yes, she is successful, and yes, she is a college graduate, but this statement appears to discredit herself. How can you get through college without picking up a book once? Why would you not want to expand your knowledge? How do you read the world around you? How do you confront modern day issues, if at all? In fact, higher literacy helps us gain fluid intelligence, and fluid intelligence helps us gain literacy. Fluid intelligence is our ability to reason and solve “novel problems” happening in the world. It’s our ability to think outside the box and adapt to the unfamiliar. Not only that, but it’s something that peaks in our youth.
Kids might not understand this, but adults should.
When my mother found out I hadn’t completed any assigned out-of-class reading in second grade, she intervened. She sat me down at the table and wouldn’t let me leave until I’d finished reading an entire Magic Treehouse book and started the multi-page book report alongside it. After that, I couldn’t put books down.
Thankfully, she removed my iPad privileges so I could get the work done. There’s value in iPads if wielded correctly, but if there are no controls and time limits, they’re just destroyers of a child’s attention span and creativity. If a child has no attention span, how are they supposed to focus on textbooks in class or books as popular as the Harry Potter series? They can’t; increased screen time can change and likely decrease children’s abilities within language processing regions, visual regions, and the attention system, all of which are crucial to their academic skills. Reading, learning, engaging with other children, and engaging with the outside world are how you foster their intellect and their capabilities, and this starts at ages as young as three. They need the reading stamina necessary to focus on books that these screens take away from them when not regulated properly.
To me, it feels like people forget the skills literacy supplies people with. It’s so encompassing that it’s hard to narrow down exactly where it applies. Most assume the obvious: English. However, it’s more than this. Literacy is essential to you reading this article right now, solving math problems, reading mundane chemistry lecture notes, and drafting the political speeches you care so much about. But most importantly, it fosters creativity.
Creativity is something of constant necessity in this world. It’s the driver behind technological innovations, the TV shows we spend hours watching, the social media apps we rant on, and the music that fits every mood. Creativity has a direct link to passion and excitement. It feeds the flames of our curiosity and the fire of our beliefs. Yet people can’t extract the value of it if they’re never properly exposed to it.
Increased literacy rates have correlated with many different social outcomes as well. The Barbara Bush Foundation cites that increased literacy can create stronger economies, healthier families, safer communities, and better civic engagement. Higher literacy rates have the potential of expanding people’s capability in the job market. In addition to reducing poverty, maintaining a high literacy rate within poor communities can help break multi-generational cycles of poverty, allowing for greater opportunity.
But there’s no way of fixing this if schools don’t promote literacy programs for poorer students, as opposed to putting the bulk of their funding towards HVAC maintenance.
It’s vital to the well-being of young Americans, yet it’s being replaced with screens that are not nearly as skill-building as opening up a book. iPads have been around for nearly two decades, leaving plenty of time for these young content creators to pick them up and put books down. It leaves plenty of time for all these now-adults to have contributed to the past decade’s worth of decline in literacy.
In fact, today about one in four adults read at the lowest literacy level. About 36 million adults struggle with functional literacy, barring their job opportunities as they struggle to even read job applications. This can be lowered by proficient early literacy practices that schools and homes use to encourage reading in children.
A small step in fixing this is by encouraging audiobooks. Not everyone likes to read, and that’s okay, but for all those stubborn children or curious adults who wish they could read more, listening to an audiobook might help them find a newfound love for books. I know that if I ever come across stories that lack visual enticement on their pages, I opt for the audiobook instead of the endless black-and-white pages.
So no, I don’t exactly think it’s cute to not read, especially in adolescence. Reading dystopian novels, reading fantasy epics, and simply engaging with creative forms will always be essential to me. It’s how we innovate as humans; it’s how we argue and advocate, and it’s how we call out both the past and the present’s faults. We learn from stories, we learn from their inspirations, and we continue educating and inspiring to promote the world’s well-being.
I don’t think children can innovate to their fullest potential if you don’t tell them stories, let them read and write, and sit with their own thoughts. And worse, adults can’t properly function, reason, or effectively analyze the world around them.