Reading, newspapers and the future
I was failing miserably at explaining to a friend why we published this story about reading -- or, rather, about the growing number of people who don't read much of anything -- as our Sunday A1 centerpiece. It's an important story, I said:
The trend has profound implications for our future work force, for the ability of people to make informed choices about the future of the country. Those who read less are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to vote and participate in civic affairs, the NEA finds.
But it's also a soft story. No bombs raining or bullets flying. No government corruption and no Spitzer sex. So why did it deserve big front page play, he asked.
I've been thinking about that conversation this week. That it has more resonance here than call-girl sex, money under the table or bullets became clear to me as I listened to the speakers at One Guilford this afternoon.
Here's the fact: Nearly 40 percent of the incoming students at GTCC do not read at the 8th grade level. That's what one panelist, Dr. Kathryn Baker Smith, vice president for educational support services at GTCC, said.
Nearly 40 percent read at the elementary or middle school level? Breathtaking.
Time was, people read the newspaper, and while they may not have thought much about it, they were reading, thinking, analyzing, expanding their horizons -- all that stuff. But the point is that they were reading every day. Not bills of lading. Not receipts. Not menus. Not the crawl on SportsCenter. Reading stories.
Perhaps I'm adding two plus two and coming up with 17, but I wonder how the decline of newspaper reading and the growing inability of a generation to read are connected. No, I'm not proposing some newspapers-as-medicine prescription. I know that train has left the station for this generation. But it is yet another cultural milepost that has just zipped past in the rear-view mirror.
At how high does the percentage need to get at GTCC before we as a community become alarmed enough to do something?
Comments (4)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
Illiteracy is a problem in our society, but Hardin's story unnecessarily overstates the case. For example, he writes, "...the percentage of Americans who spent any leisure time reading fiction in the previous year dropped from 57 percent in 1982 to 47 percent two decades later. That's the equivalent of 20 million people." Not so. The original National Endowment for the Arts' survey compared "prose literacy" in 1982 and 2002. The U.S. population in that time period grew from 232 million to 290 million. So, by my back-of-the-envelope math, the number of U.S. readers actually grew from 132 million to 136 million.
Perhaps Hardin is deficient in "quantitative literacy."
The NEA surveys tend to emphasize "prose literacy" -- reading novels, short stories, plays and poetry. The U.S. Department of Education takes a wider view, examining three categories: prose, document and quantitative literacy. Document literacy means being able to read and understand such things as bills, maps, transportation schedules, and prescription labels. "Quantitative literacy" means that a reader can make math calculations based on material he/she reads. From 1993 to 2003, in the department's National Assessment of Adult Literacy, prose and document literacy remained unchanged, but quantitative literacy increased.
I'd suggest that Hardin cooked the books, so to speak, when he compared apples and oranges and omitted some lemons that might have soured his argument.
Note, too, that neither the NEA nor NAAL quantified Internet reading. It may be some time, if ever, before either organization produces surveys that incorporate and quantify online reading and literacy. The World Wide Web did not become publicly accessible until 1993 (the Web will turn 15 years old on April 30) and "literacy" surveys to date have concentrated on users' ability to manipulate the Web, rather than on how well they understand what they see and read. Even without statistical support, however, I see no reason to disagree with the observation by Alexandra Rankin Macgill of the Pew Internet Life Center that, "With the increase of time people spend in front of computer screens looking for and processing information, it may be that today we spend more time reading than we did in generations past—it is just that what we read is on the screen rather than in the form of a book."
Perhaps, before we discuss the "problem" of "the growing inability of a generation to read," we need to agree on a definition of what it means to read.
Posted on March 13, 2008 1:36 PM
Perhaps.
I blurred the line between illiteracy, which is really what Dr. Smith was talking about, and reading for pleasure and a deeper knowledge. I did that purposely because, to me, it feeds into the same thing.
I know from watching my own children consume digital media that they aren't reading anything in depth of more than a paragraph or two. On occasion, not getting to the third paragraph hinders understanding. (Unless they are writing college term papers, and then they read more indepth.)
Posted on March 13, 2008 2:18 PM
My 15-year-old, who's online as I write this, is reading Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" (for pleasure, not school), just finished Mike Huckabee's "Character Makes A Difference" and immediately before that read Steven C. Gould's "Jumper" and Bill Buford's "Heat." His best friend and classmate claims not to have read a book in the past year, except (possibly) for a school assignment. They're both smart, well-adjusted kids with a pretty good understanding of what's going on in their world. In regards to reading, what they share is that a lot of what they get is on the Internet.
I check my son's computer's history file from time to time. He jumps around a lot on the Web. I doubt he reads much digital material in depth. That's not why he's online. What he gets is breadth of knowledge. Maybe, like the Platte River, that knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep, but he navigates the Web as surely as the old voyageurs and fur traders explored the West 300 years ago. I'd argue that he and your kids and many of their peers have traded some depth of understanding from books and newspapers for a wider knowledge of the world from surfing the Web.
Yes, Guilford County taxpayers should be alarmed that ONE THIRD of their high school students can't pass the English I end-of-course test at grade level. However, I'd be concerned, too, that Guilford County students have 14 percent fewer computers (and 18 percent fewer Internet-connected computers) than the state average and that one in five eighth graders (20 percent) can't pass the state's computer-skills test.
It might be interesting to ask GTCC about its incoming students' computer literacy and whether there's a correlation with their reading ability.
Posted on March 13, 2008 4:47 PM
At how high does the percentage need to get at GTCC before we as a community become alarmed enough to do something?
I heard this too. Here's other questions.
How long has GTCC known the percentage was this high? Who pays for the remedial education? Where does the funding come from for the remedial education? Are taxpayers aware of the amount of remedial education done by community colleges? What is the success ratio of the remedial education?
Posted on March 17, 2008 4:08 PM