Literacy Issues Quotes

I know what not being able to read can do to a child's confidence.

One of the things that amazes me is the amount of functional illiteracy in this country... people can't read to get around, or people who can't read the newspaper but can barely read street signs.

When you can't read or write at 14 or 15, in most cases you're headed for trouble, and trouble was finding me.

The nasty little secret was that I couldn't read worth a darn. In my case, I still read very slowly to this moment.

Why is it that our young kids all across America can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking, yet we accept the fact that they can't add or read?

There's a kind of funny gap between 14 and 20 when young people don't read very much. Nobody really knows what to do about it, although we've tried to reach these dropout readers with the 'young adult' book.

I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing 'dumber,' if what you really mean to say is 'less culturally literate.'

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Experts say that if children can't read by the end of the fifth grade, they lose self-confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to enter the juvenile justice system.

It has been said that we have not had the three R's in America, we had the six R's; remedial readin', remedial 'ritin' and remedial 'rithmetic.

I wasn't very good at school and appalling at English.

Johnny can get down and Johnny can throw up, but Johnny can't read.

As a young girl, I was very proud at overcoming a reading handicap whilst other girls of my age read abundantly.

Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.

I had learning problems when I was in elementary school, and didn't really start to read well until high school. I never read any of the middle grade classics that were popular when I was young - 'Harriet the Spy', 'Charlotte's Web', 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

It was a shock to visit a Job Corps camp and see adults who had been through some years of our public education system stare at a blackboard where a teacher was writing CAT or helping them write their own names. In another room men were learning to tell time.

The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors "is dead."

Because the Vikings never documented anything - they couldn't read or write - the history is always gonna be a little up in the air.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

The big problem is just this kind of gigantic piece, of kids reading less and liking it less and so getting worse at it. It's kind of this terrible spiral: Since they're not so good at it they do less of it, get worse at it, do less of it. And it's really what I discovered five, six years ago when I started the 'Guys Read' thing.

I question whether we can afford to teach mother macramé when Johnny still can't read.

I was a bad kid. I was a really naughty kid. I couldn't read or write. And that was me punishment - going to acting school.

My diary is a disaster...I can't spell at all...I'll spell the same word completely differently in the same sentence.

I can read and arrange, but I can't write.