Kids who are behind their reading level at the 3rd grade are 4x more likely to drop-out, and 6x for low-income. High school drop-outs are 63 times more likely to be incarcerated than college grads. So that begs the question. Should we put as much effort as we do in policing and fighting crime into fighting illiteracy at a young age? I am curious to what people think on this. Would you put your own time forward? Do you see this as a national security / patriotic thing to do? Do you think that it's up to kids to overcome challenges including the lack of support from parents? Do you think the gov't should play a role or change what they do in order to address this? What are people's thoughts?
The statistic (63-times more likely) would be inflated because young people prone to being incarcerated are also more likely to drop out of high school. If you people who are equally prone to be incarcerated, and one of them dropped out while the other didn't, I expect the drop out's changes of going to jail goes up. But not anywhere close to 63 times more likely.
I would argue that the reason young people are more likely to be incarcerated is because they dropped out and are jobless. In other words, the act of dropping out is a strong contributor to criminal activity, not the other way around.
of course I would support it. And in my personal time too. I helped an immigrant kid learn to read last year. There is an incredibly fullfilling feeling in helping a young mind open their horizons and nothing does that more than learning to read. Our society and civilisation is based on reading and writing because that's how we can pass our knowledge to the next generations. It's perhaps humans' biggest achievement and discovery.
Correlation does not imply causation. The people who commit crimes and get caught just don't have time to read.
Yes, I do support it for many reasons. One of those reasons is economical. We will pay for more prisons, guards, courts, police, and have more crime if we don't improve education. Or we can pay that money now and invest in better education have less of all those things.
Well as a liberal democrat/democratic socialist (you go, Bernie) I would support it. Do away with private prison as he proposes and fund free public universities. I have read that the private prison industry targets places where kids are far behind in reading IIRC the third grade as sites to start planning to build out new prison/profit centers. So the Corrections Corporation of America and the like will employ their lobbyists to oppose this as harmful for their profits and against their duty to their shareholders to maximize profits. Sort of similar to their lobbying for three strikes and your out laws and having regular police forces put undocumented immigrants in their facilities as we saw with the Arizona laws they lobbied for Now conservatives would see failure to read as a failure of personal responsibility on the part of the kids or certainly their parents so therefore government expenditures will not help. However, prayer and volunteerism would be ok Libertarians are often times not that interested in prayer but also support volunteerism. I suppose one can volunteer to teach a kid to read, but the college part is a bit more difficult. One could donate to a college fun for those kids, though a lot of middle class parents can't fund their own kid's college plans.
What a silly truism. Parent can't do everything. Focusing on how societies such as in Western Europe do a better job might be more useful starting point.
In this case social scientists think there is a causation element. When incarcerated criminals are put into programs on how to read at an adult level, only 20% end up re-incarcerating. Whereas 50% return who are not put in those programs. People with solid reading skills have far better job prospects. Also the flag is when these guys are 8 years old - at that point they have not committed any crimes. Many of these kids don't have two parents or have a parent that works 2-3 jobs and thus no one to help them with their homework. Or a parent that doesn't know how to read themselves. If not the gov't, would you be willing to provide support?
Where did you get that factoid from? Were the incarcerated criminals forced into those reading programs or did they volunteer to enter the reading programs? If it was voluntary, then of course prisoners who want to better themselves would re-offend less than the ones who don't. Again, correlation does not imply causation, pending the previous point. The fact that people who are better at getting jobs usually have better reading skills doesn't mean that you should teach more reading. People who eat caviar also have far better job prospects- it doesn't mean that you should feeding fish eggs to prisoners. Fine, the kind of people who grow up to commit crimes just don't have time to read then.
Private Prisons don't fill themselves Doing what you propose could hurt their profit margins and that my friend . .. is UN'MERICAN!! Rocket River
Wait... So what are you arguing here? Are you saying that there is no significant causation in the correlation between crime and education/illiteracy?
can someone give me an argument AGAINST taking measures to battle illteracy? This is mindblowing. Why do you want a portion of the society to remaing illiterate? What good will that do?
http://literacyconnects.org/img/201...grams-Making-a-Difference-Research-review.pdf Like I said before kids who fall behind in reading skills at 8 years old are the most likely to commit crimes. The cost of each of those kids in prison costs and crime, and policing is $250k. When you look at it economically, the gov't could save that much by helping kids learn to read - just that. And...they would become tax payers and boost the economy. Why would you oppose that?
So you wouldn't do anything? Would you help a kid whose parents don't care? Would you be a mentor to someone young and impressionable? I am not judging, I am just trying to understand.
