A Lethal Absence of Hope

The inability to read almost ensures a child’s failure in school and in life.  School failure, feelings of failure, worthlessness and self-hate lead to giving up and the terrible choices left to children that have no hope.

• 66% of students who cannot read proficiently by fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare
• Students who don’t read proficiently by the 3^rd grade are four time more likely to drop out of school
• 32 million Americans can’t read above a 5^th grade level – 50% of adults are unable to read at an 8^th grade level
• 85% of youth in the Juvenile Justice system are functionally illiterate
• 80% of Louisiana 4^th graders do not read at a 4^th grade level
• 70% of America’s prison inmates can’t read beyond a 4^th grade level
• 43% of adults a level 1 literacy skills live in poverty compared to only 4% at level 5
• 90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts
• One child in four grows up not knowing how to read.

Illiteracy is passed on by parents who cannot read or write.

There is no upside to the child, the community or the nation to stop educating children because of the families they come from.

Without help, children become  or the manufacture children that cannot read.

The cost of reading and school failure has filled prisons and grown 9 year prison recidivism to 90%.

Citizens without the skills to function in our community have a lethal absence of hope that comes early in life. We have made it far to easy for them not to fit it.

Dysfunctional homes, school systems based on punishment and expulsion and a justice system that captures younger and younger citizens for a lifetime of crime and punishment.

America expels more youth from daycare and elementary schools than any other advanced nation.

COVID is making the education of at-risk American youth harder.

Economically, socially, and ethically, it is critical that children learn to read.

It is not an impossible task to teach children how to read.

Replacing expulsion & punishment models with programs that work for at risk youth would be a good start.

“What we do to our children, they will do to Society”

(attributed to) Pliny the Elder Roman author and philosopher 2000  years ago

 

This information largely collected by Literacy Inc.