Reading is Fundamental to So Much - Yet Cut

Deficit reduction talks permeate the headlines like an ongoing sport saga. Republicans gain an inch after hours and hours of costly talks. Democrats take back the inch and move the ball a few yards further only to be outmaneuvered with crazy plays that involve billion dollar hail Mary passes and billion dollar blitzes. In this may-lay of budgetary posturing, someone on the sidelines got hurt. And millions will be effected for years to come.

RIF (Reading is Fundamental) ,a small in the scheme of things federal program of $25 million dollars, was cut from the federal budget. While deficit hawks squawk of victory when any money is taken from the government beast, the loss of RIF funding is shortsighted and costly. History is permeated with examples of significant contributions made by Americans who discovered their passion for learning in the sequestered nooks of a library and between the pages of a book.

I love music and the great lineage of learning passed from generation to generation through song. Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jeff Tweedy, Pete Seeger, and countless other artists who've shaped our American soul with songs of freedom and love were inspired by a man who as a boy found his salvation in books.

Joe Klein's stirring biography of Woody Guthrie details how a next door neighbor and a library card propelled young Woody's lust for learning. Guthrie spent hours in the sanctuary of  a local library immersed in books. Resulting in a hard scrabble but highly literate man whose poetic songs sustained our nation's conscience for social justice during the Great Depression and WW II. RIF took the simple inspirational concept - get kids books -that Woody had to actually strive for as a young boy and made it part of the public school culture.

Reading opens the world. Reading opens the mind. It is the purest form of quality communication available to many disadvantaged students. Text delivery methods have changed. But to assume we all have equal access to the internet and books is a failed assumption similar to thinking everyone had access to books in the 1920's and 1930's. Such a simple and powerful program, with years of effectiveness, being cut is indicative of the tragic loss of long term remedies to short sided posturing.

With 400,000 volunteers RIF's reach was wide, from the red wood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. How many potential passions will go unlit without consistent access to books? If this land is truly made for you and me, why does it seem lately to be made for only a few at the top with money and power to make the world seem like sport. A sport where spectators get hurt, ignored, and shut out.

Woody Guthrie; A Life (http://astore.amazon.com/bew-byrneeducationalworks-20/detail/0385333854)