WEST PLAINS, MO: On Friday, October 20, 2023, Ozark Spring, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, (Ozark Spring, NSDAR) joined West Plains Mayor, Mike Topliff as he signed a
National Family Day Literacy Proclamation effective November 1, 2023. National Family Day was established by the 103rd Congress in 1994 and is celebrated each year across America focusing on the importance of family, building a nation of readers, and increasing our nation’s children’s abilities to achieve a higher quality of life. “Literacy is key to solving healthcare, unemployment, poverty, and crime rates” https://www.bushhoustonliteracy.org. The Proclamation emphasizes the impact that parents and guardians have on their children’s learning and requests that they “challenge” their children to read.
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) 21% of adults in the United States (About 43 Million) fall into the illiterate /functionally illiterate category. Ozark Spring, NSDAR Literacy Chair, Mary Ann Mutrux, shared that as many as one in six adults struggle with reading and writing, and that “these staggering numbers affect the everyday aspects of their lives, such as an ability to fill out an application, take medication, read important safety information at work and in the public.” Children “involved in family learning with a parent or guardian showed a gain of 22.5% in reading scores at or above grade level; children most uninvolved in the programming showed a 2% loss.”
The most frequent causes attributed to adult illiteracy is that adults often lacked accessed to books while growing up, faced difficult living conditions, endured unaddressed learning disabilities, and were not encouraged with reading opportunities in their own education. This trend has resulted in annual costs of upwards of $225 Billion in nonproductivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue to unemployment tied to low literacy.” (National Council for Adult Learning, 2022).
For National Literacy Family Day, Ozark Spring, NSDAR challenges the West Plains and surrounding communities to create and participate in activities that encourage families to increase reading activities in their children’s lives at home and to work with teachers to ensure their success by including read-a-thons, visits to their local libraries, seek out supportive resources, begin a book drive, conduct workshops and participate in interactive family reading activities at schools, libraries, and community centers.
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