Successful Futures are Assured Through Literacy

By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president

Conversations around life and good books, along with the impact of those conversations on children’s developing literacies, includes all modes of engagement in clear and fulfilling communication. One of the benefits of coming-of-age in families and schools with rich cultures of literacy is to become lifelong readers and learners. Children who grow up in families (and schools) where there is a culture of literacy excellence predictably do well in school and later in careers and life.

Websites like the What Works Clearinghouse and the World’s Largest Lesson feature strategies to help children become fully and confidently literate. Given how stagnant reading test scores are in schools that adopt various “strategies that work,” one must return to readers’ life experiences as more effective ways to propagate literacy.

Lifelong literacy should be the ultimate academic goal of education rather than currently popular “career or college readiness.” Though many schools and school systems claim that their curricula are designed to ensure success either in higher education or in a career or job, positive outcomes occur beyond school or a family’s reach long after the current chicks are out of their nests.

If parents (and educators) want children to be successful in whatever they do after leaving home and formal education, they’ll need to accept their complete ignorance about what today’s graduates might end up doing in 10 or 20 years. A significant portion of today's careers won’t be needed in the future and many jobs will open that meet new and surprising challenges.

Creating a literacy-rich culture should be a natural priority goal for schools because full literacy will equip young adults in sagging industries to seek, discover and access the necessary resources to refresh themselves and their chosen careers. The value of inquiry, and information gathering and processing within a dynamic context is undeniably valuable for all students.

Today, we find ourselves amid growing market shifts, likely leaving many students who are supposedly “prepared for success” feeling left behind in just a few years. Those who will be able to adequately respond to job market upheavals must be poised individually to respond to shifts in their immediate environments. Youngsters who can leverage their literacies for exploring new employment or business possibilities to make themselves increasingly more valuable will require that schools and families adjust their focus from their kids doing well in school to an education for relearning throughout life.