A Higher Level of Literacy

Let’s explore a rhetorical question: What’s the big deal about literacy?

What’s it good for, anyway?

To read the directions of a swing set you are putting together for the kids? To read the sports page? To fill out a job application? To do well in school so you get into a first-rate college and land a really, really, really great job and never, ever have to worry about being down and out in life?

Obviously, the answer is “yes” to each of the first three of these questions. Literacy won’t guarantee the fourth, though. Sorry. Much as parents saving for their children’s educations and worrying about the future as they look out across the world might not want to hear it, we do not somehow live outside the events of history or personal tragedy. Wars are fought. Economies disintegrate. We are diagnosed with life-changing illnesses. Love fades. Being an excellent reader and writer doesn’t mean a happily-ever-after.

But it does mean something for how we live through those times. Thomas Jefferson wrote that a well-informed citizenry is essential for a democracy to work. I’d make the rather easy argument that we can’t have that well-informed public without widespread literacy—a literacy, mind you, that means far more than the ability to read swing set directions and fill out job applications. How we react as a body politic to those large historical traumas and how we navigate personal crisis is indeed influenced by what we read and how our thoughts evolve as we write.

But this means reading widely, stretching ourselves. And it means writing to reflect and/or to communicate information and ideas in a non-dumbed-down environment. Reading and writing at a higher and higher level is a means to life-long learning. Not only will reading biographies give the reader a greater sense of history, but a decent diet of novels or poetry (some maybe even “classics”) might ignite glimmers of personal insights. And a popular book on science, aside from casting new light on the physical environment, might help the reader see through a half truth in political debate.

What do we need as we weather personal tragedy and the ups and downs of history? Plenty, but let’s start with perspective. Living life fully, reading widely, reflecting and communicating in writing—each of these will help develop that perspective. For that we need a high level of literacy.

We can reclaim much that has been lost in this country.

Create for yourself and for your children a language-rich environment. Let the kids see you reading. Wander in book stores with them. Build a new bookshelf and line the books up like trophies. Put the computer out where everybody in the house can see it and write a blog, a letter to the editor, a story, a journal, a poem—whatever! Read to your kids. Talk to your kids about what you are reading and writing.

What’s a high level of literacy good for?

It can help us understand more of our world and steady us in hard times. It can make life richer for ourselves and for our children.