Micah Zarin's Blog

The reading crisis has, by now, been sufficiently documented. Scores have declined across demographic categories. Attention has narrowed. Many students experience extended prose as a form of physical discomfort. These facts are no longer contested, and therefore no longer useful as grounds for debate. The remaining question is not whether literacy is in retreat, but whether it is economical to continue pretending that it can be restored.

For years, we have attempted to address the problem through curricular reform, technological supplementation, and renewed emphasis on foundational skills. These efforts have produced measurable activity and negligible results. Phonics returns every year like a comet. Screen time is condemned, rehabilitated, and condemned again. New platforms promise engagement and deliver only analytics. The common feature of these interventions is that they require students to read more carefully in a culture that has made careful reading increasingly irrational.

It may be time, therefore, to pursue a solution proportionate to our actual priorities rather than our stated ones. I propose that we address the reading crisis by appropriating an additional $100 billion for Israel.

The advantages of this plan are numerous. To begin with, it requires no modification of classroom practice. Teachers may continue assigning texts with the understanding that close reading is no longer essential to civic participation. Students, relieved of the burden of interpretation, will be free to approach material instrumentally, scanning for approved conclusions rather than struggling with ambiguity. This reflects how reading already functions outside the classroom and will therefore ease the transition from education to public life.

Moreover, the proposal aligns literacy instruction with prevailing norms of discourse. In contemporary political culture, texts are not read for meaning but for positioning. One reads until the author’s alignment is clear, after which further attention becomes redundant. By decisively underwriting a predetermined geopolitical narrative, the state clarifies for students that interpretation is not a skill to be cultivated but a risk to be managed. This removes confusion and reduces unnecessary cognitive expenditure.

Critics may object that such a policy does nothing to improve decoding skills or deepen appreciation for language. This objection is accurate but misplaced. Current initiatives aimed at improving these outcomes have similarly failed, despite considerable expense. The difference is that they persist in the fiction that literacy is an independent good rather than a derivative one. Reading improves only when the surrounding culture rewards slowness, doubt, and unfinished thought. At present, it does not.

The proposed allocation also offers the benefit of narrative closure. One of the principal obstacles to deep reading is the proliferation of unresolved complexity. Competing histories, overlapping grievances, and moral friction all demand sustained attention. By contrast, a fully funded conclusion relieves students of the obligation to weigh claims or inhabit uncertainty. The story ends where the money lands. This is pedagogically efficient.

It should be noted that this approach would not prevent motivated individuals from reading deeply on their own time. Those with a private inclination toward difficulty may still pursue it, much as some citizens choose to bake bread or learn Latin. The state, however, would no longer be obligated to pretend that such behavior can be generalized.

In sum, the proposal acknowledges what existing reforms will not: that we have reorganized public life around speed, alignment, and resolution, while continuing to demand from children a mode of reading that contradicts all three. The additional $100 billion simply stops asking students to live inside it.

This may strike some as cynical. It is, however, realistic. And realism, like literacy, is best preserved by those willing to admit when its conditions no longer exist.