The ability to read and write is something that many find necessary, whether it be through schoolwork, sending emails to a boss, or simply reading a book, but what would happen if we begin to lose that ability, and why is it happening now?
Literacy rates are decreasing around the world, and the country that is falling victim to this the most is the United States. According to National University, 54% of American adults read below a sixth grade reading level.
According to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress, the average reading scores among high school seniors are the worst that they’ve been since 1992, and there are several beliefs for why this could be happening.
Many of these theories tie back to COVID, and how remote learning affected the ability to learn to read and write proficiently. However, the entire picture is much larger, as literacy rates had been decreasing before the pandemic.
In 1990, the government began to raise its funding for American public schools, which led to a steady rise in the math and reading skills of fourth through eight graders. At the climax of this rise, in 2013, the average fourth grader had the reading level of the average sixth grader in 1990, but they began to decrease in 2016 for many reasons.
One of the leading causes of a decline in literacy is devices. The National Library of Medicine researched the effects of screen exposure on literacy, and realized that the lowering attention span and increase in dopamine makes reading something that many simply just don’t care to do.
Another issue is the lack of government funding to education. According to the national education association, due to Donald Trump cutting the funding of the education system last year there is just not enough money being given to the public school systems, and it is making it much harder for children to learn.
Miriam Emery, chair of the English department, said, “It’s disheartening to know that literacy rates are going down. You know, we don’t have as many materials as we used to, and also just people’s understanding of what they read isn’t as good.”
Emery also spoke about the changes that the American school system might need to make. “I think something that’s going to change is the way information is communicated to people. So if people can’t read as well, but they’re watching videos, they can still potentially learn a lot,” Emery said.
There is a wage gap between jobs that require high literacy rates and jobs that don’t, and it is expected that the jobs that need literate people will start to have a higher pay, whereas jobs that don’t require literacy will earn less money, regardless of how much work is actually being done.
Reading and writing both have importance in almost all scholars’ everyday life, and whether they will continue to fade away or not is something that can only be figured out in the future. Until then, it’s just a matter of waiting.
