On the Importance of Reading free essay sample

Census Bureau matches to re? ect the total American population as of the previous year’s census. We interview those people in their homes – a very extensive interview about their participation in arts and civics activities – and we follow up with other phone interviews. This allows us to judge in an objective way (the error rate is about two-tenths of 1 percent – about 20 times the size of your normal national poll) how the arts are doing. We did this a few years ago. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to ? nd what we found.To summarize, reading has declined among every group of adult Americans: book, magazine, newspaper or online. If you carry a poem in your wallet and you look at it once a year, we count you. If you have just ? nished Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks in German for the third time, or you’ve read one page of a Harlequin Romance and given up because it’s too hard, we count you as equals. We are very egalitarian! What you see for the ? rst time in American history is that less than half of the U. S. adult American population is reading literature.I’m going to talk about what the causes of the problem are, and then I’ll talk about the consequences and the solutions. To go into the data a little big further, we see that we’re producing the ? rst generation of educated people, in some cases college graduates, who no longer become lifelong readers. This is disturbing for reasons above and â€Å"Reading has declined among every group of adult Americans: every beyond those that a poet might be expected to age group, educational group, income group, region and race. bring to the podium. every age group, educational group, income group, Literature awakens, enlarges, enhances and re? nes our region and race – although Asian reading is ? at (the humanity in a way that almost nothing else can. single number of several thousand in this report that Franz Kafka once said that the book is the axe by is actually directionally positive). In some case the which we break open the frozen seas within us. That metaphor is very true. We tend, by our very nature, declines have been precipitous. This has been going on for 20 years, but the trends are getting worse, to be encased in our own egos. What literature does and the worst declines are among younger American – nowhere more powerfully than in ? ction (the novel and the short story) – is put us in the inner lives of adults. In the last 20 years, younger American adults have gone from being the people in our society who other people in the dailyness of their psychological, social, economic and imaginative existence. This read the most to the people who read the least. Reading pro? iency has fallen among all makes us feel, more intensely probably than anything Americans, and it has fallen the worst among adults else, the reality of other points of view, of other lives. That is obviously in jeopardy if we now have aged 18 to 24, 25 to 34. It has fallen the worst among men, and, indeed, if you look at our study and other a society in which the majority of adults are no longer reading. But there are other things that we studies, only about one-third of adult males are doing what we call â€Å"literary reading. † Know that literary can actually measure.Something seems to happen reading sounds much better than it is. We de? ne with readers that does not happen with non-readers. I cannot scienti? cally prove that it’s causal, but I can literary reading as any imaginative text – essentially any novel, short story, poem or dramatic work in a scienti? cally prove with a wearisome amount of data 18 THE COMMONWEALTH June 2006 that it is at the very least correlative. pre-adults, you see the same kinds of declines among If you are a reader, you are overwhelmingly more high school students and eighth graders.You see this likely to engage in positive social and civic behavior decline in the amount of reading, the command of versus non-readers. If you read, you’re 300 percent reading and in the ability to read at any complex level. more likely to go to the theater and museums, 200 As a Californian, I’m particularly ashamed. If you percent more likely to go to the movies, and over look at eighth graders, California ranks 49th out of 50 twice – in some measures three times – as likely to do states. If you look at fourth graders, we rank 48th.I volunteer work or charity work. And the argument know all the excuses – immigration and things like that this is a function of income – because â€Å"Literature awakens, enlarges, enhances and re nes the more education you have, the more likely you are to read; the more education you have, our humanity in a way that almost nothing else can. † the higher your income is – isn’t true. The poorest group of American readers does volunteer this – but as a Mexican-American Californian, I am work and charity work at twice the level of the richest ashamed.Our public education system is not doing its non-readers. You see other things that are rather job – especially in this state, which once enjoyed one surprising. If you are a reader, you’re more likely of the greatest public school systems in the world. to exercise, more likely to go to sports games, more The problem is now at a tipping point. In the likely to play amateur sports – bowling or softball last 20 years, the number of adult readers in the – and much more likely to be aware of and involved United States has stayed the same. The number of in your own community. There is a deep and arguably non-readers has increased by 40 million. There are statistical connection between readers and civic now a few more non-readers than readers. If we involvement. The kind of communities that we want allow the problem to get much worse, the better part to live in are, by de? nition, communities of readers. of this cultural capacity for reading, imagination, The kinds of citizens a democracy needs are readers. civic engagement and human enlargement will be irrecoverable. The interesting thing about people who read Why did it happen?First, something isn’t versus people who don’t read, is that they do exactly the same things – except that one group reads and the happening in schools. Somehow, we are not other one doesn’t. Readers play video games, watch connecting reading with the expectation of pleasure television; they do these things, but they do them in and the sense that reading is a necessary component a balanced way, versus people who are, increasingly, of a life of self-realization, of exploration of who you simply passive consumers of electronic entertainment. re and what your individual potential is. That used If you look at our data and the data of other to be the goal of high school and college education in studies, you are almost compelled to believe that some ways – maybe quite modestly in high school, there is now a bifurcation in the American population but ambitiously in college. Now it seems we are between one group, which takes an active stance increasingly trying to focus on producing entry-level towards managing their own lives, and another group, workers for a service economy.That is not the same which is increasingly passive. The passive people as producing free citizens for a democracy. come home, watch TV, play video games, go onto the Second, and this isn’t arguable, we are now Internet, talk on the phone, go back to the TV, put a surrounded by a great welter of electronic alternatives DVD in – and then it’s time to go to bed. to reading. About 20 years ago, the average American I believe that there is something fundamentally household had one TV, one record player, one radio intellectual and spiritual that happens to readers and maybe one phone.Now we’ve got two to three through the combination of the sustained focused TVs, two video games, two computers, countless attention that you bring to reading, the use of your phones (if you count both wired and cell phones), imagination to create pictures of the scenes, characters DVDs, VCRs, the Internet, etc. Even when you leave and situations, and also your use of memory to draw the house, you have your iPod, so there’s now an those pictures out, versus being passive and having oppor tunity or a risk – depending on how you want to the images, pacing, tone and everything given to you. e? ne it – of never cutting off this predetermined ? ow of electronic entertainment, of which you are largely a This is a disturbing situation, and it’s not likely to get better. Why isn’t it likely to get better? This passive consumer. is rather scary. If you see what’s happening with