Literacy - Public Library Efforts To Promote Literacy

Public Library Efforts To Promote Literacy

The public library has long been a force promoting literacy in many countries. In the United States, the release of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) report in 2005 revealed that approximately 14% of adults function at the lowest level of literacy; 29% of adults function at the basic functional literacy level and cannot help their children with homework beyond the first few grades. The lack of reading skills hinders adults from reaching their full potential. They might have difficulty getting and maintaining a job, providing for their families, or even reading a story to their children. For adults, the library might be the only source of a literacy program.

Read more about this topic:  Literacy

Famous quotes containing the words public, library, efforts and/or promote:

    Bryan is the least of a liar I know in public life. I have always found him direct and honest, and he never goes back on what he has said to me in private—a rare thing, if found, in public men. I found him purely frank.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    With sighs more lunar than bronchial,
    Howbeit eluding fallopian diagnosis,
    She simpers into the tribal library and reads
    That Keats died of tuberculosis . . .
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
    Adam Smith (1723–1790)