The Need to Read

Carla Benini is the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Consulate Hyderabad. As a mother of three, she is an ardent supporter of reading among children. 

The Consulate just wrapped up a busy, yet fulfilling weekend of activities focused on the importance of reading.  Partnering with four learning centers around the city – Saptaparni in Banjara Hills, Little People Tree in Secunderabad, Gachibowli’s Kaleidoscope and Treasure House in Jubilee Hills – Americans and Indians joined in the fun as we read books together, watched a Wizard of Oz puppet show, wrote our own Dr. Seuss-like rhymes and learned more about creative writing.

As I read one of my personal, tongue-twisting favorites, Fox in Socks, and listened to the classic, Harry the Dirty Dog, I witnessed children being transported to a world of fantasy that books so often take us to.  And it wasn’t only the kids who sat transfixed by these stories.  I watched plenty of their parents laughing along with us as we enjoyed the stories together.

I visited as many of the activities as I could over the weekend and along the way, many parents asked why the Consulate would be involved in such an endeavor. The answer is easy: Reading has been such an important, enjoyable part of my life, and I truly believe it is the key to a lifetime of success. 

I am a passionate believer in the power of books to turn our children into problem solvers, innovators and ultimately become intelligent contributors to society as adults.  The earlier we start reading to our children, the sooner we develop in them a passion for reading.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. There are hundreds of studies on the role that reading can play in developing a child’s learning skills: 

·             A U.S. Department of Education analysis found that children who were read to at least three times a week by a family member were almost twice as likely to score in the top 25 percent in reading as children who were read to less than three times a week.  Just like children need exercise to build strong bodies, they need books to build strong minds. 

·             The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) “strongly recommends reading to children every day, starting after they are first born,” because “reading stimulates the development of the brain, language and a closer emotional relationship with a child.”

And for parents keen on encouraging their child to study engineering or computer science:

·         In a study, “Improving Reading to Improve Math” published in June 2011 by the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, authors concluded that children who practice reading comprehension show dramatic improvements in their ability to solve mathematical problems. “When children err in solving story problems, the errors are not necessarily in numerical calculations.  Instead, a substantial difficulty is with language comprehension skill. (e.g., Cummins, Kintsch, Reusser, & Weimer, 1988). This lack of skill results in several kinds of errors, one of which is including irrelevant numerical information in solution procedures (e.g., Heffernan & Koedinger, 1997).”

At home, my husband and I encouraged reading long before our kids could make out a single word on their own.  As a result, our children have developed an eager curiosity for reading and books.  Our two-year-old asks for books by name and “reads” to himself (sits on the floor with a favorite book) every day. For me, the studies only back up what I already know to be true.  I believe that “you are what you read” and if we can start reading to our children at a young age, feeding them books that will develop skills in creativity, problem solving and critical thinking, our children will develop a hunger for knowledge, and will be well-prepared for school and more importantly, for life.

Americans are speaking up

Recent polls in the U.S. show that public confidence in government is abysmally low.  Distrust is not centered on one particular party, and extends to both the executive and the legislative branches of government.   Two social movements, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, while very different in their political prescriptions, are both manifestations of public discontent with the status quo. 

The Tea Party’s manifesto focuses on protection of individual freedom as the most important function of a society.  Since all government action is in some sense coercive, this group believes government functions should be pared down to a bare minimum.  The Tea Party’s focus on the individual and its attachment to liberty as a supreme value has a long history in the U.S., as demonstrated by the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”  While not unique to the U.S., these values are more muted elsewhere, and it is hard to imagine an organization like the Tea Party taking root in most other countries of the world.  

In contrast, the Occupy movement started out as a protest against the financial services industry, and government protection of financial services firms.  The movement does not have an agreed manifesto, but in general, its members are more concerned about social and economic inequality than about liberty.  Unlike the Tea Party, Occupy is not an exclusively U.S.-based movement.  

The two groups are generally portrayed as opposites, occupying the left and right wings in the U.S. political spectrum.  Implied in this is the notion that equality and liberty are fundamentally at odds with each other.  I believe, however, that both liberty and equality represent core American values, both have been compatible policy imperatives through most of U.S. history, and it is a specific set of contemporary challenges that have given rise to both these protest movements.  Several commentators in the U.S. have pointed to the fact that protests from both sides of the political spectrum are concerned about the ordinary person’s exclusion from decision-making, and domination of political and economic life by a privileged elite.  They point to the fact that in the last decade, accentuating a trend that began in the late 1970s, income and wealth in the United States have becoming increasingly concentrated at the top, with deceasing income mobility up and down the distribution.  Combine this with the growth of financial services as a share of GDP in the U.S., the extremely high salaries earned by top executives in this sector, and the role of the industry in the current U.S. economic downturn, and you find the genesis of Occupy Wall Street.  Combine the decrease in economic mobility with increasing diversity and decreasing job security for the middle class, and you find some of the foundations of the Tea Party’s anger.  

