Franke: ‘The End of Reading’
by Mark Franke
“The End of Reading Is Here” was the title of an essay link I received in my email from The Atlantic magazine. I would have expected this to be written by a whiny old curmudgeon like me or a librarian worried about her job or even by a retired language arts teacher like my wife. Instead, the author Rose Horowitch is rather young, at least based on her attached picture.
In the essay Horowitch reports on interviews with college professors, high school teachers, book publishers and just about anyone she could get to talk to her. There was a common theme among all these experts: Americans are losing the ability to read and understand lengthy literary works with complex sentences.
While trying to decide whether Horowitch had the issue nailed or was just crying wolf, I ran across another article posted by Fortune magazine. The author, Austin Sarat, a professor of humanities at Amherst College, despairs of getting his students to read books … whole books, that is. He complains that students come to him for advice on how to skim the required reading assignments. They have no inclination to actually read a book cover to cover. Besides, isn’t that what AI was invented to do for us?
I can empathize with that, although not sympathize. In my day we had Cliff’s Notes, although they were meant as study guides and not replacements for the original works. In the interest of full disclosure, I also freely admit to a grade-school addiction to Classic Comics. I could get a sense of titles and authors that were above my reading level at that age, and I still insist that I never reverted to a comic-book version in high school or college.
The data Sarat referenced is depressing. Surveys of high school English teachers confirm that they are assigning fewer than three books per year. The New York Times runs frequent articles on the decline in reading skills among students, with one third of high school graduates leaving school without basic reading proficiency.
We all know the cause behind this decline. Screentime is the culprit. Who needs a library when YouTube and its influencers stand ready to opiate us? Without the depth of learning from serious reading, that is, devoting the time needed to read serious stuff, our minds become traffic jams of 30 second sound bites and short burst internet memes. Is it a wonder that public discourse has devolved into inflammatory accusations shouted at increasing decibel levels?
I had my first exposure to this reading decline when I was a volunteer assistant volleyball coach at the university formerly known as IPFW. We endured a lot of winter bus trips across the Midwest. One year a player told me that his goal was to read an entire book over the course of the four-month season. He had never read a full book before. It was a fantasy novel but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he resolved to read it all … and he did.
Love of reading is learned at home. Reading specialists stress the importance of parents reading to their children. Horowitch credits her father, who read to her every night, with instilling this ethic in her. My teacher wife would read to our young grandchildren when they stayed with us. Now that they are older, they need no encouragement from us to read on their own.
I volunteer to read to primary school students in the Real Men Read program. Based on the thank you cards I received at the end of each school year, these kids were listening and could remember their favorites from the five books I read to them. I am convinced that programs like Real Men Read make a difference, especially among those kids who don’t get read to at home.
The problem is that the parents are reading less themselves. Less than 50 percent of adults read a single book in 2022 according to the National Endowment for the Arts, but 57 percent placed a bet. This looks to me like we have too much money and too little intellectual curiosity. Maybe it’s just our demand for instant gratification, getting what we want without having to work for it. I think the medieval Church classified this as sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. After all, it is hard work to read things that require thought.
While clearly I am beating the drum for more reading, I seem to be falling short of my own advice. Over the past several years I have noticed a pronounced decline in my reading speed coupled with a significant loss of retention. I assumed it was my advancing age but perhaps it is the postliterate culture.
I will just blame YouTube. That’s more soothing than facing the other reality.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Comments...