It's easy to chimp at American illiteracy and extrapolate its consequences [ignorance, violence, crime, addiction, trillions in lost productivity, being unevolved and not very nice...], but it gets tedious. The crisis is sufficiently dire for the education system to try something that actually works [the blissful solitude of hands-free reading inside a movable meditation chamber] when they may soon have more money than they'll know what to do with after the dismantlement of the Department of Education and each state's subsequent windfall. They might want to seize on breakthrough technology that actually works.
Then again, maybe the American public school system is an exhausted babysitter that can't objectively pull away from the sticky blob of this mental health crisis. Throwing manpower at illiteracy is as ineffectual as it's been since the 1960s. Current methods of reading remediation are harder than they have to be, and falling behind is a cycle of bad-to-worse deterioration.
Nevertheless, nothing is so broken that it can't be fixed.
Let's think positively.
Let's dispassionately consider iIliteracy as an engineering problem.
And let's discern that the easiest way out of it is up.
Overhead in Bed turns the simple act of reading upside down.
The best way for a child to learn to read is in the lap of the one person in the world they absolutely adore. In kids-who-have-been-read-to's lifelong habit of reading, there will always remain a sacred memory of their parent teaching them to read while their consciousness was expanding at the rate of the universe, a learned-association between reading and love strong enough to free their minds from peer pressure and self-loathing, strong enough to withstand insecurity, carry them through adversity, beat back insanity, and achieve escape velocity.
Because there are too many American kids whose parents don't partake of this dependably wonderful experience, and because a few hours of tutoring will never do it, it's left up to kids to learn the skill themselves - which they're perfectly capable of doing within the Overhead in Bed Experience.
All a kid needs to learn to read well are: phonics, privacy, and *compelling material.
Distractions? Afuera! A book hovering in stationary free-float in a closed and quiet atmosphere accelerates the recognition process that is reading. Overhead in Bed turns reading on its head. The wonderment of looking up [leaves, clouds, stars, a book in stationary free-float] effects a knowledge-acquisition that’s easy and precipitant.
At its essence, learning how to read is learning how to learn, which is self-preservation. As our primary motivational instinct, there's nothing passive about self-preservation.
A kid learning how to read is our ancestor learning how to make fire.
Reading is active and intimate. It's not a passive slouch. As theater-of-the-mind simulation, reading results in neuro-plasticity, mental strength, better health, personal success and happiness.
Passivity is fine, it's relaxing, but it's being done-unto. Three hours of Instagram can be captivating, but it's still passive. So is 'television' whatever that word means now, low-cognition screen time. AI and LLMs lower IQ by accumulating cognitive debt. Thinking for oneself appears to be on the extinction horizon.
Activity is muscle-building. Activity begets strength. Passivity leads to atrophy and powerlessness and gullibility. Which could be why American kids are fixed in failure. The less-informed are more manipulable and victimizable, and there are enough arch determinists in the American public education system to inculcate a culture of faultlessness, they've been doing it for fifty years. “Your Honor, my client didn't steal that car - soCIEty stole that car!” San Francisco’s participation-trophy mindset dropped algebra so the dumb kids wouldn't feel bad. Someone needs to tell them that American exceptionalism isn't lowest-common-denominator. And when did IQ tests and cursive writing vanish into The Land of Lost Buttons and Socks?
Reading yields a self-confidence strong enough to push off uncertainties that can adhere to a passive mind like moss.
The tranquility of Overhead in Bed relaxes the body and frees the mind from bothersome stimuli. It eliminates attention-partitioning and the physical froo frah that gets in the way of heightened consciousness. Mens sana in corpore sano.
Readers are analytical, articulate, curious and creative. They have lower stress levels and higher self-esteem. They have good vocabularies, they're resilient, and they're in control of their wealthier, longer-lived lives. CEOs read a book a week.
Imagine a parent’s relief when her kid begins doing well in school. Imagine the solace in knowing that her high-achiever's strength-of-mind will guarantee him a fair shot in the new American meritocracy.
*Compelling material counters the sin of low expectations. Learning how hypersonic missiles fly at five times the speed of sound might interest a kid more than Doctor Seuss telling him, “... house mouse house on mouse.” Don't laugh: “Hop on Pop” is taught to eleven-year-olds in Baltimore. Some so-called 'math illiterate' kids can prognosticate betting lines and point-spreads better than Las Vegas bookmakers.
If he were still alive, Ted Giesel would be appalled at America's illiteracy, and he just might concur that if a kid can free his mind from consciousness-dissipating interference and be afforded some privacy from his insecure environment ... the rest will follow.
Oh, the places you'll go when failure is impossible.