"What the hell, you got a room in your house just filled with books? That's stupid," was one of the many memorable quotes from my first semester teaching in a school filled with at-risk and impoverished kids. Right now you're reading a productivity and technology blog. You're no stranger to literacy and you read for enjoyment. All day every day you process thousands upon thousands of words to make meaning of and enrich your world. As an educator both at the high school and collegiate level, I'm confronted again and again with children and adults who are only semi-literate nearly drowning in a world they can't process the way you and I can. Somehow, every year I find myself with hundreds of students that regard reading a book the same way they regard getting kicked in the groin. If a student makes it out of their formal schooling only semi-literate, their passage into adulthood is painfully crippled. All the social programs in the world won't be able to stabilize that person's life as much as the confidence that being a competent and literate adult would. Photo by Tom@HK.
You would be hard pressed to find an organization that has done more to advocate and foster literacy than Reading Is Fundamental. It isn't a new charity and it won't win awards for being trendy. It has, however, consistently won awards for being extremely efficient with its funding, receiving an A+ rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy and being ranked among the best 100 charities in the country according to Worth magazine. Consider the following spattering of facts about the state of illiteracy in the US and the economic impact of it:
- Nearly 50% of the adult US population reads at a 7th grade level or lower. Nearly 25% has reading proficiency so low they cannot read instructions on medication bottles, the manual that comes with a piece of machinery, or a newspaper. This means roughly 40 million Americans cannot do something as simple and critical as read the handout a pharmacist gives them that warns them of lethal drug interactions. *
- 62% of parents with high socioeconomic status read to their children every day. 36% of parents with low socioeconomic status read to their children every day. *
- The average lifetime earnings of a person holding a Master's degree or higher is $1,500,000 higher than that of a non-highschool graduate. *
Books for Ownership is a program that encourages children to take ownership of their literacy by giving them ownership of books. Many of my students over the years have told me that they've never owned a single book. How can a child be expected to feel any sense of ownership over their own reading ability or growth if they don't even own the most fundamental tools involved in the whole affair? Books for Ownership puts books into the hands of children and their families, and sponsors community literacy activities to encourage engagement with books.
If you grew up in a literate household, you learned how to pass on literacy just like you learned how to tie your shoes or prepare your own food, by watching the adults in your life. The best time for a family to break a generational chain of illiteracy is with a new child. Shared Beginnings is a program that helps young parents foster literacy in their growing children. In a helpful and compassionate setting parents are helped to overcome their own reservations about reading and encourage a love of reading in their children through reading sessions, songs, reading related games, and other activities that help to stimulate a young mind and form a positive association with reading. Shared Beginnings is a wonderful solution to a problem I have often encountered as an educator: a student who thinks that reading and education is stupid because their own parents have passed on their own trauma from school and illiteracy onto their children. One of the most wonderful things about the Shared Beginnings program is watching a parent experience the excitement of reading through their child, recapturing the excitement they may have never had themselves.
Family of Readers starts at birth like the Shared Beginnings program, but continues even longer into the elementary years. There is a heavier emphasis on encouraging growth and independence among the adults in the Family of Readers program than in Shared Beginnings. Parents are involved in forming committees to select reading material for their children and communities with the guidance of a literacy counselor. They are trained on how to educate other parents about the importance of literacy, recruit them into the programs, and how to plan activities that are book-centric.
So what can you do? Money goes a long way towards staffing programs and filling delivery trucks with books. Volunteering in a local literacy program goes even further. A child you share a love of reading now can be one less student sitting in front of me giving up on before they even begin because the words on the page make no more sense to them than cracks in a sidewalk. When you sponsor literacy both through your money and actions you sponsor another person entering into a world of potential.
For more information about Reading Is Fundamental, from its half century history of successes with literacy to how you can become involved in literacy programs in your community check them out at rif.org.