The annual back-to-school march is soon upon us, and good parents of every socio-economic stripe are worried about how to do right by their children.
New backpacks? Sneakers? A new laptop?
There are a lot of questions. But there is one simple thing that can help everyone.
Read.
Read to your children. Encourage them to read to themselves, and each other.
Perhaps most important, let your children see you reading. Not because you have to, but because you want to. It doesn’t have to be anything heavy, or even particularly adult. Just a book, or an ebook or a magazine. With or without pictures.
Sumerian myth. How to fix your car. A biography of your favorite baseball player. Harry Potter. Just model the behavior that will be most important for your children, not only for them to do well in school, but to grow and develop as functioning adults.
Serious people are becoming more and more fearful that American society is becoming post-literate. (That means nobody reads anymore.) And with the amount of time people of all ages are spending on social media, absorbing flashy snippets of information that may or may not contain any truth or meaning, the concern is well grounded.
The inability of people young or old to absorb, comprehend, consider and question material in books and long articles is indeed a danger to society. It makes it easier for the rich and powerful to distract us from the stuff we really need to know to be good people and functioning citizens of a democracy.
On the positive side, there are influential folks out there who work to promote literacy, including Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, LeVar Burton, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker and The Gates Foundation.
And that helps, because far too much of Utah’s political establishment is consumed with petty culture war battles. Making lists of books that can’t be read in school. Cutting state taxes so that local school districts must take the heat for raising theirs. Playing around with school finance systems to make it look like the state is spending more on education, even as it moves money away from functions such as counselors and nurses.
Give some credit, though, to such leaders as Gov. Spencer Cox and his wife, Abby. (Even if he did sign that dumb book-ban bill.) Both promote reading and honor teachers.
Reading and reading well is fundamental to everything that comes after it, from kindergarten through trade school, medical school, the military or just becoming a well-rounded person.
Books can be expensive, but they can also be free. There are school and public libraries — Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County have good and growing library systems. The King’s English Bookshop has a nonprofit affiliate, Brain Food Books, that works to provide not only a chance to read but to own books. There are Little Free Libraries in most communities. Thrift stores are worth a look.
A lot of us are worried about how our children are going to do in school, and afterward, in this TikTok culture. And we are right to be.
But just laying a foundation of reading, for learning and for growing, is a huge step families can take no matter what is or isn’t going on at school.
You don’t have to teach your children the Pythagorean theorem, the dialogs of Plato or the battles of the Civil War. It can be “The Cat in the Hat,” “Tom Sawyer” or “Brown Girl Dreaming.”
Just show them how wonderful it is to read. They will take it from there.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.