One of my favourite memories of childhood with my parents is reading the Harry Potter series for half an hour each night. From having books 1 to 3 read to me in their entirety, to a gradual introduction of my reading skills in the Goblet of Fire and improving until I was able to independently read Deathly Hallows in its entirety, that bonding solidified a love for a good book and an appreciation for great storytelling that my family still maintains to this day.
A parenting staple for decades, reading to children is a must for building confidence and self-esteem, improving the curiosity and memory-skills of children, strengthening familial ties, and finding common ground to initiate early bonds. It’s a long honoured tradition in many families, encouraged by doctors and psychologists, and reinforced through schooling. But it’s fading away quicker than we can comprehend, especially with alternative forms of media being introduced to young minds.
According to a recent survey from publisher Harper Collins UK, only 41 per cent of parents still read to their children under five, down from 64 per cent in 2012. A crux of this issue is that many Gen Z parents have been ditching books for screens. Several young parents spoke to The Guardian about why they’re more inclined to turn on Bluey than pick up The Gruffalo: reasons ranged from it being utterly tedious, with kids often requesting the same book or needing pages reread, to the parents simply not enjoying reading themselves.
In an unfortunate way, this may be an inescapable consequence of Gen Z being the first generation reared through technology and therefore leaning towards it as a crutch in their parenting. Technology is now a bargaining tool, a source of some reprieve from having to entertain a child 24/7, and in many cases a substitute for the need to provide an at-home education to children yourself. Paired with a previously unthinkable cost-of-living crisis and increasing burdens to parenthood, time to read to one’s children can seem nonexistent.
Compounding that, a significant number of parents seem to interpret reading as a purely academic pursuit, and a concerning effect stemming from this is that “only a third of five-to-10-year-olds frequently read for fun, compared to over half in 2012”. Reading for pleasure is intrinsically connected to higher educational attainment later in life, as it aids in developing a richer vocabulary and improving critical thinking skills, an understanding of the world, and a zeal to explore the unknown.
This is all building to an issue that will expand much further than just the young children cohort. After all, these children eventually become high schoolers, college students, and adults running the world. We are suffering from a literacy crisis, and the habits that are instilled in these young children follow them through life. Children who struggle with reading are more likely to drop out of second level education, not seek a third level education, and even be imprisoned later in life. Education and literacy training are even proven factors in reducing recidivism, though prevention always beats remediation.
Additionally, the transitions in how reading has been taught in primary schools could also play a large part in the staggering evidence that we are facing a literacy crisis. Schools between the 1990s and 2000s transitioned from teaching reading through phonics to whole-world, or sight-word iterations. Essentially, this is the difference between learning how to decode a word to sound out unfamiliar vocabulary, to relying on context clues and memorising what entire words look like.
For children who are being taught to read at home before they hit school, they may gain some insight into phonics through the trickle down of their parents’ education, and not struggle once they reach school. For children whose parents act entirely upon trusting the school system, their children may struggle to read and have significantly less interest in reading when significant new or challenging vocabulary is used, not having the tools to decipher it.
Furthermore, students in later years of education are increasingly relying upon generative AI to produce written assignments for them. As anyone who’s ever been interested in pursuing writing knows, good readers build good writers, and that is true all the way from writing for fun to simply turning in a book report. The lack of originality and effort in the literate pursuits of children will be a compounding problem, as every issue builds upon the others.
The literacy crisis will prove in coming years to be a major issue facing educators from Junior Infants to college, and a very simple headstart can be made to ensure young children aren’t set to suffer from it: read to them. Be patient, but be persistent. If they want to read the exact same thing every day, that still aids in their reading skill. But it’ll set them up substantially better to someday be a lifelong reader.
