Op-ed: “Read Across America Every Day"

March 2, 2009, By Bart Gordon

March 2nd marks Read Across America Day – a day dedicated to encouraging children to read.  More than 45 million students, teachers, and parents participate in this event each year, making it the nation's largest reading event.

The purpose of this event, however, should not be confined to one day – we should read to our children and encourage them to read as often as possible.  Reading is a key that can open so many doors.

A 2007 report by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), titled “To Read or Not To Read,” pulled together 14 national studies on the nation's reading trends and the effects of reading.  The results were surprising.

Over the past ten years, we have been reading less and less as a nation.  The percentage of 17-year-olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled over a 20-year period.  Employers now rank reading and writing as top deficiencies among new hires.

In the report’s preface, the Chairman of NEA, Dana Gioia, explained, “With lower levels of reading and writing ability, people do less well in the job market.  Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and few opportunities of achievement.”

When I read this, it made me think of the current state of our economy.  Now more than ever before, as we witness so many Tennesseans and people across America struggle to find a good job, we should be placing special emphasis on reading with our own children, especially since it so closely relates to obtaining success and living a healthy life.

The NEA report substantiates these relationships: “Regular reading not only boosts the likelihood of an individual's academic and economic success...but it also seems to awaken a person’s social and civic sense.  Reading correlates with almost every measurement of positive personal and social behavior surveyed.  It is reassuring, though hardly amazing, that readers attend more concerts and theater than non-readers, but it is surprising that they exercise more and play more sports – no matter what their education level.”

The bottom line seems clear: we have got to get our children reading at a young age and continue to encourage them to read as they get older.  The saying that advises us to “turn off your TV and read” seems like good advice to live by and pass down to our children.

U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon of Murfreesboro represents Tennessee's Sixth District in the House of Representatives. where he is the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee.