The social cost of low reading skill for young people

A few days ago, I was flipping through my grade school yearbooks and reading what my classmates and teachers had scrawled throughout the pages. The one that stuck out most in my memory was from my kindergarten teacher, Miss Grenzow: "...keep reading and writing."

It's hard for me not to smile when I say those words back to myself so many years later because of just how far those "skills" (read: hobbies) have taken me. It's clear that my affinity for the written word began at a young age, and my growing passion for books was certainly not going unnoticed. When most kids in my class were being given one book a week to take home, Miss Grenzow was giving me three or four. I was coming back to school having gobbled up every word in each book I was given, hungry for more.

I tell this story because if I was limited to choose one thing to attribute my success in life thus far, it would have to be an early love and understanding of literacy. And thankfully, that passion was strongly nourished and encouraged by my parents and great teachers like Miss Grenzow.

Kindergarden Tessa (circa 1997)

To be honest, I consider myself lucky. To have the ability – and more importantly, the desire – to read from such a young age isn't as common as I wish it was. 

"At kindergarten entry, about one-third (31 percent) of children understand the letter-sound relationship at the beginning of words and about one in six children (18 percent) understand the letter-sound relationship at the end of words," according to the 2002 National Center for Education Statistics report, "Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade." 

By the spring of first grade these numbers change dramatically, illustrating just how much literacy progress is made during the first few years of a child's schooling.

Percentage of children demonstrating specific reading knowledge and skills for fall kindergarten, spring kindergarten, and spring first grade: 1998–99 and 2000

Data via the 2002 National Center for Education Statistics report, "Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade."

As you can see, most kids make large strides toward literacy in kindergarten and first grade, but what about the children who don't? According to the U.S. Department of Education more than 60% of K-12 school children are reading below the level of proficiency that is required for the brain-work of reading to be transparent to the mind-work of learning at the grade level they are in.

Just as the positive effects of literacy cannot be underestimated for the future success of a child, neither can the effects of not reading. Below is an excellent video shown to us in my grad school class, Library Services for Children and Young Adults, that addresses the personal and social cost of illiteracy. 

As you can see, literacy has much larger implications than simply fulfilling a class assignment or learning about a new topic. Children who struggle to read are much more likely to turn into adults with higher rates of drug use and incarceration, and that's just a small look at the overall picture.

A large part of the literacy discussion is "How can reading help my child" or "What is my child missing out on by not reading?" But perhaps the more important question to be asking is what are the risks associated with not picking up a book, and how can we remedy that situation?

*To learn more about illiteracy among young teens, click here.