Read books!

National Review's March edition recognizes the 250^th anniversary of America's Independence with some pretty good essays. From Mary Katharine Ham in "Reading Makes Us Better Citizens":

In a video I stumbled on recently, a man in a hoodie reads to the camera, somewhat haltingly telling the story of Aslan and the Pevensie children. He’s been working his way, one chapter a day, through The Chronicles of Narnia. The text over the video reads, “37 years old, fifth-grade reading level, no one taught me, but I’m not giving up.” ....

The truth is that a lot of Americans, for more than a generation, haven’t been learning very much. They don’t learn because they don’t read. They don’t read because they’re not asked to, and if they are, it’s in small excerpts. If they were asked to read, many couldn’t because trendy pedagogy took precedence over phonics and didn’t begin to lose its hold until 2022, when journalist Emily Hanford revealed that there is a science to reading that research shows works but that schools ignored. ....

Even an elite college like Columbia University, with its great-books curriculum, is cutting the number of required books because students are “overwhelmed by the reading,” a situation recounted by professors to The Atlantic. The share of nine-year-olds who read for fun every day is at the lowest level since the Nation’s Report Card began studying the trend in 1984. And the percentage of adults who read for pleasure daily dropped from 28 percent to 16 percent over 20 years. ....

Despite the research showing that newer methods of teaching reading didn’t work, the education establishment wouldn’t let go of debunked practices. Yet some states, like Mississippi, had figured things out. When the Magnolia State launched a new approach to literacy in 2013, it started on a trajectory that took it from 49th to ninth in the Nation’s Report Card rankings. The poorest state in the country, with large numbers of low-income and minority students, began outperforming everyone, showing gains across all income and achievement levels for half what California spends per student.

The state’s approach was to screen young kids several times per year for literacy, attempting to close the kind of cracks that Oliver James had fallen through 30 years ago. Mississippi added a policy to hold back third-graders who were not proficient. This caused controversy, as many assumed that large numbers of students would be held back. What actually happened is that accountability and a new approach got adults in gear to help students succeed by third grade. Setting higher expectations, not hiding failure with lower ones, worked. The state invested in training to get teachers bought in on new curricula and used tried-and-true phonics instruction in line with the science of reading.

This success has already been replicated in Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana, which all rose substantially in NAEP rankings in 2024 as other states continued to fight pandemic losses. ....

At the risk of simplifying complex problems, the answer is books. They’re not just practical, but as the “Mississippi miracle” moniker suggests, downright astounding in their delivery of public good. In the 2019 book The Enchanted Hour, which inspired me to start regular read-alouds with my children, author Meghan Cox Gurdon calls it a “dazzlingly transformative and even countercultural act” in an age of increased technology and decreased connection. “Reading out loud is probably the least expensive and most effective intervention we can make for the good of our families, and for the wider culture.” .... (more)

I was taught before phonics went out of style. I also had a father who read to me, and there were many, many books available. I didn't always read what was assigned, but I always read. I was very fortunate.

Mary Katharine Ham, "Reading Makes Us Better Citizens," National Review, March, 2026.