So there’s your formula: Select really excellent, high-quality curricula and aggressively teach teachers how to use those curricula instead of putting them through generic “skills” training that won’t impact their classroom practices much. Measure how well students, schools, and districts are doing and hold back kids who aren’t reading at the end of third grade. –Kelsey Piper
That’s Kelsey Piper on The Argument, in her essay, “Illiteracy is a policy choice.” Here, her argument is that the reading scores of American schoolchildren are slipping into the abyss, except for… Mississippi?
Consider this the latest chapter of the “Mississippi Miracle,” which has seen the state climb from 49th in the country on fourth grade reading to ninth nationally. This rise has received a great deal of coverage in publications ranging from The New York Times to The New York Post. And yet, it still feels as if what’s taking place in the Deep South still has been grossly undersold.
First, it’s not just Mississippi — Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements.
Second, many people who aren’t too focused on education policy seem to imagine Mississippi has simply stopped underperforming, that they’re now doing about as well as everyone else.
This is not true. They haven’t just caught up to your state; they are now wildly outperforming it. –Kelsey Piper
I launch all of my books at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. They are by far and away the most professional bookstore I’ve ever had the privilege of signing at and due to the extraordinary efforts over time of their owner and proprietor, Barbara Peters, and her monthly BookNews they have a mailing list of customers from around the world. I remember standing in the minuscule little mailing room in the back of their first store, watching as a fax machine printed out orders one after the other, the first from Germany, the second from Brazil, the third from Japan. If I have a fan in Timbuktu who wants the new book, the PP can get it to them.
But here’s the thing. When the audience gathers at the PP, I look around and see almost uniformly gray hairs. The [very] few younger people present are there almost invariably to buy books for their parents or grandparents.
I’m grateful as hell anytime anyone shows up at all, and that fans buy my books in a volume large enough for me to pay my grocery bill. But I’m worried that my audience (and the audience of my fellow writers and for writers to come) is aging out and is not being replaced by new generations of readers.
I’m familiar with all the excuses, which usually involve too much time spent exclusively on one screen or another. But I think there’s another reason.
Piper is right. My generation was the last one that was taught how to read.
This does not augur well for the future of my profession. Fortunately, Mississippi (and Tennessee and Louisiana) are showing us how to get back to the basics. Go here to read about it, and maybe advocate for the program with your state legislators. You’ll be right behind me.
But for the government to take on its rightful role is clearly going to require pressure from its constituents. So that’s my advice to every reader who isn’t a policymaker — move to Mississippi for better education, or else demand that your state copy Mississippi’s homework. –Kelsey Piper
#thiswritinglife Chatter Illiteracy is a policy choice Mississippi Miracle Poisoned Pen Bookstore reading
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One of the reasons I’m considering a move to a Southern state. My grandchildren are prolific readers, I’m proud to say. We taught them early on about reading, taking adventures and journeys through books, and using their imaginations. They also greatly admire the two Stabenow shelves in my bookcase.
I am course deeeeeeelighted to hear that about the 2 Stabenow shelves. (grin)
I know you’ve heard me say this but for anyone else: Literally my first memory is of my mother’s forefinger running beneath the words “Once upon a time in a faraway land lived a beautiful princess named Snow White. She had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.” I was reading long before I got to kindergarten. In primary school there was always some part of a class period dedicated to reading, either silently to ourselves or listening to the teacher read. Once I became a writer and was invited to do talks and workshops in schools I was horrified to see how much the reading culture in classrooms had deteriorated. If you don’t teach the kids to read, they will never develop the ability to think critically.
On our first family trip to Italy in 2016 seven 7️⃣ of us were packed into a van driving from Siena to Venice. My grandson, Lucas, had the back seat all to himself. Stretched out, nose in book, he finished four books on that trip. We kept telling him to look out the window as we passed fields of Sunflowers or other memorable sights.
I grew up as the only child of voracious readers in the 1950’s. My presents were books! After supper was reading time. I would be settled in-between them on the couch, and they would read me to sleep. At four, I would read a page with help. Poetry, classics, (Mr. Shakespeare was a favorite, as was Mr. Hiawatha’s story). I was given more leeway as I grew. Mrs. Pope, the Children’s Librarian, soon handed me over to Miss Lucy, who was the Main Librarian. She guided my parents and me. She was my best friend. My husband and I retired to our hometown and live caddy-corner to the old building that proclaims “FREE PVBLIC LIBRARY” worked into the limestone. Now a museum, it holds art and memories! The new building is huge and busy, too! I still grab a book and a dog, and walk down to a shady spot in the park by the river to read an old friend. I read aloud to the dog, who seems to enjoy Mr. Hiawatha as well as Ishmael, Kate, and more!