To Read or Not To Read: The Importance of Literacy

This was a persuasive paper I wrote in 7th grade.

      As of September of 2007, forty-two million adult Americans could not read. Fifty million were limited to 4th or 5th grade reading level or could only recognize a few printed words.

      Child labor was a main cause of illiteracy in earlier generations. Many children had to work in mines and sweatshops to help provide fro their families. As a result education and literacy were compromised.

      While child labor is no longer a major issue in the United States, illiteracy is now caused by problems such as social promotion. Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student to the next grade despite their poor grades to keep them with social peers. For example John Corcoran, a retired college educated teacher, was recently interviewed by CNN. He had taught high school English for 17 years even though he could not read or write. He didn't learn to read or write above a 3rd grade level until he was 48 years old. He told CNN that the reason he never learned to read or write was because of social promotion It is hard to say how much social promomtion truly affects illiteracy because few districts admit to using this practice.

      As you can see illiteracy  has been a problem over the years. Today, we as a society are too concerned with mainstreaming our children and not singling them out. Therefore some of our children are suffering because of the lack of independent assistance to insure the nderstanding of core concepts of reading and writing. We must not be afraid to seperate those children that may require a different learning style or that learn at a different pace from others. If we do not do so our children will not learn to their fullest potential and that could hurt them in the long run.

       Literacy is a necessity in today's society. It affects one's career, social interactions, and the ability of communications clearly. Because of illiteracy approximately 90 mission people can't fill out a job application. All jobs require the ability to read and write. The only jobs that don't require the use of reading and writing are farm laborers, and even they have to be able to understand schedules and standard procedures. Illiterate people are missing out on 237 billion dollars total each year in money that they could be earning if they knew how to read. They also have trouble reading and working on computers, which are practically running everything these days. Ok, so why is literacy important? It's used in communication, occupations, and pretty much every other daily task.