Literacy standards and reading as a whole is the next epidemic.
Earlier this year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that roughly half of Utah’s third-graders are not reading at grade level standards. Reading isn’t just an issue impacting the youth, though. According to a survey provided by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), “Roughly one in four men read a novel or short story in 2022.”
The first few years of our childhood education is almost entirely dedicated to two basic things. Learning to read and learning basic mathematics. At around fourth grade there is a change in our education from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” yet 40% of fourth graders have below basic reading skills, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
This culminates into a personal anecdote where I saw Gov. Spencer Cox reposting on X about a debate over whether J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a children’s book or not. Tolkien himself said he wrote it as a bedtime story for his child, but the point remains that there are adults who have difficulty reading a book that I enjoyed as a ten-year-old.
As a country, we are reading poorly, with less comprehension, and fewer books overall. With less reading there will be less learning. We are in the beginning of a crisis, and we should do all we can to prevent the falling literacy rates in America from growing.
Go read a book!
Bryce Wilson, Taylorsville