Iowa Needs to Celebrate Read Across America, Now More Than Ever

It's officially that week of the year where we celebrate the major fundamental of learning, by doing exactly what it takes to in fact learn: read! Reading has no equivocal. It is the power to grow, comprehend, and improve ourselves. It is a power we often take for granted in Western society. One only needs to look as far as a history book to learn why: but then, you'd have to read it to know.

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Most are not naive to the fact that reading has long shaped religion, law, and civil rights. Control over sacred texts in medieval Europe kept power centralized until figures like Martin Luther translated the Bible and used the Protestant Reformation to promote personal access to scripture. In law, enslaved people in the American South were forbidden from learning to read after events like Nat Turner's Rebellion, because literacy threatened the system of slavery and legal control.

Additionally, restrictions on women’s education in some Muslim countries, such as the secondary and university bans imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, have limited women’s ability to study religious texts independently, understand legal rights, and participate fully in public life. This directly ties literacy to religious interpretation, legal status, and equal rights. Across all of these examples, literacy was directly influenced by who could interpret religious doctrine, understand laws, and claim their rights.

In the United States, we often take this ability to empower ourselves for granted. At my kids' elementary school, they will be enjoying dress up days and reading heavy activities to celebrate the week.

And reading is worth celebrating, because it is the great equalizer. Knowledge, wisdom, and faith all come by hearing. It is with reading and studying that we become firm in our assertions, disciplines, and beliefs. It's how contradictory assertions are weeded out and condemned.

I happen to have a job where reading (and writing) is a must. Each day I attempt to write just two articles that will entice people to engage with them. Media use various tactics: things like trigger words, vague headlines, or common interests. Let me say firstly, thanks for reading, hopefully you find what I have to say engaging, enlightening in some cases, and humorous in others. To quote the Wizarding World's Dumbledore, "Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it." We need to remember this.

People have fought wars simply for the ability to learn, and by extension, read. It is in our best interest that we continue to give reading the weight it deserves. Without the ability, we would be blindly following those who simply could. And as history shows, not everyone can be trusted with authority. Just some food for thought on this extremely eventful week. God Bless America.