Reading is in trouble?

I followed a link in the ASCD SmartBrief on-line newsletter to * The demise of reading: hype or cultural crisis?" and read the article, "The Loss of Literature," by Lawrence Hardy. He was bowing the old saw about e-texts and visual media replacing the reading of books, especially literary books.

There was a link for comments entitled "Your Turn." It asked:

Are your students more interested in "The O.C." than Catcher in the Rye? Would they rather discuss "Survivor" than Lord of the Flies?

Given the dominance of television in our culture, maybe those questions are unfair. Well, then, let's ask them another way: Are your students reading books at all -- other than (parts of) books they absolutely must know for the test? Are they reading much of anything?

In this month's cover story, Senior Editor Lawrence Hardy examines a report by the National Endowment for the Arts that says literary reading -- the consumption of fiction, poetry, plays, etc. -- is declining precipitously and that the fastest decline is among young people aged 18 to 24.

Some educators say the NEA has hit on a serious problem -- indeed, a crisis, as the report says. Others say the NEA's predictions are exaggerated.

What do you think? Is reading in trouble? Please choose a response from those listed below and send an e-mail -- with December Your Turn as the subject -- to your-turn@[deleted on principle. It wouldn't go anyway]. We'll report the results in February.

A. Yes. Reading is in trouble. On average, students seem to be reading less of everything -- books, newspapers, magazines -- and it's not being replaced, either in quality or quantity, by online material. (Please elaborate.)

B. Yes. Reading is in trouble. Students may be reading as much as ever, but an increasing amount of it is online material that is not of the same quality as the books they've given up.

C. Relax. Reading's not in trouble. The move to a digital world is an inevitable progression of our society. Kids are as literate as ever, but the concept of literacy is changing.

I composed the response below and tried to send, but the e-mail returned due to finding that the recipient did not exist.

I checked again and sent again, and the e-mail returned a second time.

I copied the response, did a Google search for the journal, and found the "write to us" link, which went to a person at the National School Board Association. There I pasted the response and sent a third time.

My e-mail returned as before. Apparenly this group invites responses
but their reading is in trouble.

My response is below in case they happen to read my blog, which is probably more unlikely than any other occurrence on the planet.

[Note January 1: I received e-mail from NSBA stating that they received my message and will use it in their letter to the editor section in March. The message kept sending itself from my outbox until it was successful. I love e-mail.]

Response:

A. Yes. Reading is in trouble. On average, students seem to be reading less of everything -- books, newspapers, magazines -- and it's not being replaced, either in quality or quantity, by online material. (Please elaborate.)

In brief, I have to choose this option for a reason not even mentioned in the article. That reason is that we place many teachers in the classroom who do not understand, appreciate, or participate in literary reading themselves. The ability to parse a text into its themes and assertions and to respond to it in a philosophical sense -- which is what we mean when we say "make meaning" -- is not "teachable" from a textbook or any curriculum unless the teacher has the ability and understands the process.

The love of texts and the ability to identify and interpret them is "caught" like a cold, from someone who has it. If the teacher has it, the teacher can transmit it. This statement is true because texts contain meaning whether they are classic texts or modern, printed or electronic, verbal or visual. The reader's activity in finding and constructing meaning is what we are talking about when we reference "literary reading." No student can learn this from a teacher who cannot do it. We should never place a teacher in a classroom and expect that teacher to convey something that teacher doesn't have.

The problem is that we can't teach the teachers. Our English professors are experts on Shakespeare, or experts on Realism and Naturalism, or experts on 20th Century Ethnic Poetry. Our history professors are experts on the Civil War or experts on Southeast Asia through 1800, or experts on Europe in the Middle Ages. We don't teach teachers philosophy, logic, or debate. We don't even, in most instances, teach them to parse grammatically, much less to weigh, define, and rank ideas. Only rare individuals can link today's texts -- cybertexts, video games, music videos, films, blog sites, anime films, manga comics, Orson Scott Card, William F. Buckley, Stephen King, or Neil Gaiman -- to the themes and movements of Homer, Aesop, Herodotus, Greek theatre, Plato, Aristotle, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

In fact, you would be hard pressed to find any single individual who can give you any accurate one-sentence description of each person or category of text listed above. Those individuals who can are not in academe because they do not fit. We have "specialized" them out, bored them to academic death. We have beaten the literary virus, and it no longer threatens our academic categories or challenges our authority.

