“I did not!”
“Yes, you did. You totally stole it from school.”
She pulled out my copy of The Once and Future King, and showed me the inside of the front cover. It was stamped: Board of Education, City of New York.
Okay, so I stole it. But I had a good reason. I loved that book so much; I couldn’t bear to return it to the school library.
My grade-school memories are full of books: bulletin boards that tracked the class read-a-thons, hand-written book reports, summer-reading lists. But a student growing up, as I did, in New York City’s District 20, will have a very different experience today. The city has adopted a new literacy regimen under which many public elementary schools are, in effect, giving up the teaching of books—storybooks, narrative nonfiction books, children’s chapter books—altogether. The curriculum is part of an initiative from the Eric Adams administration called, ironically, NYC Reads.
Plummeting reading comprehension is a national problem, but it’s particularly acute in New York City. Half of its third to eighth graders—and 60 […]
Literacy is key to success in many areas of life. With a video based culture and ubiquitous internet access we have inadvertently trained a generation of students to expect instant answers while promoting the shortening of attention span. These factors in popular culture work against reading and literacy. The dirty little secret is that thinking and comprehension are difficult. They sometimes require significant time and effort. Sometimes the process of thinking physically hurts, as we “try to wrap our minds around” whatever we are focusing upon. Those families which promote literacy at home, and reinforce it continually will have an advantage over those who fail in this effort. I predict this will be true regardless of demographic. As a species we have been teaching reading over thousands of years. We know what works, and what works may not be popular despite effectiveness.
Has anyone stopped to fine a correlation between America’s declining education system and the great number of states than have become red states? Well, there is a correlation and that’s because the GOP just hates to fund public entities like schools, health care, the VA, etc. Years ago, state legislatures funded universities at 80% and tuition was really low, so more people could afford to go. Now that figure is down to a mere 10% going to higher education and not only have student populations declined in higher ed, but those who do go have overwhelming debt! They don’t qualify to buy a home once they graduate and probably even buy a car. One would think that Republicans, who love people to be working and paying taxes, etc. would alter their thinking to support funding education. Look at the states with the lowest scores in reading and math—–they are Red States!
Stephan, my wife has been a Speech Language Pathologist for over 30 years. She has also taught the Wilson reading techniques to dyslexic adults and is highly educated in her field. If you want to know why so many adults in America are not proficient readers then please check out the podcast “Sold a Story” for a more thorough and accurate analysis.