Why are our children failing in basic reading & writing skills? | Books

By JudithCuddihy
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A recent survey in the United Kingdom shows that every year more and more of our children are leaving school without even the basic reading and writing skills. This is a very important issue at the moment and more studies are needed to find out how and why this situation has happened and what can be done to reverse it.

It is very difficult to just blame certain individuals or organisations but it must be down to one or a few different combinations of the following.

1: The Government: 2: The Schools 3: The Parents 4: Lifestyle Choices:

Personally, I believe that it is a combination of all four and will give a brief explanation why I believe this.

The government has a responsibility to provide each and every school with the necessary funding, so are they coming up short on this? Are the examinations becoming easier so that more teachers are becoming qualified without all the required skills needed?

With the funding provided to the schools being spent in the right places and on the right things? Are the teaching staff qualified enough for the post? Are teachers becoming more and more disallusioned with poor working conditions and poor salary? Are teachers hands tied when it comes to classroom discipline?

I don't think that we can blame the parents in most cases, obviously there are parents around that do not give a damn whether or not their child leaves school with an education or not but the majority of them do. Years ago when we had the "traditional family", dad went out to work and mum stayed home to look after house and kids and people generally had more time for their children, ate meals together, bedtime stories and so on. Today is a totally different matter with quite a lot of families having to have both mum & dad going out to work just to survive and thus not being able to give their children the time that we used to be able to do a few years ago.

Lifestyle Choices, how can this affect a child's education? Well, we now live in a totally different "world" where children now have access to all sorts of wonderful things, play stations, computer games, ipods, mobile phones etc. Whatever happened to the old traditional books & bedtime stories? In my opinion Lifestyle Issues play a major part in our children's education, there are just not enough children today that take time out to read a great book.

Can this worrying trend be reversed? Nobody knows but only time will tell and ultimately it must be down to every parent in the land to want better for their children and make the effort to spend more time with them and encourage them read more especially in their early years.

About the Author

Judith Cuddihy holds an Honours degree in adult nursing and holds a keen interest in children's progression and supplies her own range of children's Personalised Books her Childrens Books are produced in house and can be sent worlwide.

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