Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Maggie. And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone, and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having.
[00:00:25] This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school and in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:35] Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 108 of Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're going to start today's episode like we do every week, and that's with the concept of the week. So the concept of the week is when we like to define things that either we would be teaching directly to our students or educating our families and caregivers about.
[00:00:59] So today's concept of the week is literacy.
[00:01:05] Great.
[00:01:06] I think this is something that gets thrown around a lot. And I think it's kind of important that we actually understand what are we talking about if we mean if we're talking about the literacy rate.
[00:01:17] Okay, so the literacy rate is the percentage of people in a given population who can read and write a simple statement with understanding.
[00:01:29] So how do we even begin to measure that? Right.
[00:01:33] It is by age group, usually calculated, at least in the United States for people age 15 and older. That is what's considered the adult literacy rate within the United States.
[00:01:46] Some other national definitions start at age 7, which I find interesting.
[00:01:55] A 7 year old in no way, shape or form is an adult.
[00:02:02] It used to be adults who have finished eighth grade. And I think that's kind of where that age 15 does come from. Okay, that makes sense that like historically speaking, it used to be people who had finished eighth grade and that was a much strong, much smaller percentage of the greater population also.
[00:02:23] So the formula is that we would divide the number of literate people by the total population in that age group and then we're going to multiply that by 100.
[00:02:33] That's how we would figure out that percentage.
[00:02:37] And usually this is gathered from the national census or like a standardized household survey.
[00:02:47] Why does it matter? Why do we need to know what the literacy rate is?
[00:02:52] Social progress. Right. It shows educational development and overall. Right. The human capital.
[00:02:59] What are society does know? It impacts economic growth, higher rates, improve job opportunities, innovation, economic Output. Right. If, if one can get a good job, they could also spend money because they'll have it.
[00:03:18] And then as far as like the global context. So the global art adult literacy rate is around 86 to 88%.
[00:03:30] Although definitions and testing methods vary by country.
[00:03:35] So here again, this is an area where the United States tends to look like we're not doing so hot.
[00:03:43] And I don't think we are. I don't think we're doing so hot. However, in countries like China, they're not measuring every single adult. They're not even close to that. They're only going to show data based on their upper echelon of their population.
[00:04:06] Even in the uk, who diversity wise. And I mean that we can make a decent comparison between ourselves and the uk, even they do not measure across the whole population.
[00:04:22] If you're part of a disability class or you're part of the non, their non public school, they don't actually measure that either.
[00:04:34] So it's one of those where.
[00:04:38] Yes, I think the United States has some issues right now, but it difficult to compare this kind of data country by country because they get to decide how they're measuring that for themselves.
[00:04:53] So episode 108 is children are reading this, which we don't like to think about or hear. I know, but it's true. This episode hurts my heart. It does.
[00:05:09] So primary reasons, right.
[00:05:13] Obviously, screen time, digital distractions and decline in early reading habits at home.
[00:05:20] Absolutely.
[00:05:22] I mean, think about how much less adults are reading. Correct.
[00:05:28] So the increased read time, right. There's smartphones or social media, there's video games and these type of things give you fast high dopamine rewards and compete directly with that sustained focus. You need to read a traditional book.
[00:05:45] More than half of teens spend four hours or more a day on screens.
[00:05:51] That. Okay, first of all, that makes me. Ugh. Because that's a lot of time. But also I think that's low. I think that's low too. Honestly, I think that's low.
[00:06:00] They must not be factoring in the time they spend at school.
[00:06:04] Probably not. Which also makes me sad. But because there are screens. Yes, yes. I mean I will say, and I will absolutely raise my hand here is like, yep, it's me. I'm part of the problem.
[00:06:18] My kids, even though they do not have personal devices and over my dead body are they receiving them anytime soon.
[00:06:26] We do. I mean they watch TV and that's. Yeah, they probably are watching about that much a day, to be honest. Especially lately because it's the end of Summer, Right. Exactly.
[00:06:38] Fewer early reading habits, apparently. Recent data shows that only 41% of young children aged 0 to 4 are read too frequently, which is a sharp drop from 64% in 2020 12.
[00:06:53] Daily reading early in life heavily predicts independent reading later. Oh, my gosh. Think that's a big drop. That's a huge drop.
[00:07:04] That is. I mean, that's 20 percentage points over 64 to 41. That is attractive. Do you think it's because the parents are on screens? I think it is because the parents are unscrewed. I mean, there's multiple studies of.
