It might seem noticeable to say that a child’s background
makes a change to how literate they are. What is less palpable, until you look
at the facts, is just how stark an impact it has.
Take, for instance, research published last month by the
National Literacy Trust, which finds that United Kingdom children from more privileged
backgrounds are eight times more expected than less advantaged children to have
an above standard vocabulary by the age of five. It could seem, in the UK at
least, that the richer the parents, the more probable the child will have a
love for reading.
Now draw this picture global, and you soon start to think
why 781 million people are not capable to read or write adequately. How, in the
21st century, will someone apparently be born into illiteracy, a inadequacy
that can then fetter them for life?
But this same report adds a heartening glimpse into a probable
solution – possible if we make it so. It has uncovered proof that technology is
assisting to eat away at these ingrained disadvantages, inspiring and enabling
children from all backgrounds to connect with stories and to build up a love of
reading.
Three in ten children from low earnings families are probable
to read for longer when using technology. And boys, historically a harder to inspire
group than girls, are also more thrilled to stay reading for longer via
technology than textbooks.
What a game-changer; what an opportunity, what a gap-closer.
Technology is not a silver bullet, but it gives
unprecedented opportunities to open up education to everybody around the world
who wants it. It will help us reach the children for whom books are not just
there, lying around; the children for whom reading is way, way down on their
list of things to do; the children whose parents can’t read, so can’t read to
them.
These latest findings include to the relentless swell of
evidence that displays the power of technology to transform education. It will
never replace the committed teacher or, the responsible parent. But what it can
do is get stories into student’s hands – or onto their screens – and so start
to level the literacy playing field. Literacy is such bedrock of approximately
every other thing that happens in education, that technology is a chance worth
grasping with both hands. Technology provides online education and online tutoring a boom. So child easily learns and change begins in their life.
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