Readers are Leaders - donate* your books

My kids had a friend over who participated in a family activity, called reading. I could not believe what I heard him read. First we laughed at the words he mutilated until I realized how serious his handicap was. After reading the statistics on illiteracy I want to inspire all who read this blog.

Collect any worthwhile, educational, entertaining books and donate them to your local school/congregation/prison*.  They can pass them on to kids.

Mentor a child with reading difficulties.

Why learn to read early?

Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare. The fourth grade is the watershed year.

literacy statistics and juvenile court
•85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate.
•More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate.
•Penal institution records show that inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help. This equates to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders.

•Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The Department of Justice states, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level.

Many of the USA ills are directly related to illiteracy. Just a few statistics:
•Literacy is learned. Illiteracy is passed along by parents who cannot read or write.
•One child in four grows up not knowing how to read.
•43% of adults at Level 1 literacy skills live in poverty compared to only 4% of those at Level 5
•3 out of 4 food stamp recipients perform in the lowest 2 literacy levels
•90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts
•16 to 19 year old girls at the poverty level and below, with below average skills, are 6 times more likely to    have out-of-wedlock children than their reading counterparts.
•Low literary costs $73 million per year in terms of direct health care costs. A recent study by Pfizer put the cost much higher.

*If you donate to Goodwill etc. Juvenile prisoners can not get the books. Moms can not afford to purchase from Goodwill....