June 05th, 2012

There is Hope!
by William K Elliott

Yesterday I met a woman named Emily. I met her in a local bookstore, and my guess is that there are two things about Emily most will not be able to guess: her age, and what she was doing there.

You see, Emily is 17. Even more impressive is that she was there to (you’ll never believe this) buy books. No, really—it’s true—I swear.

Not only was she buying books, but she was buying books other than the big “teen” hits.

Frankly, I was flabbergasted.

It’s not that I don’t know of other people under the age of 80 who also read, it’s just that I rarely run into new people who fall into this category.

There’s Kandyn from down the street of course, but I know her mom—reading is big in her house. She’s also in the home-school Co-op where I teach, and where there are a number of other teens who read. Violet and Priscilla immediately come to mind, but I am sure there are others. Violet is even writing her own book. But most of the kids?

I assigned a book report for the U.S. History class I was teaching. The kids’ response? “Mr. Bill, we don’t like to read.”

The problem is, reading is at the very core of learning.

When you can read (and I don’t mean just managing to sound out all of the words on a page, I mean reading and understanding what was written), you can conceptualize. You can turn words into thoughts and pictures, and thoughts and pictures into words. It’s a skill that is vitally important, and yet it seems that a majority of people “don’t like to read.” As one researcher put it, they’re “alitterate” not illiterate. They can read, but they choose not to, and in doing so they become poor readers.

Worse, they become poor thinkers. If you cannot conceptualize, you cannot conceive of consequences unless someone else spells them out for you. If you cannot conceptualize you’re at the mercy of those who can. You’re a sheep—a cypher—totally dependent on others for the what, how, and why of daily existence.

And who really wants to be a sheep?

So kudos to Emily, Kandyn, and Priscilla. They’re the leaders of our future. I just hope they like shepherding.