Helping Johnny Read
We recently published an article titled “Johnny Cannot Read,” in which we highlighted the crisis in our nation’s education. If it were not so tragic, it would be laughable. Yet the failure in our education system is both tragic and obvious. This is not a local or state issue; it is a national issue that must be solved at the state, local, and parental levels. This will not be solved by our school systems, but by parents, one child at a time, one day at a time.
Our Family Bibliophile
When I was growing up, my mother was an avid Reader’s Digest bibliophile. Much to our chagrin, she was a stickler for grammar and spelling. As a pre-teen and teen, I did not put it on my list of priorities. But as I grew older, I became more appreciative of her efforts. Meals were often interrupted by grammar corrections, a sort of real-time spell-checker in the 1950s. Once she heard a word and had a chance to look it up, it was burned into her memory.
Her talent with words and writing was remarkable, and it has taken another sixty years or so for me to appreciate just how remarkable her fascination with words, grammar, and writing was. She had a thirst for knowledge that is missing in adults and students. When she read, she sat beside an unabridged dictionary, and if she encountered a word that was new or confusing, she would stop, look it up, and file it away in her mind for future use.
She was a bit of a personal computer before there were any. A personal, sometimes obnoxious, version of today’s spell checker, Thesaurus, and Grammarly all rolled into one. I asked her to edit one of my books, and it came back so marked up that I was a bit embarrassed. Her mastery of words and grammar was beyond my comprehension.
Two Words
On this website, we publish a short article every ninth day titled “Two Words.” This is a nod to my mother and upbringing. It has me searching for unusual words and still broadens my vocabulary even at eighty.
As a footnote to each article, there is this note
“How we write matters. Spelling and grammar matter. These skills shape how clearly and confidently our ideas reach others. When your message is accurate and well-structured, people focus on it rather than being distracted by mistakes. Written communication skills build credibility, helping you sound thoughtful, capable, and professional in everyday communication. We include these two-word comparisons to aid learning as part of our overall project, and we hope everyone learns from and enjoys them.”
A nod to my childhood and mother. Today, we appreciate readers sending along unusual words to supplement our own searches.
This series of articles holds even more meaning for me, as it focuses on our nation’s core education problem. We summarized it in the previous article this way and we believe it is worth repeating.
Retaining Our Greatness
For America to retain its greatness, appreciation for reading and math skills must return to homes, and adults must model a lifelong quest for learning. Schools cannot be a panacea for broken homes, and we must view literacy as both a parental and moral responsibility, not a government program.
A population that reads and performs math at a sixth-grade level cannot evaluate simple arguments and is easily deceived by politicians.
A population that cannot evaluate even simple arguments cannot govern itself.
A democracy built on self-governance cannot survive for long without citizens capable of reasoning.
Failures in national literacy are a call to action for all of us.
It is not hyperbole to say that our enemies see this weakness and work through teachers’ unions to fight changes,
This may be the greatest challenge we face, because we are fighting for the minds of the next generation. Elections matter, but so does the character of the people we trust with our children’s education. In the end, parents must lead, because no society survives when its citizens cannot think.
References and Further Reading
Reader’s Digest, Encyclopedia.com, encyclopedia.com, Last accessed May 23, 2026.
