DUMB STUDENTS, STUPID PARENTS, AMERICA'S DECLINING LITERACY RATE
- Michael Thervil
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Written by Michael Thervil
[America's declining literacy rate] When it comes to the declining literacy rate amongst students, teachers from coast to coast in America have been sounding the alarm bells for decades. According to statistics, a whopping 40% of American students can’t read. Making matters worse, of that 40% of students that can't read on their grade level, 70% of those students that come from low-income families are failing to meet grade level expectations when it comes to being able to read. Another alarming statistic, 54% of American adults are also unable to read at a sixth-grade level and out of that 54%, 28% of American adults have been labeled as functionally illiterate. This is a complex problem with many contributing variables that play a role in why illiteracy rates in America have sky-rocketed over the decades.
While many Educators and parents have placed the blame on poor reading instruction, distracting technology, a significant uptick in school closures, and a lack of federal, state, and local economic funding; there are only two culprits that serve as the root cause as to why the literacy crisis in America has reached such endemic proportions. The first culprit is that schools across America have lost the ability to fail and hold students back from advancing to the next grade. In other words, schools across America have been engaging in what is known as “social passing” in which they prioritize the “feelings” of students and parents over academic performance.
The phenomenon of social passing amongst students has fueled the notion that students can advance to the next grade despite being able to academically meet the educational standards set upon them by the state in which they reside. Because of this, this has produced and augmented the unrealistic “expectation” of students being able to do either the bare minimum or in many cases nothing at all academically and still be on time socially for graduation. The adverse effects of this are further compounded by parents who “expect” their children to advance to the next grade level and ultimately graduate because many of them feel as if it’s the teacher’s job to ensure that their child knows how to read. The truth is it takes both parents and teachers working together to ensure that students learn how to both read and comprehend what they're reading to standard.
The second culprit is not classroom management, but lack of schools and teachers to effectively and swiftly deal with students with behavioral problems in the classroom. This is also compounded when parents of students that fall into this category fail to uphold educational and social values as well as enforce consequences for their children's misbehavior not only in the classroom setting, but in the streets. For decades teachers have been not only voicing concerns over the verbal and even physical violence from both the students and their parents which often go either uncorrected and/or unpunished.
School Administrators have shied away from disciplining students who get out of line citing fears of being held accountable for legal allegations of child abuse and violence towards students. Teachers have also been prohibited from separating students with behavior issues from those that don’t under the guise of fair and equal treatment. When students are allowed to disrupt the learning process due to unchecked behavior it fosters an environment where teachers spend more time attempting to gain control over their classrooms than teaching and instructing students.
The process of learning how to read and comprehend what one is reading requires time, repetition, and discipline. In a country where the population is short on all three variables, it is of no question that literacy rates have declined to such low levels. With this trend expecting to continue for the foreseeable distant future, the reading crisis in America is only guaranteed to become worse over time. If the high number of students and adults who can’t read continues down it’s current trajectory, the next question that could possibly be asked is, “will the manual task of being able to read be relevant for the students of the future?”. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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