Reading is a basic life skill. It is a cornerstone for a child’s success in school and throughout life. Without, the ability to read well, opportunities for personal fulfillment and job success will be lost.

There is a common tendency to view literacy in purely educational terms. If one is illiterate or functionally illiterate, there are thought to be gaps in one’s education that require correction. The illiteracy problem is not created solely by the schools, and its solution does not rest entirely on their shoulders. Schools are not necessarily the source of the problem, and improvement of the schools is not necessarily the most appropriate strategy for change.

More than a set of skills, literacy is a value. Societies that place an important value on being literate actively seek to inculcate it and provide rewards to those who are literate. In other societies, literacy is viewed as a

The more elements of good parenting, good teaching, and good schooling that children experience, the greater the likelihood that they will achieve their potential as readers. A simple act of reading a book to a child would go a long way. “If we could get parents to read to their children 15-20 minutes a day, we could break the cycle of illiteracy in a generation,” said Joe Perez, supervisor of Hillsborough County’s adult basic education program. “We can’t wait for the schools to educate our children…Home is the first school. Parents are the first teachers. Reading is the first lesson.”

• Teaches positive behavior patterns and social conduct

Almost any educator who works with children from low-income backgrounds has a powerful array of anecdotes to back the point of how needy many students are - and the list of needs they cite rarely begins with physical items. Intellectual and emotional needs are most on the minds of teachers and administrators. They tell about children arriving in kindergarten or first grade who are unaware of the letters of the alphabet, have very limited vocabularies, or don't know how to hold a crayon or scissors - or a book.

Some topics in this essay:
, Tommy Thompson, Education Statistics, READING ROOTS, Harold Sloan, Ford Foundation, Readers Program, Foundation FLF, Goals Panel, Hillsborough County’s, parents read, parent readers program, • parents, readers program, parent readers, parents children, reading aloud, reading children, goals panel, learning read, children reading, • parents read, national average involvement, family literacy foundation, break cycle illiteracy,