Teaching Literacy to Our Youth: Taking Responsibility


Abigail Soriano
Novice Teacher, English

It‰s no secret that many of our students graduate from high school without being able to read beyond junior-high proficiency. Television commercials around election time never fail to cite grim statistics of our schools. Before their sixty seconds are up, they are sure to present some panacea to the literacy issue. Usually it‰s electing some politician into office or the advocating of ‹holding our schools responsibleŠ by instituting some fill-in-the-bubble, multiple-choice test. The public has been barraged with newspaper articles, TV commercials, and radio ads of the low test scores of American students. What is an average citizen to deduct from this? What the media says, most likely.

The media and politicians continually blame the schools for students‰ poor performance. Non-educators vilify teachers and portray them as incompetent and unfit. Lawmakers constantly try to invent new ways to ‹fix our schoolsŠ such as stripping teachers of their curricula and supplanting them with scripts, such as the Open Court program, and by mandating that teachers prepare students for the mounting pile of standardized tests. By robbing teachers of their freedom to teach their students a creative and wide-scope curriculum, politicians feel that America can ‹take back its schools.Š However, what they fail to realize is that these new policies are in fact detrimental to our students‰ progress. How so? Politicians (who have most likely never spent any real significant time in the classrooms) devalue the training and experience of teachers by passing laws that do not make sense in real life. For example, California recently instituted the high school exit exam that affects this year‰s freshman class. Now teachers have another test that they have to prepare their students for, which most likely means that something from their lesson plans has to go. Teaching students to read a short passage for the comprehension section would, for example, replace the discussion of a novel or a unit on poetry. Surely by the time these students reach twelfth grade they will know how to dissect a tricky reading excerpt and choose the best answer, but how do filling-in-the-bubble skills help them in real life? How do standardized tests equate with literacy?

Enter the notion of true responsibility. Face it. English teachers cannot be the sole literacy educators in students‰ lives. Most likely, these teachers only see their students for an hour a day. Sure, they could teach academic reading skills, but they are also held responsible for teaching students writing, grammar, public speaking, play acting, and so on. The task is too overwhelming for a single individual. The bottom line is English teachers cannot be the only ones to teach literacy.

Literacy is everyone‰s responsibility. Every teacher (including math and science) should teach practical reading strategies. After all, one usually does not read a novel as deliberately as one would an information-dense science textbook. Also, parents need to make the home a literacy-friendly place complete with varied reading materials of interest to youth, such as dictionaries and age-appropriate books. Even politicians can help. Instead of clamoring for more tests, why not use those funds to implement reading programs in youth centers? As soon as positive actions begin to take place instead of the blame solely being placed on teachers, students will begin to benefit.

In conclusion, although politicians offer easy answers to the literacy issue, the problem is significantly more complex. A long-lasting and effective solution requires an investment of time and help for our children, not a quick remedy of more testing. After all, aren‰t our children worth it?