How could you persuade someone that reading is important?

Question

And what are the perks of being a master reader?Does knowing how to read help us esp.in this technologically advanced world?

Answer 1

Take the person to one meeting of a volunteer project to teach adults to read. Listen to the stories of the people who are marginalized in jobs, in everything they do, including shopping, using medicines and household products, because they cannot read. Listen to the ones who have learned to read after having lived such a marginal life, and how they developed into a whole new person, able to perceive a reality they had only vaguely glimpsed before they learned to read.

A lot of people think because we have become so visual with television and DVDs and all sorts of entertainments that scarcely require more than very simple reading, that reading is less important now. You cannot get an education of any relevant kind if you cannot read, you cannot get a halfway decent job if you cannot read the application form, and you cannot do most of the things that make it so good to be alive in the 21st century.

You couldn't even participate in Yahoo Answers if you couldn't read.

Beyond mere literacy, however, there is another whole world of books. A world so rich Dover Thrift Editions can find enough quotes about reading and books to make a whole book in itself.

"In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours." William Ellery Channing

"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration." Andrew Carnegie

"The great thing is to be always reading but not to get bored -- treat it not like work, more as a vice! Your book bill ought to be your biggest extravagance." C.S. Lewis

"I find television very educating. Every time someone turns the set on, I go into the other room and read a book." Groucho Marx