Here are four facts about literacy. Follow the link below for seven more.
- Twenty-five percent of all American children—that’s one in four—will become adults without learning to read;
- Two-thirds (66.7%) of students who fail to read proficiently by the 4th grade will go to jail or end up on welfare;
- Eighty-five percent (85%) of juveniles who appear in juvenile court are functionally illiterate;
- And seventy percent (70%) of all American prison inmates cannot read above the fourth-grade level.
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-literacy-america
If you find these facts distressing, that’s emotionally healthy. But hold on. Your distress is likely to get worse. The inability to read correlates with poverty, single parent households, youth pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, substance abuse, and even anti-social violence. Causal connections are tricky. It’s easy to jump to conclusions. No one could say that the evidence demonstrates that intensive reading programs would end our social ills. Nonetheless, a single dysfunctional factor that shows up repeatedly in our most pressing social problems cannot be discounted as the result of chance.
In fact, Dr. Dennis Hogenson, in his peer-reviewed research study of aggression in delinquent boys (“Reading Failure and Juvenile Delinquency”), makes a stark connection between illiteracy and anti-social behavior. He does this by contrasting the correlation he recorded between reading problems and aggression with a series of other possible explanatory variables that surprisingly made no difference.
“…the present study was unsuccessful in attempting to correlate aggression with age, family size, or number of parents present in the home, rural versus urban environment, socio-economic status, minority group membership, religious preference, etc. Only reading failure was found to correlate with aggression…” Dennis Hogenson, “Reading Failure and Juvenile Delinquency,” Bulletin of The Orton Society. 24:1974. p. 167.
Consequently, “Reading is Fundamental” is more than just a marketing catch phrase to get children to read. It’s a key factor in developing employability, emotional maturity, socially adapted behavior, and a range of other positive traits—traits that characterize citizens who obey the law and make positive contributions to society.
The ability to read is simply that important—both personally and socially. Though certainly not the single cause of crime, functional illiteracy chains people to a life of chronic frustration and failure. In addition to social ineptness and embarrassment, it completely shuts down avenues of vocational advancement and personal enrichment. This interferes with rational thinking and adaptive behavior. As Hogenson’s study predicts, over time this leads to social aggression and violence. Is it any wonder, therefore, that over two-thirds of the America’s prison population have severe reading difficulty?
This is a failure of the nation’s educational system—one that puts youth on a trajectory to prison—a sort of inmate-in-training track. The child in elementary school cannot decode and understand the written word. This goes unremedied. As the child grows into a youth, frustration in school also grows. Eventually, the young person drops out of school or perhaps even earns a high school diploma without ever learning to read. The non-reading youth enters the adult world of work and financial responsibility and is unable to cope. From failure and frustration, aggression builds. Ultimately, the untreated reading problem festers into a criminal justice problem. Finally, it becomes a felony conviction.
The court verdict punishes the socially unacceptable behavior but rarely recognizes the underlying problem. Instead, the court hands the non-reader a criminal record. This will make life even more frustrating. Decent housing and employment become more difficult. So after release from jail or prison, the stage is set for yet another criminal offense. When this inevitably happens, political leaders wring their hands and wonder publicly, “What can be done about recidivism?”
The answer to which these political movers and shakers will not listen is simply this: “Teach people to read.” It’s never too late to do that. Those who go to prison with reading problems should enter probation with high-school level reading ability. That should be the goal. Equipping inmates with this tool will enable them to compete for jobs more effectively, enter training programs with confidence, and eliminate in their lives a major source of frustration and aggression.
This is not the complete solution to crime and recidivism. But it is a large and rational piece to the puzzle. Barring severe physical or mental disabilities, adults and children can learn to read effectively. And in the past, teachers possessing fewer resources than those of today successfully taught reading skills to others. So teaching people to read is something we already know how to do. It’s not a mystery. It’s a matter of making “reading proficiency” a “teaching priority” and then putting a system in place to get the job done. After all, if a technically modern society cannot equip virtually all of its citizens to read effectively, then what should we conclude about its competence to solve other problems? If it can’t figure out how to teach its citizens to decode and understand the written word, then what confidence should we have it its ability to tackle poverty, unemployment, or terrorism.
The inability to read effectively is a serious national problem. One in four young people become adults without acquiring this skill, even after years of mandatory education. Moreover, the inability to read is linked repeatedly with major social problems, such as poverty and violence. The vast majority of inmates in America’s prisons have reading problems, and research suggests that this deficiency may be the likely cause for criminal behavior—even more likely than poverty or minority status. Equipping people to read, therefore, ought to be a social priority. Communities should make reading programs easily accessible to the general public, and the criminal justice system should make the development of this skill a focus before any inmate’s release. Doing this will enhance the newly released inmate’s chances for a successful re-entry into society. Moreover, easily accessed reading programs in the community may well intercept literacy problems before they become criminal cases.
An America made up of non-readers cannot remain technically advanced. Who could disagree? So improving literacy nationally is an investment in America’s future. It’s the smart thing to do. In like manner, measures to improve literacy among prison inmates and ex-offenders are also investments–investments designed to redeem lost human resources and to put them to productive use. If helping inmates and ex-offenders to become literate reduces recidivism, empowers them to find jobs, and puts them on the tax rolls, then let’s teach them to read. That’s smart, too. Moreover, it’s a positive and humane way to fight crime.
Philosopher and educator, John Dewey, noted in his Ethics that modern culture still maintains classical prejudices against manual labor. Aristocrats in Athens and Rome devoted their ample leisure time to social, political, and military pursuits, leaving the “real” work of enterprise to slaves and women. Though a bit altered today, as Dewey observed, that attitude has survived into the modern day. In both Europe and America, consequently, the “white collar” has routinely enjoyed higher status and economic reward than has the “blue collar.”
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