[00:07:19] I mean, it makes me very, very sad. But yes, they're on screens. And it's not only that we're not reading out loud to our kids, it's also we're not talking to our kids.
[00:07:35] We're not making eye contact with our kids. We're not stopping and playing their little pretend game for two minutes instead of scrolling on your emails. And I mean, I'm not trying to pick on parents here because I am a parent. And heck, yeah, then there are two guys.
[00:07:51] But it is. It's really, really impactful.
[00:07:58] And that is a real.
[00:08:01] That's a real travesty.
[00:08:05] Especially, we know one of the best predictors for later reading success is. Is early oral and listening vocabulary being increased.
[00:08:20] And so if we're not reading to our kids or even talking to our kids, they don't have that exposure to that kind of language and they don't make it up later.
[00:08:40] Another thing, really busy schedules and academic pressure. Right. There's packed school curriculums, there's heavy homework loads, a lot of organized extracurriculars.
[00:08:53] And this leads to children having less unstructured free time. Right. So then how can they enjoy reading? Because they don't have time for it. Right? They don't have time for it. And like, if they're.
[00:09:06] If my choice is sit on TikTok or read a book, I mean, they're not going to. They're not going to choose that as their activity.
[00:09:18] And there used to be in school. Right. Time that it was literally just reading time.
[00:09:28] And while the data suggests that that doesn't necessarily improve read. I mean, there used to be. Right. Like a common acronym was deer, Right. Drop everything and read. Did you ever drop deer time at school?
[00:09:41] Never heard of that. But okay. Literally never heard of that. Oh, yeah, that was huge. Like all the posters from the 90s. Drop everything in reed. It was called deer. And there were other similar programs. It was a kind of a big push and it was supposed to be like. Or do you daily silent reading or whatever. DSL was another one that just was an acronym out there that it was 20, 30 minutes. That that was what you were doing. I think I was reading too much in the 90s to actually know that there was an acronym to actual reading.
[00:10:15] But while that is not shown to improve like reading skills message necessarily, which is why a lot of schools went away from.
[00:10:26] Still was like, this is what we're doing right now. We're reading.
[00:10:32] And I think there is value in that. Even though.
[00:10:37] Yes, obviously, as a structured literacy proponent, I want there to be some evidence there, but I think there's just. There's value alone to.
[00:10:48] The teacher was also reading during that time. That was what was supposed to be happening, actually. Like, the teacher was reading, the class was reading and everyone was doing it.
[00:11:00] So you were exposed to. This is what. This is what you do. This is just. You read.
[00:11:06] Yeah. Which makes a good model. Right, Right. I mean, there were some other things happening in the classroom, don't get me wrong.
[00:11:14] But like the ideal version was literally everybody is reading right now. Okay.
[00:11:20] There's a shift to snippet literacy, which I've never heard of, but it does make sense when you define it, right? Yes. So some different platforms like read it or opinions are mixed. But users note that digital communication has short text messages or social media posts over long paragraphs, which shortens everybody's attention spans. Absolutely.
[00:11:46] You know, it's my short form. Video is terrible for your brain because it doesn't force you to pay attention for longer spans of time.
[00:11:58] The other piece of this, not only the snippet literacy, but just the curriculums in general. We have talked before on this podcast how it is completely possible nowadays to graduate from high school and even college with a bachelor's degree, having never read an entire book cover to cover because the programs are focusing on passages or they'll maybe select like a few chapters from a book or a chapter from a book.
[00:12:33] A lot of like summary of the classic books instead of reading the classic book.
[00:12:43] And I mean, we have talked about that before on this podcast and how that's a real detriment to our students coming out because they don't really know how to read a whole book.
[00:12:54] Right. Which also really hurts their critical thinking. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:13:04] You know, I mean, not obviously, no surprise to any of our listeners because obviously you guys are listening and interested in this, but. Right. That capacity to read and write, commonly known as literacy. Right. It is so pivotal to a person's career trajectory, their ability to.
[00:13:31] Not only your career, just the idea of how do you navigate life if you do not have robust vocabulary and understanding the environment? I mean, the books and stories also help us interpret our own feelings.
[00:13:51] Reading a lot of books from a lot of different perspectives helps us build that capacity in ourselves. And so those students who lack literacy, they face severely restricted options, even within entry level or quote unquote, low skilled jobs.
[00:14:15] Those kinds of jobs we would be talking about. Right. Jobs and food service.
[00:14:20] You have to be able to read.
