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Reading – Up or Down are Different Facets of the Definition

A colleague (Thanks James) sent this to me last week. I mmight have blogged this earlier, but I do think it’s worth reading – critically – too.
To Read or Not to Read: a Question of National Consequence – Nov 2007
“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.
“To Read or Not To Read relies on the most accurate data available, which consists of large, national studies conducted on a regular basis by U.S. federal agencies, supplemented by academic, foundation, and business surveys. Reliable national statistical research is expensive and time-consuming to conduct, especially when it requires accurate measurements of various subgroups (age or education level, for example) within the overall population. Likewise, such research demands formidable resources and a commitment from an organization to collect the data consistently over many years, which is the only valid way to measure both short and long-term trends. Few organizations outside the federal government can manage such a painstaking task. By comparison, most private-sector or media surveys involve quick and isolated polls conducted with a minimal sample size.
“When one assembles data from disparate sources, the results often present contradictions. This is not the case with To Read or Not To Read. Here the results are startling in their consistency. All of the data combine to tell the same story about American reading.
“The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates. These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear, the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.
“How does one summarize this disturbing story? As Americans, especially younger Americans, read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they have lower levels of academic achievement. (The shameful fact that nearly one-third of American teenagers drop out of school is deeply connected to declining literacy and reading comprehension.) With lower
levels of reading and writing ability, people do less well in the job market. Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement. Significantly worse reading skills are found among prisoners than in the general adult population. And deficient readers are less likely to become active in civic and cultural
life, most notably in volunteerism and voting.
Full-text: http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf
Link to Reading at Risk: http://www.nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf
I still have some personal issues with the very narrow definition of reading (excluding many valid forms of reading and pretty much ignoring that using the web alone requires reading skills and neglecting to note that adding additional reading tasks to a 24 hour day and needing to sleep would necessarily reduce the time spend in literary reading), but the report is still amunition in any library’s arsenal. Either way, it serves a purpose.
Stephen

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Posted on: March 7, 2008, 8:39 pm Category: Uncategorized

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