When George Borrello and Mike Ferguson ran for county executive, they undertook a series of debates, one of which discussed job availability and the effectiveness of the workforce. A basic problem that emerged for local businesses was finding people who possessed the needed skills, could also pass drug tests and be willing to show up for work each day. “It will be important,” said Mr. Ferguson, “to sit down with education leaders and local colleges to develop a curriculum that teaches skills for meeting job requirements not just for today but for tomorrow.”

Fact is, new technical information is nearly doubling every year. Today’s top 10 in-demand jobs weren’t even thought of 15 years ago. We ask for schools to prepare our kids for jobs that may not yet exist, using technologies still to be invented, in order to solve problems that we don’t know are even problems yet. A daunting task, but not impossible! The real question is: can we afford to wait until our children enter school to begin that preparation?

More than 75 percent of children’s brain development occurs between birth and age 5. That means the quantity and quality of whatever fills their brains during those critical early years is likely to determine their success or failure when they get to school. So, is there anything parents can do to insure that their kids will have the wherewithal to be confident and successful learners? The answer is almost too simple to believe:

Read to them.

How can something so simple be so effective? Because reading is the heart of education, words are the primary structure for learning, and knowledge of every subject in school flows from word comprehension.

When we read and sing to toddlers and infants we fill their brains with the meaningful sounds that make up the words they will eventually need to read and comprehend on their own. Children growing up in homes where parents are active readers who read aloud to them, and sing and play creative word games enter kindergarten with a big advantage. Enabled with a wealth of words, they grasp more easily what they read and hear, are able to express themselves more clearly, and, therefore, have the confidence to meet the unknown challenges they’ll encounter first in school, then continuing throughout their lives.

What about the kids who enter kindergarten with limited comprehension skills due to lack of adequate exposure to words? Starting out disadvantaged, they often have to struggle to keep up. They may grow to dislike reading and avoid it since they cannot do it well. The less they read, the less they know. The less they know, the sooner they may fail, or worse, drop out of school, which frequently results in eroded self-esteem. Low self-esteem can lead to many different forms of harmful behavior, the least of which may be the lack of initiative to show up for work, or the inability to pass a drug test. Eighty-two percent of prison inmates are school dropouts.

But is it possible to break the pattern of illiteracy for parents who have not been raised with a love for reading, or do not possess vocabulary and/or comprehension skills to share with their kids? The answer is yes, and, again, the solution is simple:

Libraries.

Libraries offer safe and welcoming environments that provide free and easy access to a multitude of opportunities to develop a love and appreciation of books, reading, and life-long learning. Simple interventions such as summer reading programs, toddler story times and 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten go a long way toward providing children with the skills they need to succeed in school. Investing in libraries is, and always has been, the key to education, literacy enhancement, and sustained literacy skills for life — proven tools for reducing poverty, crime, domestic violence and drug abuse (not to mention improving the effectiveness of our work force.)

Low literacy rates cost the United States government billions of dollars per year in work force non-productivity, crime, and loss of revenue due to unemployment. Fourteen percent of our U.S. adult population can’t read well enough to fill out a job application. It would take nothing less than a miracle to fix all that. But, I have a good idea how we might prevent it from occurring:

Read to your child!

Mary McCague is board president of the Lakewood Memorial Library.