[00:14:26] You're not going to be able to man the Grill at McDonald's if you cannot look and see what the incoming orders are.
[00:14:35] Correct. Yeah, kind of talked about this next section already.
[00:14:46] So some kind of interesting things, right? So it's just some numbers, like how we doing?
[00:14:54] So in 2004 and 2005, on average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate.
[00:15:02] As of 2024, 21% of adults in the United States are illiterate in 2024.
[00:15:14] You know, and keep in mind, the definition of literacy that we're using here is like the most basic one, right?
[00:15:24] So those. That's the portion of adults who can read something and understand it. At its most basic, 54% of adults have a literacy rate below sixth grade.
[00:15:42] 20% are below fifth grade level. That's actually pretty stable.
[00:15:49] This is where we've been for a while, for the last several decades.
[00:15:56] You know, low literacy levels. It costs the United states an estimated $2.2 trillion a year.
[00:16:07] How you begin to estimate that capacity, I'm not actually sure.
[00:16:11] Yeah, I'm not sure how they got that number, but yeah, but yeah, I mean, think about it. You don't have. If you are a person who has a low literacy rate, your ability to earn is impacted and your ability to spend is impacted. And that's how we're going to calculate that.
[00:16:36] Interestingly, there's a couple states that have the highest rate of child literacy, which is Massachusetts.
[00:16:46] And New Hampshire has the highest adult literacy rate, while New Mexico has lowest child literacy rate. In California, the lowest adult, which is kind of an interesting.
[00:17:00] It is interesting. I think that makes sense regionally.
[00:17:04] Massachusetts and New Hampshire being our eastern seaboard states, New Mexico and California, I'm betting if they broke it up into northern and Southern California, that we do pretty different.
[00:17:19] I don't know, but I would bet that that would be pretty different. And I bet that that's kind of where, you know, it makes sense in jibes too. 34% of adults who Lack literacy proficiency, were born outside of the United States.
[00:17:37] California having a very high percentage of people born outside of the United States.
[00:17:43] So that does make, that makes sense.
[00:17:49] Globally, the US ranks 36th in literacy.
[00:17:58] Again, I think what's concerning is the trend of just the less reading in general. Right.
[00:18:08] And I think what I want to offer our listeners is I think this can be scary to talk about on a global level.
[00:18:16] And it does scare me and I don't want this trend to continue.
[00:18:21] But some things that are in your control as a parent is how much your kids are reading or exposed to text or have the opportunities to do so. So while I think this is a topic of like, can be easily doom and gloom because it is scary.
[00:18:41] And as a teacher, it breaks my heart as a literacy professional, it breaks my heart as someone who works for a company called Dyslexia Achievement Center. Right.
[00:18:51] I care a lot about reading and kids reading and adults reading and everybody doing it.
[00:18:58] But there are some really actionable things you could do in your home. What we do know is that kids who see adults read, read. Correct.
[00:19:11] If, if you are. And it doesn't have to be. I, I get a lot of parents because we work with kids with dyslexia and adults really, but a lot of lot more children.
[00:19:27] I get parents who are like, well, I don't really like to read, so how can I even do this? And I will say read ya books with your kids.
[00:19:40] Read. It does not have to be. It's okay. It can be a newspaper. It can even be something on your phone if you're really transparent. I am reading an article right now. I am doing this right now. Right now.
[00:19:53] Even saying the words out loud. I am reading by emails can have an impact on kids perception of should they be reading and what should. What kinds of things.
[00:20:05] And remember one of our episodes we talked about how long. It's not that long. No, no. 20 minutes a day. Right. Like that. You build that vocabulary and you get interested. So I mean, it's not like we're saying just spend hours and hours reading. Absolutely. Just because reading for me is a pleasure activity. Right. I would like it to be a pleasure activity for everybody. But that's not true. It's just not. It's not. It's not going to be. And that's okay. Exactly. You know, I'm not going to take up indoor plant harvesting because that's not my bag. But being able to read a book at home, read an article at home that is accessible to everybody and it makes a really big impact. It does. And it's okay to encourage your kids to read things that they like.
[00:21:04] Yep. If they're into plants, read about plants. If they're into Pokemen. I read a lot of Pokemon because my oldest is really into Pokemon. And even though I cannot say any of the names of the people in the Pokemon book, it's way over. So hard to do.
[00:21:22] Even the Pokemon cards. Yeah.
[00:21:25] There is a lot to read on those Pokemon cards. You know, they have their strengths and they have all these things and who they go against.
