"The man who will not read has no advantage over the man who can not read." As stated by Mark Twain many years ago, this quote still holds true to society today. The ability to read is a right to all developing teens, let alone to all adults, who live across America. Reading a book not only nourishes the mind, but also furthers learning in all fields of education. It can help you improve your grades in every field of your education. That's right, even in seemingly unrelated school topics, such as science and math. Reading also has been proven to correlate with staying active, as those who read more frequently exercise and participate in more sports. Although it's typically thought that reading is a necessary skill for all citizens, surprisingly over 42 million American adults are currently completely illiterate.

In the past, society has not fully realized the value of what being able to read can do for a person's well being. The willingness to read for pleasure actually associates with positive effects on an individual's life. In recent studies, researchers have found a distinct correlation between having lower reading skills and issues such as unemployment, lower wages and little hope for promotion. Twenty percent of all Americans have also proven to have an insufficient amount of reading skills when it comes to the requirements in their job description. That being said, when an individual reads less they tend to have worse grades, participate in less volunteer work, and typically have even been shown to vote less.

Society is currently seeing a steady increase in the number of Americans who lack standard reading skills, rising by a startling 2.25 million individuals a year. Other studies show that within the last 25 years reading skills have sadly shown little to no improvement in America. This issue is a nationwide problem as illiteracy inflicts not only the individual with social disadvantages but also impacts the entirety of society as well.

This trend is increasingly threatening to teenagers in the education system. After evaluating all juvenile offenders, 85 percent of the younger individuals were classified as illiterate, a significantly higher percentage in comparison to the 70 percent illiteracy rate of grown adults in prison. Although that may seem extreme, the shocking statistics do not stop there, as approximately 20 percent of all seniors in high school are considered illiterate, and 38 percent of employers find that graduates who apply for jobs fresh out of high school are not capable of fulfilling their obligations due to their lack of skill. How is this seemingly possible, one might wonder? With deeper observation scientists have blamed public education as the main culprit. Despite the fact that funding for education has nearly doubled in the past 15 years, schools are still experiencing major issues when evaluating educational spending.

Even with the issues of poor education systems being identified, there is still no short-term fix for this growing issue. The government has struggled to make efforts to improve the situation by continuing to offer free access to public schools and each year roughly ten billion dollars are devoted solely to literacy education. Not reading a proper amount is a vicious cycle. Those who don't read frequently do not get the proper practice for developing their skills. Therefore, in turn, those who aren't exposed to practice, have no desire to tackle the task of reading. Keep in mind however, in many cases it's not an individual's fault that they lack a certain level of education. Those who live in poverty exhibit 43 percent of the lowest reading levels, a factor an individual typically cannot control easily.

Overall, reading for pleasure must be continuously stressed in order to improve the nations current crisis of illiteracy. Bearing in mind that roughly 50 million adults are reading at a fourth grade level, this is not acceptable for a society that is supposed to be leading the way in affluence and technology. Besides the drastic need for improvements in education, children also need to have access to all different types of learning resources, such as what a public library offers, as well as strive to utilize books to their fullest. America needs to take action now and drastically decrease the amount of illiteracy if our society has any intentions of progressing efficiently.