Considering the amount of impact a school has on a child, especially at an earlier age, there has been an increasing demand for schools to step up their game as parents started to worry about their children's ability to read. But, there has to be an understanding that public education has never been more effective than before. It's clear that the people in charge of education do have much attention on the literary skills of the young, but their efforts haven't paid off significantly. The main problem remains on the fact that if kids don't want to read, they won't. In this age of digital communication, nobody really has to read the books the schools assign.
The Internet usually get a bad reputation among the older generation, while the younger denies it vehemently. There are truths to both sides of the argument. It's the same for this argument too, the Internet has made it easier and cheap to get books, but made it more irrelevent. Despite not being a necessity, the Internet seems to take up a lot of time for people-too much for reading. Surely, if parents were to restrict their children's access to the Internet, they would have an incline to read more, right? That's very probable but how much more likely is it that kids will read more and for fun?
Maybe it's just natural that as time passes by, reading is becoming less important than other aspects of life...it's not, but that is what many seem to think so. Back decades ago, books symbolized knowledge and education. It was power. Now it might as well mean that someone has too much free time. Anybody would know the power of an opinion formed from the general public. If people think books are irrelevent, there is no doubt that books will become irrelevent; regardless of whatever they contain. If the general public could agree that books should be read by everybody, then it's pretty much guaranteed that almost everybody will read books. But how could the opinions of billions be changed?
For starters, read. If you already do, read classics. If you already do read more things. If you already do, just read everything. This problem wouldn't be becoming a huge problem as it is right now if more people simply decided to read on their own accord. You'd be suprised how entertaining books can be. Many people just don't know because they never started. Read and encourage others too, that's probably the most effect, and probable solution to this mess anyway.