The National Endowment for the Arts has released a new study that examines reading in America:
To Read or Not To Read gathers and collates the best national data available to provide a reliable and comprehensive overview of American reading today. While it incorporates some statistics from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2004 report, Reading at Risk, this new study contains vastly more data from numerous sources. Although most of this information is publicly available, it has never been assembled and analyzed as a whole. To our knowledge, To Read or Not To Read is the most complete and up-to-date report of the nation’s reading trends and—perhaps most important—their considerable consequences.
A Key finding from the study is Americans are spending less time reading:
- Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.
- On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.
- Although nominal spending on books grew from 1985 to 2005, average annual household spending on books dropped 14% when adjusted for inflation.
The NEA says this decline has "civic, social, and economic implications" and points out in their study that "nearly two-thirds of employers ranked reading comprehension "very important" for high school graduates. Yet 38 percent consider most high school graduates deficient in this basic skill." And, "Literary readers are more likely than non-readers to engage in positive civic and individual activities – such as volunteering, attending sports or cultural events, and exercising."
Frank Cost, in his book The New Medium of Print: Material Communication in the Internet Age provides insight into what a decline in reading might mean for print.
"Here’s why I think it is safe to make the connection between the habit of literary reading and the authority of print. Literary reading is different from other forms of reading in that it requires a reader to begin at the beginning and follow a linear argument all the way through to the end. Other forms of reading, newspaper or magazine reading for example, allow the reader to jump around, choosing to read some items, and not to read others. What this means for civilization and the future of democracy remains unclear. But what is clear is that people who do not acquire the disciplined habit of reading books are less likely to develop the automatic responses to print that contribute to the power of the medium. If you are not a reader, it is less likely that you will open a catalog that appears in your mailbox."
Whatever these new findings mean for civilization or print, I think it can be said that interactive media is readjusting our traditional media consumption habits.The report is available for free at http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html
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Discussion
By Brian Regan on Nov 27, 2007
Interactive media is here to stay. I was just having a discussion with my wife over the holiday weekend. We were at her parents home and I was silently watching their habits. My take was that their generation use media differently. First off they watch TV, this medium tells them the story or information and they sit and watch it, not much interaction between them and the TV, although my Father in-law was not very happy about the Giants losing. During these times I would be online working on Second Life projects or posting on various forums about topics that interested me and I wanted to debate upon or on LinkedIN and networking. The next was reading the newspaper. They spend Sunday morning reading a few different newspapers. At the same time I spent time reading my news online and using Google searches to dig deeper into things I found interesting and finding different things to read that spread out from there. In both cases my in-laws sat back and read or watched what they were told to watch or read. Were as I spent time digging into things I wanted to learn more about and interacting with my media. We had some discussions at dinner and bother my in-laws and I knew about the latest news and various significant issues locally, nationally and globally. In regards to reading less, I feel that I read quite a lot and find many things that interest me. From there I will tend to purchase access to sites with good material, buy books on the subjects and subscribe to magazines. Interactive media is changing many things. Virtual Worlds like Second Life are drastically changing how our higher education schools are teaching future generations. No longer do they sit in classrooms and lecture, but use 3D worlds to explain their topics, allow students to interact with them with the environments.
By Michael Josefowicz on Nov 28, 2007
Thanks for the blog post.
My take is that it's important to define "reading." As Brian describes, the methods of getting information are different in the 21st century from the legacy of the 20th.
Is it better? Is it worse? Still a little early to tell.
Is it better or worse for printers? Also still a little early to tell. Lots of evidence supports both judgments.
And to what it means for the "future of civilization"... probably a lot, but also much much too early to tell. Our grandchildren will probably write PhD theses about the subject.
By David Tobey on Dec 10, 2007
Each semester I ask my students 'What's the last book you read and the Last Movie you saw?' The answers are all over the map to, no books, does a magazine count, how about the internet, and can it be a school book? The movies are of course different and most of the students who have not read anything have seen a movie. The students who are readers have not seen a current movie. The readers do a better job in class when reading is required, non-readers seem to want a demo of what needs to be done, and their assignments are incomplete. Our classes use text books, practice sheets, hand outs, magazine articles and internet sites to instruct. So reading is required for all projects, yet it just is not happening. Students seem to want to do just what they need to do and nothing more. Expanding beyond the 'just enough' to gain additional knowledge through reading is skipped over. Employers have told me they want people who can read, understand and follow instructions and when they are not clear ask questions. Seems simple, yet reading is keeping some students in the dark. Reading is still an important skill, be it a book, instructions, directions, a map, specifications, or your pay check.