The Mound - #34 - The Reading Crisis

Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems.

According to a recent report by the Grattan Institute, "The Reading Guarantee: How to give every child the best chance of success", Australia is in the midst of a reading crisis, with evidence showing that 1 in 3 students are unable to read proficiently.

Cited as the main problem here is the schooling system's "whole-of-language" approach "which became popular in the 1970s and is based on the idea that learning to read is an easy, natural, unconscious process".

Key to fixing this issue is apparently a more structured approach to literacy with a particular emphasis on "phonics" or sounding-out words during those earlier years at school. As students progress through school, the parts of English we largely relegate to unconscious development (i.e. grammar, syntax, spelling, and vocabulary) will be brought to the fore and taught in much the same way that another language might be taught to Primary and Secondary students.

But as the Grattan Institute dusts off its hands and calls it a day, the nation's schools and teachers are left to enact this transition, first asking the very reasonable question -

"And where exactly are all these updated teaching materials?"

Here's how we fix it:

Phonics and the diversity of learning styles aside, we have an issue in that reading is for nerds. Of course - back in my day - sitting on a bench at lunchtime and reading Harry Potter was just about the coolest thing that a child could do - but we can't allow for the rose-coloured recollections of our rockstar childhoods obscure the fact that kids today are surrounded by magical machines that allow them to find and see and share all the horrors of our adult world (so long as they can halfway spell "perineum"). It's a different time and one need only compare the trajectory of cinema from the 1920s to the 2020s for Literature's sloth to become apparent: for all their brains, the book people never thought to revisit the whole "book" thing.

We believe that what we have here is an opportunity to advance the literacy of children at a rate not seen since the invention of the printing press, if only we can bear to learn some lessons from the devices and platforms that are currently ruining our children.

Imagine handing a phone to your child when they're just five years old, their own device for keepsies. Somewhere between a Kindle and an Android tablet, the device's sole purpose would be to very, very slowly introduce your child to the internet, using their literacy skills as proof of their being ready to explore more areas of interest. We could begin, of course, with phonics. Drills and exercises completed could earn the child minutes of access to broader, less academic games and - much like Tik Tok, YouTube, and Instagram - an algorithm would serve bite-sized, written content to every user for the purpose of slowly understanding exactly what kind stories will interest them.

ChatGPT already has the ability to write stories at various reading levels. In just a few years' time and with the widespread usage of such a product, it's foreseeable that every child in Australia might have a curriculum of their own. Of course costs might be an issue, but this is also an opportunity to finally break the textbook manufacturers' extortionary grip on education. The only thing standing in our way, really, is the focus and the discipline required to make a bit of tech that doesn't do everything, that wants friction for its users, that exists solely to develop their reading skills and perhaps broaden their mental horizons. Sounds a bit like a book, really, doesn't it?

You're welcome, Australia.