“Reading is boring.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made September National Literacy Month in 1966, but a national survey conducted in 2024 found that 48.5% of respondents hadn’t read a book in over a year. For readers across all ages, the answer as to why can be as simple as that: it’s just boring. As other forms of entertainment become more readily available, reading becomes less of a priority to find time for, especially in the midst of busy schedules. If it’s not as fun as something else they can be doing, why would they do it?
Reading a novel for fun isn’t for everyone, and that’s a personal choice to make. Nevertheless, it does have its benefits including stress relief, acting as a sleep aid, and slowing mental decline. Though, it doesn’t have to mean sitting down and finishing a book. Not only are there many genres such as comics or manga that can make reading less intimidating, but words are everywhere: in billboards, in close captions, or even on stop signs.
On the other hand, literacy isn’t always a choice. Often, it’s the result of environmental or situational factors such as having illiterate parents, an incomplete (high school) education, a learning disability, and more. Literacy rates have a correlation to employment, income, and health which, according to the American Psychological Association, tends to lead to lower literacy rates, sending into motion a cycle of lower socioeconomic status and low literacy rates.
Once this cycle begins, it’s easy to think there’ll be no end. There are solutions that are being implemented today, though. One of the biggest solutions include reading intervention programs. There are a variety of programs that can be used with varying results, strategies, and costs of implementation. Although some argue that one of the biggest threats to literacy is the abundance of technology and a general preference for it over reading, technology is a tool that can be used in these programs as well, to make the learning experience fun and less of a chore.
Some non-profit organizations focus specifically on improving literacy rates (such as the Barbara Bush Foundation) and combat the issue of cost. Similarly, in Texas, Literacy Texas provides the funds and training to improve literacy rates, hosting their next virtual panel discussion on Zoom on Thursday from 10–11 a.m.
In 2024, 21% of adults in the United States are considered to have low literacy with Texas only slightly lower at 19%. Behind these statistics are millions of individual stories and motivations behind why reading isn’t a part of daily life but with reading intervention programs, these statistics can be challenged and people are at least given the opportunity to actively make a decision on whether or not to read.
