Reading Was Fundamental
Posted on November 20th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
Though it’s too late for me to do much more than acknowledge this issue, I did want to mention the new study showing that Americans are reading less and that their test scores are in decline as a result.
Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfreyâs book club aside, Americans â particularly young Americans â appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.
It’s not a surprise, of course. If I were a kid today, I’d be watching more movies, playing more video games, and so on than when I actually was a kid. How could one not? They are ubiquitous, and tempting. And of course the amount of time in kids’ lives is finite.
The thing that is frustrating about the study is that it’s limited. Yes, fine (well, not fine), test scores are declining, and to the extent that test scores reflect deeper things, that is alarming. But what else do kids lose when they read less that can not be so easily measured? How is their development affected without the lessons and instruction and challenge of reading stories?
10 Responses
11/20/2007 11:15 am
Right at the end, you shift the question in an intriguing way, suggesting, it seems, that there is value in reading stories or narrative, specifically. It’s a great question: what is the function of fiction or narrative?
Standard answers range from aesthetics to ethics. A new emerging field of cognitive science and literature is looking at this question in new ways, though finding it very hard to refine our basic answers.
Anyway, I like that you seem to assume that there is a point to our reading of stories that is a bit different from general literacy.
11/20/2007 12:05 pm
I’m in the middle of reading “Trumpet of the Swan” to my six year old son. Of course, as the child of two overeducated people, there was never a chance reading would get short shrift. Nonetheless, I see effects on several levels, compared to when we read picture books. He thinks about the characters more: their motivations, what might happen next. His attention span widens, because he has to hold onto the previous days’ chapters until the next reading. I think both of those are directly related to, as beecham said, *story* reading.
There is also the sharing of experience that happens when I read to him, and we talk about the book, and it happens to a much greater degree than when we watch TV together. The book is more open to interpretation. Being E.B. White, there is detailed attention to the language, and paying attention to it is a much richer intellectual experience than watching TV or playing on the computer.
There’s also a much deeper pleasure in sharing a book from my childhood, and in seeing that it still can charm a young mind.
11/20/2007 6:43 pm
Great book - those watercress sandwiches always sounded so delicious to me.
11/20/2007 8:22 pm
Are you sure this study is meaningful? Poster 2’s comments aside, one is very tempted to confuse correlation with causality in these sorts of issues.
11/20/2007 9:28 pm
Matory’s talking to Princeton
11/20/2007 9:57 pm
So be it. Sort of like the late-night pub strategy of running the same game on woman after woman, each one slightly less attractive than the last. Sooner or later, one of them will buy it. And I hear Princeton is easy.
11/20/2007 11:09 pm
The book is called “The Trumpeter Swan,” no?
Trumpeting SE
11/20/2007 11:54 pm
Say it ain’t so, Standing Eagle! The mighty Casey has struck out!? Is this a plant? Some shadow charlatan bent on destroying Eagle’s Ripken-esque streak of reliable facts?
11/21/2007 3:56 am
“The Trumpeter Swan” is an actual swan; “Trumpet of the Swan” is a book.
11/27/2007 2:27 pm
11:05: “as the child of two overeducated people, there was never a chance reading would get short shrift” is not a well-formed sentence. So much for reading!