When Americans are confident about the future, they tend to believe that liberty and equality of opportunity will meet the needs of all, and that liberty can tolerate some redistribution by government to create equal opportunity.  Economic uncertainty, 9/11 and the change in the balance of power in the world have shaken American confidence and converted Americans from intrinsic optimists into worried pessimists.  On both the left and the right, I think Americans today are fundamentally concerned about opportunity, and it is because opportunity is viewed as severely limited that liberty and equality are seen as competing priorities.  And on both the left and the right, they blame government to some extent, resulting in those terrible poll results. 

The U.S. is graced with a well-educated, demographically favorable and industrious population.  We have incredible natural bounty, tremendous intellectual property, a decent infrastructure and good will internationally.  I’m confident that, while it might not happen as quickly as we’d like, the trends that have eroded Americans’ confidence will reverse themselves and with growing optimism about the future, the sharp divisions in today’s political spectrum will narrow.  In the meantime, while I may not share the protestors’ views, I’m proud that my countrymen will stand up to try to make a better world for their children, and I’m proud that my country allows its citizens to protest peacefully for what they believe. 

Occupy Wall Street and What it means to the U.S.

Recent polls in the U.S. show that public confidence in government is abysmally low.  Distrust is not centered on one particular party, and extends to both the executive and the legislative branches of government.   Two social movements, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, while very different in their political prescriptions, are both manifestations of public discontent with the status quo. 

The Tea Party’s manifesto focuses on protection of individual freedom as the most important function of a society.  Since all government action is in some sense coercive, this group believes government functions should be pared down to a bare minimum. 

The Tea Party’s focus on the individual and its attachment to liberty as a supreme value has a long history in the U.S., as demonstrated by the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” 

While not unique to the U.S., these values are more muted elsewhere, and it is hard to imagine an organization like the Tea Party taking root in most other countries of the world. 

In contrast, the Occupy movement started out as a protest against the financial services industry, and government protection of financial services firms.  The movement does not have an agreed manifesto, but in general, its members are more concerned about social and economic inequality than about liberty.  Unlike the Tea Party, Occupy is not an exclusively U.S.-based movement. 

The two groups are generally portrayed as opposites, occupying the left and right wings in the U.S. political spectrum.  Implied in this is the notion that equality and liberty are fundamentally at odds with each other.  I believe, however, that both liberty and equality represent core American values, both have been compatible policy imperatives through most of U.S. history, and it is a specific set of contemporary challenges that have given rise to both these protest movements. 

Several commentators in the U.S. have pointed to the fact that protests from both sides of the political spectrum are concerned about the ordinary person’s exclusion from decision-making, and domination of political and economic life by a privileged elite.  They point to the fact that in the last decade, accentuating a trend that began in the late 1970s, income and wealth in the United States have becoming increasingly concentrated at the top, with deceasing income mobility up and down the distribution. 

Combine this with the growth of financial services as a share of GDP in the U.S., the extremely high salaries earned by top executives in this sector, and the role of the industry in the current U.S. economic downturn, and you find the genesis of Occupy Wall Street.  Combine the decrease in economic mobility with increasing diversity and decreasing job security for the middle class, and you find some of the foundations of the Tea Party’s anger. 

When Americans are confident about the future, they tend to believe that liberty and equality of opportunity will meet the needs of all, and that liberty can tolerate some redistribution by government to create equal opportunity.  Economic uncertainty, 9/11 and the change in the balance of power in the world have shaken American confidence and converted Americans from intrinsic optimists into worried pessimists.  On both the left and the right, I think Americans today are fundamentally concerned about opportunity, and it is because opportunity is viewed as severely limited that liberty and equality are seen as competing priorities.  And on both the left and the right, they blame government to some extent, resulting in those terrible poll results. 

The U.S. is graced with a well-educated, demographically favorable and industrious population.  We have incredible natural bounty, tremendous intellectual property, a decent infrastructure and good will internationally.  I’m confident that, while it might not happen as quickly as we’d like, the trends that have eroded Americans’ confidence will reverse themselves and with growing optimism about the future, the sharp divisions in today’s political spectrum will narrow.  In the meantime, while I may not share the protestors’ views, I’m proud that my countrymen will stand up to try to make a better world for their children, and I’m proud that my country allows its citizens to protest peacefully for what they believe.