Cedar Park, TX

Ever wonder how to build a prison?  I don’t know the details behind the brick and mortar process but it’s pretty easy to predict where one will be needed.  Like many states do, look at the literacy rate per capita geographically.  The population reading at or below a third grade level is a very reliable predictor of where crime will flourish.  This is tied to the dismal illiteracy rate in the prison population – a whopping 70%!
Illiteracy also creates a “prison of the mind.”  Lets imagine that you find yourself enrolled in an advanced graduate course on quantum mechanics.  Problem is, you’ve never had a single course in this subject matter prior!  You’d find yourself on the first day dealing with terms and ideas such as “black body radiation” that have no meaning to you.  Unfortunately this is what some of our young elementary students experience their first day in class.  They have had no exposure to the most basic concepts of reading.  Without aggressive intervention, they will never catch up.

How does this happen?  One reason is the lack of books in the child’s home during preschool years.  The average middle income family will have 13 child appropriate books per child.  A lower income family has none – there will be 1 book per 300 children in these communities!

Besides the cost of crime, illiteracy has other social implications.  How about this sad statistic?  Illiteracy will cost the country $225 billion per year when you consider job training, health and other problems it creates.  This equates to a third the cost of the current financial bailout!

For the next several weeks, I’ll be exploring in more depth the impact illiteracy has to our community.  I’ll also have some suggestions and ideas on what we can do to address it.  As Joseph Addison once said, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”  I hope that together we’ll get more of our children “fit” for reading!

Butch Aggen is owner of The Goddard School of Cedar Park and volunteers for Leander Educational Excellence Foundation’s efforts to promote early childhood literacy.   Questions or comments are welcome.