Content area
Full Text
Acad. Quest. (2008) 21:195220
DOI 10.1007/s12129-008-9055-9
SYMPOSIUM
Editors Note: Only a few years ago the National Endowment for the Arts released a study showing a serious decline in the reading of literature in America. The percentage of the population that had read even a page of poetry, drama, or fiction for pleasure in a single year had dropped below 50 percent for the first time in modern history. Now the NEA has released a new study about reading in general. To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, based on data from large, national studies conducted on a regular basis by U.S. federal agencies, supplemented by academic, foundation, and business surveys, as NEA chairman Dana Gioia explains in the preface, tells a story that is simple, consistent, and alarming.1 Americans are reading less; comprehension is eroding; and the consequences of these developments are ominous, inasmuch as reading is correlated with academic achievement, economic success, civic participation, and enjoyment of cultural activities. So far from improving the picture, higher education appears to contribute to it. For example, 63 percent of college seniors in 2004 read nothing or less than an hour a week for pleasure. This sorry figure is actually fourteen points higher than the percentage of this same cohort that had done little or no reading for pleasure as high school seniors.2
We asked a group of experts for their views on the study. They approach it from a variety of angles and even disagree somewhat, as you will see. Meanwhile, perhaps we can take heart from an article in the Christian Science Monitor that tells of a book circle at a shelter for homeless men in Cleveland. The men read both fiction and non-fiction at the rate of about two books a month, and are better able to understand their own experiences through reading. We dont have a TV we can carry around with us, says club member Willie Griggs, who has had heart surgery and uses a cane. We love books.3
1National Endowment for the Arts, To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, Research Division Report #47, Washington, DC, November 2007, http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono.html
Web End =http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono. http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono.html
Web End =html , 5.
2Ibid., 9.
3Jacqueline Marino,...