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Twilight of the Books
Dec. 18th, 2007 04:49 pmCaleb Crain visits the subject of literacy and its decline, in America and the rest of the world, in this week's New Yorker:
Twilight of the Books
"The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, “To Read or Not to Read,” which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, 'Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.'”
Crain goes on to discuss the changes in culture and society that anthropologists and historians associate with the rise of widespread literacy, and speculates on the implications of the current decline if it continues.
Twilight of the Books
"The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, “To Read or Not to Read,” which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, 'Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.'”
Crain goes on to discuss the changes in culture and society that anthropologists and historians associate with the rise of widespread literacy, and speculates on the implications of the current decline if it continues.
