Reading's End

*Less than half of all Americans have read a "work of creative literature" in the past year.

*Only 13% are "proficient" readers, capable of "comparing viewpoints in two editorials."

*Between 1992 and 2005, the percentage of 12th graders who reported they had talking about their reading with their friends at least once a week declined from 54% to 37%.

These and other statistics can be found in a piece by Caleb Crain in the current issue of The New Yorker. I've linked to the article in the headline to this post, i.e., if you click on the headline, you'll go directly to the article.

After establishing that reading books and newspapers is in a steep decline in the U.S. and Europe, the article explores the science of reading. As a human ability, reading developed much too recently for our genes to select for it; instead, we've adapted other neurobiological capabilities in order to train our brains to understand written language.

Until quite recent times, only the elite read books, and it appears we are returning to that type of society. Most people no longer read any serious works of literature or journalism. Instead, most people watch a lot of television. This habit requires an entirely different set of brain activity, and numerous studies have suggested that, unlike bookworms, those who get their information primarily via TV end up knowing far less about issues like the war, and comprehending even less.

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The arrival of the Internet is often blamed as a contributing factor in the decline in reading, but the evidence here is less persuasive. While watching TV is passive, surfing the web is an interactive activity.

Email is a blessing because it gets people writing who might otherwise not write. It takes time and skill to compose an email message of any complexity, and therefore, email is perfectly good brain activity. Blogging is even better, and millions of people blog.

Finally, as text-messaging takes hold among the young, people are writing and reading messages, albeit in a code that (I predict) will supplant written English as the primary form of communication by the middle of this century. One can imagine a new Shakespeare emerging, a person with an ear for this new dialect, who can create plays and perhaps other literary forms (though probably not sonnets) that pushes texting to a new level of artistry.

Like most teachers, professors, librarians, and journalists, I am alarmed at the decline of reading serious books and periodicals. But, I'm not yet ready to dismiss the new forms of interactive communication and story-telling as lacking merit. To the contrary, I remain hopeful the democratization of information will in fact prevent our return to a society where only the elite have access to literature, art, and the facts that we all need to make responsible decisions going forward -- as citizens, parents, and as inhabitants of a planet in peril.

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