The Threat of Not Reading

The US Department of Labor estimates that American businesses lose about $225 billion a year in lost productivity due to illiteracy. However, the uncounted cost of this growing problem is not only limited to dollars and cents, but to a destruction of our future. High illiteracy rates in children multiply to adulthood, throughout history illiteracy has been used to keep the elite class in power and elitist rulers will continue to grow their power base if we continue to ignore this problem.

High illiteracy rates in children multiply to adulthood. Statistics show that 36 percent of American fourth graders cannot read at a basic level. Those same statistics also show that most of them never catch up. Between 21 and 23 percent of adults have the same problem. How does it multiply? Because illiteracy in adults leads to poverty and poverty, in turn, leads to illiteracy. Therefore, the cycle continues to worsen from one generation to the next.

Throughout history illiteracy has been used to keep the elite class in power. One of the worst offenders was the early Catholic Church who allowed their own leadership to be educated, but not the masses. This trend was not broken until Martin Luther began using the printing press to make copies of the bible in German. Though today's Church is not as extreme as in the past, it still continues to keep most of its believers in the dark. A far worse example it the how Muslim leadership uses the same methods to keep its subjects in line and especially women. The most frightening part of it all is that the trend is growing in social settings outside of religious boundaries.

Elitist rulers will continue to grow their power base if we continue to ignore this problem. As poverty increases, social welfare increases as well. As social welfare programs increase, government power increases. This cycle continues to repeat itself and slowly erodes freedom from the hands of individuals and passes it over to the control of a government institution. Until this cycle is stopped, the United States and democratic nations all over the world are at risk of being subdued under elite leadership.

We have to reverse the trend of history if we are going to conserve our freedom. The cycle of illiteracy and poverty will not go away. The longer we set by and watch this problem increase itself, the larger the threat becomes.

I am truly concerned with this issue and see it as a very real and very devastating threat to freedom. I pride myself on writing smaller books to which I apply the 1/4 inch rule as a means of getting non-readers back to reading. When your child sees you reading, they read as well. Even if it is a 1/4 inch book, it is reading. Let your children catch you reading one of my novellas.

To help your children along and to show them that you are willing to invest in their literary future, consider this excellent reading program by clicking here Teaching Children to Read! And visit my own web site where you can purchase my books Bil Howard, Author. Once again, I hope you don't mind if I make a little money off of the work that I do.