In June Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, made a startling statement about the condition of the nation's public schools. He criticized the system, describing it as one that permits, "...lying to children and their parents, because states have dumbed down their standards."  (Link:http://www.newsweek.com/id/189237)  

    Perhaps it is this “dumbing down“ effect that explains why, in a 2007 survey of 97,000 college freshmen, over half of the students polled said they did not get a great deal of satisfaction from reading. Nearly 40% admitted that books had never gotten them very excited. And 43% said books had not broadened their horizons and stimulated their imaginations. (Link: http://dumbestgeneration.com) These statistics say a lot about the quality of literacy education in the nation's elementary and secondary schools, public and private.  

 

    Despite the school type and where it places its emphasis, the first and most important measuring stick of any school is literacy. Are its graduates literate? Literacy is commonly thought of simply as the ability to read and write. This is a limited definition.  
 

  For most of its long history in the English language, “literate” has meant "familiar with literature," or more generally, "well-educated, learned." Only since the late 19th century has it also come to refer to the basic ability to read and write. It is the full and classic definition, of being well-educated and cultured, especially with respect to literature or writing, that should be used when discussing the quality of student literacy and education.  
 

  And when we speak of literature, we are speaking of two things really: First, it is all writings that have permanent value, excellence of form, great emotional effect, etc. Second, literature is the writings of a particular culture regarded as having lasting value because of their beauty, imagination and impact. 

   Literate people have the keys to a broad and penetrating understanding of concepts and cultures. Students in the course of their educations should make liberal use of dictionaries and other reference books to achieve a complete grasp of what they study. Combine this focus on comprehension with a high-volume and rich literature program, and you will see a student’s confidence in and love of reading emerge.  

   And it is through this love of reading and exposure to the many magnificent aspects of our culture through literature, past and present, that these same students can advance their culture to greater heights. This is, after all, what an education should do. For, as author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard put it, in 1980, “It is well worth mining in dictionaries and classics for their exact and sometimes numerous definitions. Words are not just a dry academic subject. They carry the tide of progressing civilization. They are for use in your livingness. They capsule the knowledge and content of the world.” – Ron the Humanitarian: Education  
  

  In addition to the quality of the material read in a literature curriculum, there is the factor of volume. True literacy is achieved through high-volume reading. The payoff is the more a student reads, the more the student can read. It’s a simple equation. High-volume readers develop bigger vocabularies faster which means they struggle less with more difficult texts. They recognize better the different pacing and styles of written materials. They acquire a better sense of plot and character, an eye for the structure of arguments, a sense of aesthetic style in the written word and they discover moral convictions missing from their real life situations. 
  

   All of this adds up to faster academic progress all around. It’s like exercising. Go to the gym three times a week and the sessions are invigorating. Go to the gym three times a month and they’re painful. The more the student reads, the more the student can read. 

 

  This is where many schools of today fall down in their literacy programs. The quality of material is shallow and the quantity of books read skimpy. This is a recipe for disaster in an educational program. Such a system churns out students who are both illiterate and aliterate. A student who is aliterate is one who is able to read but has no interest in doing so. It is the illiterate and aliterate that push society towards lower standards both in and out of school. As Mark Twain once famously said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.”  
  

   Discovery and enlightenment through literature is one of the greatest pleasures of life. Make sure your child is on the path to true literacy in the fullest sense of the word. 

Colin Taufer

Headmaster