• Graduates in the year 2021: 
  
• What an interesting group, hailing (though not necessarily commuting!) from New Jersey to New York to Nepal. The diploma range is from a two-year degree to graduate school. Some of you took a straight-line route, some had a change or two along the way as you decided on your next step.
• All of you are working in some capacity already, with the majority simultaneously attempting to figure out life after graduation: will that first regular employment be “just a job” or a stepping stone toward your desired career. 
• Some of you have graduate school in mind, but not necessarily right away, knowing that such a step probably would be the most intentional education decision you have ever made.
• All have persevered through a pandemic that turned your lives, and/or those of your families and friends, upside down. 
• All have dealt with the pluses and minuses of your particular school, at times thinking it was the best choice ever and at other times wondering why you ever enrolled there.
• All have lamented the lack of clear communication from schools during the various changes dictated by the pandemic.
• Most important is that each of you has become more self-reflective, more aware of who you are as a individual, your uniqueness, and your ability to become the person you want to be. In a society and world where lack of self-knowledge can quickly get one labeled and grouped, the ability to “know thyself” is more important than ever.
  Congratulations!
  As the country gets more vaccinated, I hope to break bread with you and get completely caught up.  I realize that your graduation ceremonies themselves will be restricted attendance, if any, a bummer for sure.
  Peace,
  Bob
  
  
  
  
  

The secret to learning Reading had little to do with school — or the latest teaching techniques found on college education major syllabi — or insights delivered at workshops by expensive consultants.

Instead, what if a positive attitude, curiosity, and learning Reading stemmed from a stable family structure, the inculcation of values, books in the home, affordable time and available energy.

Maybe a series of societal changes would be more likely to produce acceptable Reading outcomes than teachers seeking to be heroes. Or is the former one of those necessary, but not sufficient situations.

Here are a few examples of societal changes with prospectively highly leveraged positive returns:

Inexpensive daycare … Higher minimum wage … Restructured marijuana laws … Availability of Pell grants for prisoners … Ability to choose the school to which a child attends.

Fast forward, at the upper end of the school age spectrum, long after Reading has supposedly become a habit, why not make this ask of rising high school graduates:

Agreement that the sequence of high school graduation, then a job, then marriage, then a child is clearly preferable socioeconomically (demonstrated to be the case by Brookings Institute research data) to any sequence which switches around these four milestones of life.

Perhaps the combination of said agreement and the aforementioned multiple societal changes would lead to more family cohesion, which would lead in turn to increased success in Reading.

Or maybe my “What If” mutterings are meaningless in a world of Googled “education’ and social media addiction. Why even care about in-depth Reading when “answers” to all of life’s questions are merely a click away.