Illiteracy
Many of us take it for granted that we can read this blog that I am posting. What if it was just a bunch of shapes that you were looking at and wondering “what does that say?”. Unfortunately in our society there are too many people who are unable to read & write. Many of them go through their life without other people realizing it. Illiteracy is a growing epidemic in our nation. 42 million American adults can’t read at all - another 50 million read at only fourth or fifth grade levels. This number of functionally illiterate adults increases by approx. 2.25 million each year. That is a scary number but with 20 percent of graduating high school senior being functionally illiterate that number is not surprising.
What does this lead too? Well 70% of all prisoners in state and federal prisons are classified as illiterate. 70% of all people entering state correctional facilities have not completed high school and 14% have no high school education at all. 85% of juvenile offenders are classified as being functionally or marginally illiterate. 43% of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty. WOW are those some scary statistics or what! Add to that a recent newspaper article stated that 1 in 100 people in our nation are in prison. So in a town of 800 that would figure out to 8 people in prison and with the 70% of them being illiterate that would equate to 5 of those people from our town being illiterate.
Or how about this tidbit of information. Do you know how they determine in SD how many jail cells will be needed in the future? They look at the 2nd grade reading level in our schools.
Yes reading is very important. It is the building block for a successful school experience. If you can’t read or read well all other subjects are going to suffer.
Parents, grandparents, and others one of the greatest gift and advantage you can give a child is to read to them from birth on. The knowledge they gain from that will serve them a life time. As they grow and learn to read let them read to you. It builds their skills and confidence. The next time you are buying a present for a youngster (of any age) consider purchasing a book as the gift. It opens up a whole world of imagination, information and enjoyment.
We live in a society where our youth are not competing for jobs with someone down the street or highway but with people on another continent half way around the world. We need to instill in our youth the importance of an education and the skills they will obtain to take them through life. An education is never wasted and can never be taken away from you.
We are fortunate in our small town to have a nice library and to have an organization that promotes literacy. The local Women in Action group sponsor several reading programs. One is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. This is where Dolly gives books to youth from birth to 5 years of age. The local WIA group pays for the postage. They also help sponsor the summer reading program at the library. Finally they sponsor the Prairie Readers Competition at the school. This involves not only Armour students but students from Tripp/Delmont, Lake Andes, Corsica, Stickney and Dakota Christian. The students have been working hard since before Thanksgiving reading books and practicing for the competition. This is a team of 4 students in a quiz bowl type of setting pitting their knowledge of books against teams from other schools. This competition is on March 31st at noon at the Armour School. Come see between 250 - 300 students compete and show their love of reading.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I have to say that before I attended my first Prairie Readers competition, I was a little skeptical. The awarding of trophies at the end, however, is something to behold. The noise in the gym is comparable to that of a good ball game. And it’s all over books!!! Thank you WIA for continuing to sponsor this outstanding program.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
We once again had a successful Prairie Readers in Armour. Even with a snow day delay. Thanks to Mr. Glanzer and his bus driving to help a school attend we had 243 youth, ~108 spectators, & 31 helpers at the event. And yes the noise in the gym was LOUD!
During the instructions for the workers I used the statistics from the blog on 2nd grade reading levels. Many of the people in the room were teachers and they were shocked. The parents in the room were even more shocked. Yes literacy is important in life and hopefully it was helped along by Prairie Readers and the 243 youth who read a grand total of 361,039 pages.
Thanks again for anyone who was involved.