Recent visitors to a local D.C. high school were greeted with a remarkable sight—a room full of high school seniors silently reading classic literature. The featured book was Emoji-Dick, a line-by-line translation of Herman Melville’s celebrated novel into emoji, the picture symbols now ubiquitous in modern digital communications. Unfortunately, A Nation at Risk, Again: Emoji Illiteracy in the Twenty-First Century claims that this classroom is the exception, not the rule. The timely report reveals a number of dire findings, but worst of all is the revelation that, according to researchers, an astoundingly low 62 percent of American students were proficient in ELA (Emoji Language Arts)—a full thirty-seven points behind their Japanese peers.
According to authors, most American students can’t grasp such basic distinctions as when to use the “smiling face with heart-shaped eyes” versus the “face throwing a kiss.” These same kids are also frequently the target of online bullying. “Our only comfort regarding these students is that their emoji illiteracy actually shields them from understanding the vast majority of these aggressive online attacks,” says Mike Petrilli, education reformer and cyber bullying expert.
On the bright side, the people behind the Common Core recognize the need for improved emoji instruction and are set to roll out rigorous new ELA standards within the year. These standards will include important skills like “proper sentence punctuation with pizza emojis” and “using context clues to interpret or infer emoji meanings in literature.” Of course, it remains to be seen whether opponents of the current standards will try to sabotage new materials. But at least there’s some hope that this grim situation will soon improve. 
