Remember a few months ago when I suggested that reading was still a worthwhile activity for the American public? Well, this report seems to support that idea (as if we needed the extra confirmation, right?)
To wit:
Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s
book club aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to
be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores
are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic
disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access
to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in
basic writing skills.Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s
book club aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to
be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores
are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic
disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access
to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in
basic writing skills.
It gets worse:
Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary
school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle
school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These
trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among
young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop
that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed
that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on
reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.The study also examined results from reading tests administered to
adults and found a similar trend: The percentage of adults who are
proficient in reading prose has fallen at the same time that the
proportion of people who read regularly for pleasure has declined.
And the punchline:
In an interview Mr. Gioia said that the statistics could not explain
why reading had declined, but he pointed to several commonly accepted
culprits, including the proliferation of digital diversions on the
Internet and other gadgets, and the failure of schools and colleges to
develop a culture of daily reading habits. In addition, Mr. Gioia said,
“we live in a society where the media does not recognize, celebrate or
discuss reading, literature and authors.”
Nah, that would be too . . . French.
I’m the first to admit that reading is indeed a cultural activity. In the house where I grew up, books were things to be treasured, horded, read aloud when one was young and read silently when one grew older. My brother and I were reading The New York Times by the time we were three years old (so my mother says) and, unlike my math scores which teetered on grade level throughout elementary and junior high school, my reading scores in the NYC citywide tests were 12.9 by third grade and pretty much stayed there. The reason for this is mostly because my mother was raised in exactly that kind of environment–books were A Big Deal, plain and simple. It wasn’t until I was well into college that I began to realize that not every household was like that. I suspect the situation is worse now.
So seriously! Read! Now!