By Neila Urquhart
60% of students in the United States are considered to be below grade level in reading.
This is a statistic that was released by the Nation’s Report Card to show the difference between student reports each school year.
Over the past decade literacy proficiency rates have plummeted across the nations. Many people speculate what the cause for this issue is, but there might not just be one answer.
As this issue presents itself, it becomes clear how severe it is and why it is important that a solution is found. Before finding a solution we must first look into what issues are being presented and why.
What does this look like within schools?
Kayhi English teacher, Sarah Campbell said that she noticed a difference in proficiency in her classroom over the past years. Out of all of her students, a significant number are not at a proficient level compared to the beginning of her career.
“Quite a few, probably 25% of the students I work with are who I would consider far below grade level.”
Campbell said many students display their literacy struggles by not participating in class or by staring at their book instead of reading during independent work time.
Former sociology professor, Bill Urquhart said that he has noticed that within the past couple years college students have not been able to keep up at the same pace as previous generations.
“Over the course of about the following five years I started to see the next generation of students start to come through and maintaining that level of workload for the writing became very challenging for them.”
The National Center for Education Statistics showed that within the past decade test scores among 13 year old students has dropped dramatically.
Urquhart said he used to assign students one paper a week, but as the newer generations entered his classroom they were unable to achieve the same quality work at such a pace.
Some students were entering Urquhart’s class with less knowledge about topics that he viewed as general information that most people should know before entering secondary education.
“Students seemed to come to me with less general knowledge about things like history, anthropology, the economy, and world events even.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a study that showed 70% of Americans fail a basic civil liberties quiz.
Kayhi English teacher, Gabe Asper said that in his classroom most students don’t seem to be completely fluent in their language.
“We do such a robust vocabulary curriculum in Kayhi freshman year and a lot of kids don’t do well on the quizzes and tests and what that really means is that they don’t even show fluency in their own language.”
The students that aren’t proficient seemed to score poorly in class because they didn’t have a thorough understanding of the work.
Asper stated that another struggle he saw for his students was coming up with original ideas.
“What kids are really struggling with nowadays is yes they can probably read and they can listen to a teacher teach but they’re struggling with having their own original ideas about something.”
Asper said that he has seen more and more students struggling with creative thinking when doing projects that require their own work.
What has caused this drop in literacy rates?
While most college students in previous years were fresh out of high school, Urquhart stated that a large number of current college students are returning to their education as grown adults.
The White House released a study that showed approximately 30% of students attending college are at least 25 years old.
Urquhart said he believes that his students being less literate is due to the different kinds of students he had been teaching.
“What I think accounts for part of the drop of writing ability and literacy in general content knowledge has to do with the demographic changes.”
Asper stated that when he was a kid he spent most of his time playing outside, but younger generations are spending more time indoors.
“Overall kids are just not playing outside anymore like they used to.”
Asper said he believes that children are not playing outside as much due to the rise in popularity of electronics. According to Asper, interacting with other children is crucial for development and that is something many kids are missing out on.
“What technology has taken the place of is outside time and play, and kids playing with each other at a young age is pretty important for development and language development.”
Even inside the classroom, Asper said he has seen many students distracted by the usage of technology, specifically artificial intelligence.
Asper stated that a lot of students put so much effort into making their artificial assignments more human, they had the ability to write the assignments themselves with the same effort.
“Some students spend so much time perfecting their AI weird essay that if they would have just sat down and started writing something in that time they used, then they would have probably gotten a better score.”
Campbell stated that she has seen many students in her classroom struggle from different issues, but one thing that many students may have missed out on is exposure to reading materials from an early age.
Campbell said that current students typically read significantly less than her previous students and that may be an effect from factors at home.
“The students I teach now read significantly less than my students from 25 years ago and I believe that technology has diminished reading for fun.”
What does this mean for our future?
Urquhart stated that children that have a wider vocabulary at a younger age will typically maintain that leverage throughout the rest of their school career, meaning that children with lower vocabularies will also continue to stay behind for the rest of their schooling.
“Children who have a vocabulary that is 20% larger than their peers are often maintaining that 20% advantage all the way through their schooling years.”
Urquhart said that the newer generations are more interested in justice, but being uneducated and trying to make the world just will cause the opposite of the intended goal.
“I think that a risk of rising illiteracy is potentially a less just world.”
Campbell stated that because students are reading less, their creativity and imagination are being stunted.
She believes that reading contributes massively to creativity and without it, there will be less creative minds in the future.
“I think that there is something that happens when you read a book and you have to form those pictures and see in your brain as you read and you are exposed to all those new words and it enriches and expands the way that we tell stories and the way that we think.”
The World Literacy Foundation stated that reading is one of the most effective ways to foster imagination.
With the reduction in popularity of reading, Campbell fears that the world will become more bland.
Similarly to Campbell, Asper believes that the lower literacy could affect students’ creativity, specifically because of technology.
“In a way our discourse is losing its originality and dumbing down. This is probably the thing that concerns me the most about literacy right now.”
How can we stop the literacy rates from dropping?
Asper said that he believes the solution to the drop of literacy rates is for students to take the initiative and try to learn new things in their free time.
“I think when you’re a student it’s gotta be your job to be a lifelong learner and what that means is that your job is never done. You have to kind of find things that interest you and that includes reading.”
Campbell stated that another way she thinks people can raise their literacy is to take the time to practice reading. The more you read, the better you get.
“We are born with the innate ability to process sound, we are not born with the innate ability to read. Reading is a learned skill.”
Campbell stated that reading and speaking to children while they are very young is extremely important if parents want to set their children up for future success.
She believes that the learning that happens when people are babies and toddlers heavily influences their future ability.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that reading to babies, even if they can’t talk yet, is important for brain development.
“The research does show that language acquisition from birth to age five is a critical point and so having verbal language and having access and exposure to books as a young baby is really important.”
Urquhart agreed and stated that starting education before kindergarten is crucial for development.
“I think that supporting early childhood education is one of the best indicators of later literacy progress.”
Urquhart stated that oftentimes there are education resources outside of the school that middle class and upper class people are able to access. Because of transportation and other costs, lower class children don’t have access to those same resources.
Urquhart said he believes the way to bring up the literacy rates is to make education programs more accessible for all groups of people, especially minorities and low income families.
“Programs that promote access to all families to electronic resources and how to access those resources through library services, head start programs, and summer programs are all very advantageous.”