We Cannot Afford to Lose Reading

Literacy is more than a skill. It is one of humanity's oldest art forms.

Around the world, literacy among children is under severe pressure. Attention is fragmented, screens are replacing pages, and for many children, access to books remains limited.

UNESCO reports that in many low- and middle-income countries, fewer than one in four children under the age of five has at least three books at home. That matters, because early shared reading shapes language, imagination and emotional development.

There is a beautiful quote I read years ago that says, "Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it."  That is the quiet magic of reading. A book is never just paper and ink. It is a conversation across generations. A child opening a story today steps into the imagination, wisdom, grief, wonder, and dreams of and with other human beings.

Reading is not just academic preparation. It teaches rhythm, patience, empathy and inner vision. It creates stillness in a world that profits from distraction.

If we lose reading, we lose far more than literacy. We lose one of the oldest ways humans have learned to understand themselves, and each other.