The NEA’s “To Read or Not To Read” ought not to have been written
Washington, DC — Today, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announces the release of To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, "a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States."
"To Read or Not To Read
gathers statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and
skills of children, teenagers, and adults. The compendium reveals
recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing
trends that have severe consequences for American society."
According the authors the data, without question or ambiguity, prompt three unsettling conclusions:
• Americans are spending less time reading.
• Reading comprehension skills are eroding.
• These declines have serious civic, social, cultural, and economic implications.
Now, really, why did it take even one study, let alone the forty of which this report speaks, to come to the conclusion that Americans are spending less time reading? Wasn’t it always inevitable that the amount of time given to reading would drop off precipitously with first the advent of film, then television, and now the internet?
Where was time for reading going to be found given the amount of time that we know people were giving to the latter three activities? I assume that the authors themselves are readers, should we then presume that too much reading has resulted in their loss of common sense? Perhaps they should read less, and get out there where people are and understand better what people are doing (instead of what they’re not doing).
For how else could the authors have failed to see, that what they are at great pains to conclude by their investigations, just had to be. Common sense ought to have told them well prior to their possessing the results of the surveys and reports, that if one does more of one thing one has no choice but to do less of the other. It can’t be any other way.
Their second conclusion is even more inane. "As one reads less one’s reading comprehension skills erode." Duh…
In fact, that may not even be true. It will depend on the meaning one gives to "reading comprehensive skills." My grandson navigates the internet by following (reading) signs and directions. And he does it much quicker than I do because of the amount of time he gives to that sort of thing. If it takes him longer to read, say Dickens, which it does, not to mention Shakespeare, because of his not having read much literature, so what.
My grandson’s ability to read great works of literature didn’t erode because of the time he spend navigating, and reading, on myriad internet sites. He never even had the skills to read literature that only come from reading literature. If the authors of the great works of literature some day do interest him he will have absolutely no trouble, given all the comparable skills he has learned, acquiring whatever skills are necessary to quickly get up to speed in reading these authors. But until he has that interest it’s not important that he does.
The third conclusion, that "these declines have serious civic, social, cultural, and economic implications," is pure opinion. This smacks of being out of touch with the real world. By ‘serious’ I suppose the writer means unfavorable, perhaps destructive, and such can’t possibly be shown to be true.
I could just as well say that the time people spend watching films and television, plus surfing on the internet, has serious, this time, however, meaning constructive and positive civic, social, cultural, and economic implications. How is one to determine whether viewing more, and reading less, has destructive or constructive implications? One can’t.
And in fact aren’t our civic lives much more positively impacted by our television and internet browsing than by, say, our reading of poetry and novels? One might readily defend the position that the latter are mostly detrimental to any civic involvement at all.
Now the organization coming to all these serious conclusions is the National Endowment for the Arts. And me? What am I, not a National Endowment. How can this be, that the National Endowment doesn’t know what it is talking about and I do? Am I missing something essential in regard to all this? You tell me.
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