people make a lot of flippant jokes about the literacy crisis but like. learning to read isn't an automatic neurodevelopmental process the same way learning to walk or talk is for most people. it takes explicit and systematic instruction for the vast majority of people to be able to do it at all. if someone doesn't know how to read, that is a systemic failure, not their individual fault.
in cognitive science, there are a lot of different ways to think about reading. but the various models for the most part hinge on two specific processes: word recognition and comprehension. word recognition means the way people recognize and break down words, and comprehension means how people understand the words they read. some of the dominant literacy models in cognitive science include
The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tumner 1986)
Scarborough's Rope (Scarborough 2001)
The Active View of Reading (Duke and Cartwright 2021)
all of these involve some combination/exploration of recognition and comprehension.
unfortunately! in the US starting the 90s, phonics instruction was increasingly abandoned in favor of the three-cueing method. basically, instead of learning how to break down the sound chunks (phonemes) that make up words, kids were encouraged to learn to read by looking at the pictures or guessing via context clues. so the word recognition aspect of reading took a big hit. many kids grew up with functional learning disabilities because of that style of instruction alone.
reading comprehension is also really, really culturally dependent. the way you understand (or whether you can understand) what you're reading relies on the body of background knowledge you have access to, which in turn depends on your socioeconomic position. there's also the matter of what kinds of knowledge and analysis are valued/prioritized by society. critical thinking is a key part of comprehension, and schools are actively invested in not facilitating that skill because their overall objective is to produce a compliant labor force that will ensure the reproduction of capitalism. critical thinking is emphasized in imperial core education only to the extent that it's absolutely necessary: for developing decision-making capacity for postindustrial knowledge workers, managerial types, politicians, lawyers, doctors, and so on.
so. basically. both recognition and comprehension are core to literacy development, and they've both been fucked with heavily in the US (and a lot of other countries). breaking the literacy crisis down this way also helps with figuring out how to fix it. teaching more kids phonics will help them decode words more effectively, but it won't help them comprehend new material. and when we talk about the "media literacy crisis" we're mostly talking about a comprehension problem, which can't be fixed just by having people read more. each issue needs targeted intervention.
so! recommended reading list:
my full essay on the literacy crisis, of course. there's more analysis of structural interventions that would actually work to address children's literacy issues.
Let's talk (and read!) about the US literacy crisis - what the real causes are & how to fix them.
the podcast Sold a Story by APM Reports. it has a lot of good information about the shift from phonics to three-cueing. the narrative is a little oversimplified and they weirdly keep praising the bush administration while ignoring how it contributed to the problem, but i still recommend the podcast for understanding the basic facts of the situation
Schooling in Capitalist America (1968) by Bowles and Gintis on how the US school system developed to meet the needs of the capitalist economy
Making Workers (2018) by Katharyne Mitchell for a more recent analysis covering more western countries besides just the US
