Reading the "Readings about Reading" has stirred in me a questioned I have grappled with for a long time. Statistically there is a correlation between socioeconomic status and reading skills. However, my family resides significantly below the poverty level and we all have high reading skills. My family background is lower middle class and as I have mentioned before, reading was not a priority among my family members. Out of 6 siblings I have one brother who reads informational books despite significant Dyslexia, and 1 sister who is an avid reader, though maybe not to my crazy level. The rest of my siblings rarely read, nor do my parents. My husbands family was always below the poverty level, but all 5 children are readers. They do have many of the other issues that are found with generational poverty, crime, drugs, alcoholism, multiple marriage and divorce, and things of that nature, but they ALL read, alot. The one defining factor, I believe is that their mother, my mother in-law, trained as a teacher before marriage and is a reader herself. She taught all of her children to read before they entered school, and encouraged reading as they grew up. My question boils down to environment over nurture where reading is concerned. Did their mother's influence concerning reading triumph, in this aspect, over the poverty issue. I will say that 4 out of the 5 children dropped out of high school and none of them attended college, despite both parents being college graduates.
With my own children I have not only tried to fan the fire of the love of reading, I have also tried to expose them to books that inspire character and reaching above your circumstances. I did not want to see my children sucked down many of the paths that their aunts and uncles, despite being raised in poverty. So far it seems to be working. My daughter Christen, 18, is heading off this week to move to La Grande to attend Eastern in the fall. All of my children are respectful and well thought of in our small community. It makes me wonder about the power of reading, and education. Yeats said "Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire", if we can light the fire and build it big enough, will it help our nations children to make a better world? I do not know but I am going to continue my own small experiment here, hit me up in about 20 years and I'll tell you how it went!
Hi, again, Jennifer. I enjoyed reading your reflections on the connection between poverty and reading. I think the issue is less money than having books in the home. Often, money and books in the home correlate, but sometimes they don't. There may be additional contextual issues associated with the correlation between poverty and lack of education. Again, where lack of education does not exist, a value of reading may flourish in any home with books. Families create a culture of valuing and understanding books, just as they create a college-going culture. When we can share that, money is less of an issue. I will look forward to meeting Christen when she gets to La Grande! Nancy
ReplyDelete