If we do not find the key, we could be setting up another Dark Ages. Already the clouds are gathering as we see different segments of society moving to excise from the curriculum certain ideas that offend their agendas. Our physical world is growing smaller. I get e-mail dated tomorrow because it comes across the date line. Travel is rapid, commerce is essential, and the clash of cultures is inevitable. If we let our world of ideas shrink and become isolationist, uncritical, and dogmatic we can expect the storm. This is no new idea, but rather is a pervasive theme in both ancient and modern texts. The question is whether or not enough of us can read it and respond to it.

Pain may be good for you

We may be on our way to a kinder gentler era when the smoke (no pun intended) clears and the only actual no-harmful-side-efects pain releiver we have is marijuana. After all, those heart-stopping drugs treated the pain and left you with the stress that causes or contributes to most disorders that kill people. You could cut the ache in your shoulder and still make your quota on the assembly line or the performance chart, damp the pain that is a caution sign and crank out the work until your heart stopped.

Who knows what may follow when the reality-based universe kicks in and tells us that pain means you should do your stretches, eat smaller portions of better food, smile once a day, and chill out a little? And who knows what may follow when the "drug" it takes to help you get started will grow in vacant lots unless you spray it with weedkiller and can be baked in brownies?

Look twice, we might not even need Ritalin.

Just looking out the window

It is a little cold here this morning! A few of our windows have frost paintings.

Flowers from friends

Thanks to everyone for the flowers! Here are photos of a few of them. Also, thanks for all the notes on e-mail and the cards that you have sent to me.

Sarah Waving

Hi! I'm doing fine. Thanks for your calls, email, and flowers. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to some makeup!

The surgery was on the left, but you can see I'm still able to wave my left arm. :)

Carl is typing this for me, by the way.

Swift decisions

From NY Times Kerik's Position Was Untenable, Bush Aide Says, By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC LIPTON:

Mr. Kerik's withdrawal was the first major blunder in the administration's process of assembling its second-term cabinet, but not a new experience for Mr. Bush's team. Four years ago, when Mr. Bush nominated Linda Chavez as labor secretary, it was discovered after the initial vetting process that she had given shelter to, and employed, an illegal immigrant. At the time, Mr. Bush's aides were outraged and promised to change their methods for reviewing potential nominees, but on Saturday several officials said that because Mr. Bush wanted to make his decisions speedily, their initial review had been quick.

But rest easy:

"I am confident that President Bush will move swiftly to find a replacement for Bernie Kerik," Senator Collins said in a statement on Saturday.

We count on the President's swift responses. Look where we might have been if he had taken time to assess the WMD question or the association of Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.

Anyway, for Kerik, according to Rudolph Giuliani, who recommended Kerik, it was just one little mistake, hiring the illegal nanny. Nothing serious at all:

"...Whenever this happens, there is always the idea that it must be something else, it must be something else," Mr. Giuliani said. "But that is when there is not a good reason. This is a good reason. Who would actually think he could go forward with this issue?"

Well, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik thought so. Mr. Kerrik told the press:

"I think when you're in a position like this, the press, the media and all your enemies try to find things that a person has done wrong," he said. "But I don't think that there would have been a problem with the nomination."

So according to Giuliani, we should not speculate upon any of the (many) other problems related to Mr. Kerik. If we did, do you suppose we might find some of them tied to Mr. Giuliani?

In a related New York Times story yesterday,

Mr. Kerik, who took over the Police Department without a college degree, had credibility with street cops and a rough-hewn charm he used to ingratiate himself with many New Yorkers. But critics contend he was prone to lapses of judgment, pointing to the use of an elite homicide task force to question several people who his book publisher, Judith Regan, believed had stolen her cellphone, and the use of other detectives to research his book, an action for which he was fined by the city's Conflict of Interest Board.

I'm sure Giulani just found out about this fine for conflict of interest yesterday in the Times, otherwise he would not have recommended Kerik for such a responsible position. And of course the nanny is also beyond the scope of our inquiry, since:

The nanny Mr. Kerik had employed, who has not yet been identified, left the country about two weeks ago, just prior to the announcement of his [Kerik's] nomination, a former New York City official said on Saturday, adding that her departure had been planned for at least two months.

Apparently somebody plans ahead and covers the possibilities for negative outcomes. Maybe we could get the nanny back and nominate her.