[00:21:34] Yeah, there's so many things to read on there.
[00:21:37] Playing board games. Board games have lots of reading. Right. You have to read the cards. You have to read the board. Right.
[00:21:45] I mean, the directions.
[00:21:47] Yeah. There's tons of things you can do that way.
[00:21:50] And even if you listen to a book together, you know, then have a discussion on it.
[00:21:55] That's all. Those are all things, you know, while it is concerning that reading lates are falling, there are a lot of things we can do and should do and are in control in our own homes.
[00:22:13] Exactly.
[00:22:14] And so.
[00:22:19] Yeah. And so I think that's kind of the point of our episode. Right. Is this is something that's happening, but that does not mean that you are powerless as a parent. I think just like low reading rates for kids or low achievement rates for kids. Yes, this is scary. That is a scary national trend.
[00:22:41] International trend.
[00:22:44] That does not mean you can't control it in your own house. You can.
[00:22:50] There are things you can do. It is not completely. Completely doom and gloom. Let's just throw up our hands and give up. Like. No, there are a lot of things we can do.
[00:22:59] And we're here to offer parents that encouragement that. Yes, that is something we're seeing. And we're concerned about it.
[00:23:08] Right. But there are a lot of actionable things that are not difficult to implement in your house. And it can be reasonable.
[00:23:18] Exactly. Yeah.
[00:23:22] All right, Maggie, what's happening beyond dyslexia. Oh, my goodness.
[00:23:27] Nicole. All the things we have. So it just. Right. Beginning of the school year means also the beginning of all, like, student kid activities. Kid activities in my own house. So we're a Scout family.
[00:23:45] Both my kids are in Scouts, and I one of the den leaders for my daughter's little. She's a tiger this year. She was a lion last year.
[00:23:54] So the first graders are the tigers. And we have our first den meeting tonight, so. Which is a Unusual day for us. Usually it's on Tuesdays. Yeah, I was gonna say, wasn't it usually Tuesdays. Yep.
[00:24:08] It usually is on Tuesdays, but here we are, it's a Thursday.
[00:24:14] So part of this is. I have to say this out loud because it is happening tonight. You're a leader, so you have to be there. I have to be there. I am required to be there. Yes.
[00:24:25] And it's at the library. Woohoo. Yay. Yes.
[00:24:29] What's going on with you, Nicole?
[00:24:32] Oh, that's a good question.
[00:24:35] We have been very busy.
[00:24:39] Super busy, just doing all the things.
[00:24:44] So, yeah, I guess the big thing is, you know, We have one in soccer and one's about to start volleyball, and one is thinking, not really sure about what.
[00:25:08] We'll see what he comes up with. Yeah, he might be thinking a while. He might be thinking a while. But just the preparation of. We need to get better shoes. We need to get better, like, get them ready for all that and their gym bags so that they have their deodorant and all their fun stuff that you need to have.
[00:25:31] Yep. Yes. The stuff management Stuff management. That's a good. Yep. It is a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff.
[00:25:40] Not as much as much as the baseball stuff at least, but yes, there's still a lot of stuff. It's still a lot of stuff. Yeah. And just. And the specific stuff. Right. You know, having that gym bag that always has a stick and Jordan, like, yes. That was probably one of the best tips I was given as a mom. Like, no, no, no, no. Just like, if this is your gym bag, you stock this gym bag with all the things you need. And you don't. You don't try to, like, pack and repack it. This is what it is. Exactly. And this is where it stays.
[00:26:18] Yes. And just have the kids and hide it if you have to, like, hide it if you have to. Like, no, you're not allowed to touch it. You have to. I had a parent who was like, I make my kids check out their. Like, like, they have to come to me and check it out. Nice. And then I give it to them and then they have to check it back in. And I'm like, that's actually kind of brilliant. That is brilliant. Yeah, that is brilliant. So that I will not take credit for that pro tip. That was somebody else. But I don't think she was wrong about it. Nope. For what it's worth.
[00:26:54] Nope. We're just trying to keep Catherine in her classes school year, because she sometimes has them on, sometimes she doesn't, and sometimes she can find them, and sometimes she can't. Super fun.
[00:27:05] So useful to not have your glasses.
[00:27:10] Oh, Catherine.
[00:27:13] Well, thank you everybody for the listening. Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or you would like us to discuss a topic. If you do like our show, be sure to follow and give us a rating on your favorite podcast player. This is how we reach our listeners and we get to help our families. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
