Illiteracy Among Children

          As all of us are aware, 'illiteracy' is a word that people often heard among these days especially among children. Actually, what is the meaning of illiteracy? As stated in Collins Dictionary, illiteracy means the inability to read or write. According to UNICEF, "Nearly a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names and two thirds of them are women." In highly literate society like Europe's, majority of the people take literacy for granted. Yet it is undeniable that their country have low rate of illiteracy. The increasing demands of our advanced societies means that one fifth of human's population are lacking of the literacy skills needed to contribute to the betterment of the world. The question is, what is the cause of this disease? Basically, this problem occur due to the economic condition of the people (poverty), preference to work rather than to study and ineffective implementation of educational programmes in rural areas.

          The main cause of illiteracy is arising from the economic condition of the people. Why am i saying so? This is because some children in some parts of the world were raised in a state of poverty. For an instance, Bangladesh where the poor suffers from a lack of proper healthcare in their areas due to the expensive and poor quality health care services. The countryside’s children do have not enough school for their studying. Thus, their  sight word growth, comprehension and vocabulary enhancement cannot be developed. Hence, by providing engaging reading materials and individual support for struggling readers can contribute to young people's literacy skills.

         Other than that, children tend to work rather than studying as they thought money is more valuable than knowledge. If they quit school and get a job, it will probably be a menial, low-paying job. It they stay in school, they won't be earning money but they will be increasing your knowledge and ability to get better-paying jobs. So in say, 5 years time, the child will probably think that they will obtain lots of money but different in school, where you have to sit still listening to the teacher and do homework. Which is not challenging rather than work. The rest of your life is a long time to be stuck in a nothing job because you couldn't be bothered to finish your education.

         Furthermore, ineffective implementation of educational programmes in rural areas also contributed to the crisis of illiteracy. School nowadays do not teach students the proper way of learning. Sometimes, the teacher just teach the way they wanted to. In this situation, school authorities should play an important role to constrain this problem from getting worse. Schools should set aside at least 30 minutes a day for silent reading, and all primary school students reading ability should be tested when they start secondary school, a leading education figure will say today. Children who are diagnosed as having a reading problem will need special coaching. If necessary, the normal timetable for these children should be suspended until they have learned to read.

         In conclusion, illiteracy is something that we need to tackle before it get from bad to worse as it is evident that it could lead to the downfall of our cultured, educated world. Therefore, measures need to be executed in order to annihilate this issue as an act to save our children from the clutch of illiteracy.