American Literacy

America has a literacy crisis, I’m sure you’ve heard it said before. But is there really a crisis? Have the levels of American literacy really fallen in recent years? To be certain the literacy levels in this country are lower than desired. However, these levels have stayed fairly consistent for the past twenty-five years. (Canter and Associates, 2004.) In reality the real problem is with the gap between the standards of today and the old standards which are less demanding of today’s achievement levels. Although students still aren’t as proficient as they should be, the standards of today set absolute benchmarks for each grade-level which students must meet. Needless to say, students are not meeting these requirements. The problem with meeting the standards isn’t that they aren’t good or that they’re unattainable, merely that students aren’t learning in a way that promotes the higher level thinking skills that these standards demand.

According to the 2004 Canter and Associates teaching manual, reading can best be defined as “the ability to think with text to construct meaning.” Thus, the problem with students today is that they aren’t actually gaining understanding from the text they read. Students need to be able to analyze and apply what they read to various situations and tasks. It is only through these circumstances that the standards can actually be achieved and thus meet their ultimate goal.

So how can teachers and parents promote these types of abilities in their students? One great way is to create an environment of cooperative learning. Only by enhancing the knowledge obtained can students break free of the “crisis” labeled on them. Students should be given ample opportunities to read and write, as well as having access to appropriate text and tasks given by teachers, parents, and care-givers. These role-models should set appropriate examples by creating an environment where reading is looked upon as a fun and interesting past-time. Students should have an interest in reading, a desire to read for entertainment instead of just to achieve the purposes of school.

Activities such as reading aloud, guided reading, and self-selected reading encourages vocabulary development, reading proficiency, and provides a great opportunity for higher level thinking to occur. Such higher level thinking can be stimulated through questions about the text or discussions of the material. Younger students can answer simple questions to help them draw meaning from the text. For example: “What do you think will happen next?” “How do you think that made him/her feel?” These also help the reader to identify with the text. Older students can do similar things by drawing parallels to other books they’ve read, or life experiences they’ve had. Another way to analyze the text is to have students trace the plot line or themes throughout the story.

Some of the aforementioned activities you might remember doing in school yourself, and some may be new ideas. However, it is only through these sorts of methods and others like them that students will be able to develop the skills needed to meet today’s standards. Through this students will be able to “cure” the current “crisis” in the levels of American literacy.