Decline in Reading of Literature and Books, Not a Decline in Reading
If case you haven't heard yet, the National Endowment for the Arts has released a new report, Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which indicates a sharp decline in book and literary reading among American adults.
I don't want to review all of the details of the report here, but rather comment on the alarmist reactions which, IMHO, don't acknowledge the positive influence on literacy that reading online may be having instead. This Slashdot poster notes that
The study began in 1982, but shows a particularly steep decline from 1992-2002, the first decade of the Age of the Internet. They never seem to draw the conclusion that the Net may have accelerated our turn from this kind of reading, but the timing seems suspicious to me.
No doubt, for the report demonstrates a bias against electronic discourse. Consider the conspicuous absence in "Table 2, U.S. Adults Participation in Cultural, Sports, and Leisure Activities in the 12-Month Period Ending August 2002" (5) of Internet usage, even though television and movies are included. The Internet was surveyed in "Table 1, U.S. Adult Participation in Literary Activities in the 12-Month Period Ending August 2002" (4), but only in reference to its use for learning about or reading literature.
Also, comments by Dana Gioia, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts, are also negatively dismissive of electronic discourse--
Even interactive electronic media, such as video games and the Internet, foster shorter attention
spans and accelerated gratification. (from the preface of the report)
--or necessarily exclude electronic discourse by making the leap that a decline in literary reading as tested by the survey implies a decline in reading in general--
What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading . . . It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group," he said, calling the survey results "deeply alarming. (quoted from The New York Times article Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds).
This sentiment could be one reason why a potentially valuable study which could indicate a shift in reading instead fails to demonstrate that reading is in decline at all. And, by failing to examine this shift, the study ignores the way in which Internet usage, as a highly participative medium, may be encouraging an increase in social and cultural engagement by readers.
For other references to this report, see also Dr. B's Blog and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
- cel4145's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Comments
Reading More
You can get teens to read more. In my house we go for the easy way, when kids want to play computer games there's a trade off. They can play the games if they turn off the speech and turn on the subtitles. I am especially impressed by some of the later games like Neverwinter Nights that have several hundred pages of text.
sb
Blog
yep, and reading more
funny you mention that. just today i was thinking that when ian gets a little older and begins learning to read, one of the things that he and i will do some nights before he goes to bed, instead of reading a book, is play a fantasy role playing game that has lots of text. i'm sure it would make sense to you, sam, because you think in terms of multiple literacies :) yet how many people in english would abhor the idea???
and this reminds me of teaching basic writing a few years back in a computer classroom. i'd come in, and the athletes that i was teaching, many of whom really had some serious writing and reading problems, would often be online reading espn.com or some other sports site. so my guess is that the national endowment for the arts is only seeing half the story. they probably realize that the destruction of the liteary canon has taken away the moral basis upon which people believed that they were supposed to read literature. but there mistake is in assuming that reading literature is not being replaced by reading something else. given access, the internet provides a reading venue for almost everyone, where anyone can easily find something interesting to read, something to their liking.
Ban computers in the classroom?
Harold Bloom wrote an op-ed piece for the LA Times in response to this report where he bemoans the lack of knowledge his students bring to his literature classes. Beyond rehashing his tired old arguements he ends his piece by saying,
I'm not so sure why it would be better for them. Wasting hours in a dusty old card catalog, taking notes on paper, spending money on photocopies, etc? I guess Bloom has never used an electronic database to email an article, novel, etc. to himself so he can read it outside of the library in some quiet corner. Or used a word processor's note feature to make comments about a text? I guess he's still using note cards (or some poorly paid graduate student as a research assistant).
Earlier he claims that his reading habits were developed because,
I guess Bloom would have us all returning to the old card catalogs, or being lucky enough to have a library with copies of certain books, or only access to books and texts that pompous old men like him deem worthy of printing. I guess he has never had the joy of reading online a text that isn't in a library near by, or that some commerical publisher doesn't think is worth printing, or that if it is available is in such frail condition as to make it nearly unreadable. Come to think of it, I do a lot of reading online, probabbly more than I do in book format. I think the question isn't about books per se, but about text. I don't think of myself as a book lover, but as a text lover, a lover of stories, etc. Unlike Bloom I really don't care about the format too much as long as it's a format that is accessible. I can carry around on a USB flash drive a bookcase my beloved Victorian triple deckers and read them just about anywhere and in any font size that works for my fading eyesight. Bloom goes on to boast about his 35,000 plus book collection. I hate to break it to him but I've got a bigger one a few keystrokes away and I cherish it just as much as he does his dusty tomes.
you victorians are lucky
i'm jealous. i wish the primary texts i were interested in were in the public domain. i can imagine that some point in the future, you'll be able to carry around 100 times more victorian lit tha you can read on some portable medium :)
which raises an interesting point. i wonder if sentiments toward electronic texts are different with the sub fields of literature where the primary texts *are* available online because they have entered the public domain? for example, medievalists seem very friendly to electronic texts (could also be because they view electronic discourse based on Ong). would we find that postmodernist or other contemporary fiction expert to be more likely to be less friendly than others because the opportunity to carry around that bookshelf is not there?
Don't Run With Morality...
you might trip and hurt yourself.
Ok, so I do wanna run with it for a moment. The NY Times ran a piece of the study and talks about the fact that supposedly readers are more likely to do charitable works. So not only is the canon the standard by which literacy is judged, but those who read the canon are also more moral and charitable people.
sb
Blog
more moral means more funding
i still haven't read all of the report yet (not sure that i will), but it's clear that the agenda is to make a case for continued endowment of literature through noting how a decline in the reading of literature means a decline in support of the arts.
and i hate the morality ploy, because it does exclude the fact that a weblogger might be reading and writing morethan ever before--just online--while participating in civic minded conversations. i was also amazed that the report dismissed the Internet as a factor, yet notes that television watching has declined slightly. it seems that no one involved in this report has followed the PEW studies which show that television watching among those that use the Internet is signficantly down. or, it's equally likely that anyone who knew of this research discarded it. if one is making a case for increase support of literature, one doesn't want to make a case for the Internet as replacing it in positive ways, now do they?
so, either the report is purposely biased or merely ignorant of the larger context of what is happening with literacy.