Young people need to build up their skills. And as their teacher, it is your responsibility to help them to build these skills. Typically, our educational system really hammers the building up of skills in the grammar school level (which is most likely the driving force behind its name in the first place), and encourages teachers to make those skills into a priority. Notwithstanding the fact that only one of the renowned three R’s actually starts with an R, the skills of reading, writing and reckoning numbers (okay, two out of three is a bit better) are extremely vital for living a successful life. While they are the equals of computer skills, social skills and financial skills, the three R’s are the skills which many schools and teachers focus on in the most formative years of a student’s education. Without effective skills, nothing else is going to work very well later on.
First off, there are a lot of problems which are going to be inevitable in the life of a person who can not read. While not everybody is going to review contracts as a part of their regular life, the ability to take in information through reading it (especially in this day and age, with almost everything being on the computer) is how people get anything done. With that plus the ability to write (which may end up becoming something of an archaic skills, except for occasional uses of shorthand), a person can at least go through the necessary information in this world.
Of course, reading and writing are not nearly everything. Another thing which is extremely important (even if it is often taken for granted) is the ability to do basic math. While math may not be sexy, it is how people figure out how much money they are making and spending, as well as the foundation for engineering and construction skills (which are themselves critical to many other parts of society). There is a reason that these are all called fundamentals. Without them, a lot of the things people do every day would not be feasible.