Can you read the situation?

The article, "Teachers, parents at the heart of the solution to SA children's reading problem - expert" refers.

The above article suggests that parents need to be recruited in a drive to improve children's literacy, and that teachers need to be encouraged, supported (and equipped) in the specific area of teaching reading to learners in the formative grades at school. At the same time the writer notes that "it is highly likely that the children's homes will be under-resourced [in terms of reading matter]."

The article fails to recognise that the overwhelming majority of parents are not readers. This is not to say that they cannot read, but that they do not read. Reading is a foreign activity for most parents; something to be wrestled with when engaging with officialdom, or perhaps at work. Parents, generally speaking, are in no position to help or encourage their children to read, or even to recognise that their children have a literacy problem.

Now, I'm going to make a wild generalization. Many (not necessarily most) teachers are in a similar position. They, too, are not readers. They may be able to read, but they generally choose to avoid reading where possible.

Instruction that comes in the form of a 'how-to' video is far more accessible than anything in writing. Children's entertainment and 'education' is based on television and smart-phone games. Until these are taken away, or much more strictly limited, and replaced with actual reading activities, we are heading for national illiteracy.

Unless, of course, one believes that the children of today, who cannot read, who will be parents and teachers in ten or twenty years, will teach their children to read tomorrow.