The Country That Stopped Reading Essay

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We have heard our whole lives that reading is fundamental and in our society reading is one of the most important skills that we learn in school. Although reading skills are essential to succeed in today’s society, reading is not treated as the necessary skill that it should be. Teens are not reading like they used to. Today's society and technology has encouraged more superficial reading or even no reading at all. The digital revolution has made everything more convenient for the children of today's society. However, kids now are spending the time they could be reading on the internet, which has done almost everything except help their minds to grow in the way that minds did in the past.
Naturally, if our literacy rates do not increase, we will end up in a similar literacy issue as Mexico is in now. This is explained in his article, “The Country That Stopped Reading,” the author, David Toscana, claims that the value of reading is so much more than Mexico makes it out to be. Mexico is crumbling due to the fact that the majority of the country is illiterate. He explains, “Despite recent gains in Industrial Development and increasing numbers of engineering graduates, Mexico is floundering socially, politically, …show more content…

According to the article, reading Shakespeare has given these inmates the ability to understand human nature better. It also helps them change their attitudes and strengthen their desire to learn. In addition, Bates claims that Shakespeare helps them start to see new views and ideas opposed to ones that they saw before, which then helps them accept other cultures and people that view things differently than they do. Also, Bates suggests that because of reading Shakespeare, these inmates see themselves as more than something that needs to be fixed. They are able to see themselves as human