“The Right to Read” examines low literacy rates among children in the United States, the issues leading to the low rates, and what is being done to remedy the issues. Speaking to CBS News, Mackenzie said, “To create a third of our children who are illiterate, is catastrophic.”

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress 37% of 4th graders in the United States read “below basic” — defined as unable to read. Low literacy rates disproportionately affect minority groups including Black, Hispanic and Native American students.

“This has been a humbling experience, and I truly feel as though this non-partisan issue of illiteracy across America and my little film will have a big impact in turning the tides,” Mackenzie said.

Historically it was hypothesized that children could pick up reading the same way they pick up speaking by observing their parents; however, recent research shows that because reading is a difficult task for the brain to learn, children must be taught how to read using very straight-forward instruction.

“We naturally know how to speak,” said Mackenzie. “We’re born knowing that language will be acquired, and we will learn to talk, but learning how to read is a complicated neuroscience task. It must be done in a very explicit way.”

The film follows Kareem Weaver, NAACP activist and educator, Sabrina Causey, an elementary educator in Oakland, and two American families with young children fighting curricular changes to improve child literacy. Describing the danger of low literacy rates, Weaver says in the film “illiteracy is the pipeline to prison, it’s also the pipeline to homelessness, it’s the pipeline to unemployment and depression.”

The film was produced by LeVar Burton, the producer and host of “Reading Rainbow,” a children’s television series that aired on PBS from 1983 to 2006 and encouraged reading through narrative stories and special guests. Burton told the Los Angeles Times in a recent article, “Literacy is at the heart of our democracy. And if you can’t read, you can’t access anything and function in a democracy.”

According to Weaver, low literacy rates are attributed to a lack of science-based teaching. Speaking to CBS News, Burton said: “We have failed them [American students] by not giving them evidence-based instruction.”

Dr. Mackenzie has produced films promoting social change, including “Kick Like a Girl,” “Where’s Herbie?,” “Sugar Babies,” “Lead With Love,” “Dying in Vein: The Opiate Generation,” and the 2018 Emmy Award-winning film “Quiet Heroes,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Change has to begin in our own tiny corner of the universe, right? And the real takeaway here, I think, is that literacy is freedom. It is the ultimate freedom. It’s the freedom of the mind, the body and the soul. So, for me, I think our film is about activism and advocacy,” Mackenzie said.

To learn more or watch the film, visit https://therighttoreadfilm.org/.