If you read the stories yesterday or happened to catch them today, you may have noticed reading scores among U.S. 4thgrade and 8th grade students declined on the latest exam given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Results from the test, given in 2024, show 30% of 8th grade students scored at or above as proficient in reading, while 31% of 4th grade students did so.
The news reminded me of a column I wrote over 15 years ago for News & Tech magazine. The column is reprinted below. Permission was sought and granted by the magazine’s former CEO, Mary Van Meter. The magazine has since closed.
There are some recent literacy statistics available. But they’re not backed up, at least on the website, with any evidence. I’ve reached out to the person connected with the website and hope to report more on this soon. There’s another study, too, but the information is at least 10 years old.
Thank you for reading.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone
This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow
First – Chill – Then Stupor – then the letting go
~ Emily Dickinson, 1862
The Thoughtless Future: Coming to a United States near you?
By DOUG PAGE
Master the poem on this page in one of Mark Bauerlein’s Emory University English classes, and you’ll likely find yourself in a minority – one of just 13% of American adults rated as “proficient” in reading.
If you comprehend this poem, then it’s more likely you’ll be inquisitive and, as a result, read books, magazines, hold a top-paying job, be an active citizen, and, if the newspaper industry is lucky, read a paper every day.
But the conundrum facing the American newspaper industry is that the audience that should buy a paper is shrinking.
According to the most recent adult literacy study – conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy – the percentage of adults holding proficient literacy skills, meaning they comprehend anything they read, fell from 15% to 13% between 1992 and 2003 while the percentage of adults considered illiterate or showing difficulty understanding what they read increased from 42% to 43%.
In other words, out of 225 million U.S. adults, only 29 million are proficient readers while 96 million are “below basic” or “basic” readers, says the NAAL.
It’s no better when studying U.S. high school students. According to research from the National Endowment of the Arts, the percentage of high school students judged as proficient readers dropped from 40% to 35% between 1992 and 2005.
This downward trend, says the NEA, is showing up in the labor force, with 81% of employers reporting high school graduates lacking basic writing skills and 28% of employers reporting their four-year college graduates often have the same problem.
Post-literate society
There’s concern that the United States is in the fast lane to the post-literate era. What’s this mean? According to the experts, video will supplant reading as the dominant medium from which people will consume information. And that will happen by mid-century.
Reading, if it’s around, may be considered a peculiar habit of the aged, educated and society’s few concerned citizens, says University of Toronto lecturer Mark Federman.
There’s a chance, in this pending post-literate era, that not only will language skills continue to slide but so will the ability to master complex topics, dense prose, a foreign language or anything requiring critical thinking skills.
This means that the capability to evaluate evidence, create or diffuse an intricate, multifaceted argument, assess right from wrong, or understand ideas regardless of their discipline could be seriously compromised.
What this outcome holds for society at large is anyone’s guess. But there’s a reason to be nervous.
“Being raised in a literate tradition means learning how to think about things that are complicated and important,” said retired Brown University History & Education Professor Carl Kaestle. “If you’re able to keep 20 or 30 variables in your mind and consider other people’s welfare as well as your own, then you’re able to think critically about a complicated matter, like health care reform.
“If you look at the power elite, they know how to read books, analyze dense prose and produce lengthy reports,” he added.
Distinguishing knowledge from info
Christine Rosen, senior editor at technology journal The New Atlantis, fears that literacy’s decline will affect future generations’ ability to distinguish knowledge from information.
“Google is the perfect example of this,” said. “You glean information from millions of sources. What it cannot do is apply critical judgement to what is true and false and what is worth knowing.
“It simply adds more factoids,” she continued.
“I think it’s key for journalists to be interested in school literacy programs,” said Saint Michaels University Journalism Professor David T. Z. Mindich, author of the book Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News.
To build the daily newspaper-reading habit, Mindich hosts lunches with college students to talk about current events.
“People bring a copy of their paper, and you get a surprisingly informed group of students,” he said. “Young people talk with each other and the conversation often drives consumption of the news.”
What relevance does Emily Dickinson have in a trade magazine? In a nutshell, literature illustrates not only the human condition but also the condition of an industry, and that’s the key task of any trade publication.
Her “main focus is the numb feeling that follows trauma of some kind,” said Professor Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.
“She doesn’t detail the experience but only how her heart shuts down. Life from then on is ‘mechanical,’ just a sequence of moments with no climaxes and no goals.”
What better way to describe a future that should be feared, one without books or newspapers and a society inexorably incapable of thoughtful contemplation.
Editor’s Note: The column was originally published in the December 2009 edition of News & Tech magazine, a newspaper trade book, which has since closed. Permission to reprint my column was provided by former News & Tech publisher (and United Press International colleague) Mary Van Meter, who, like her editor, Chuck Moozakis, always encouraged me to write about topics our trade magazine competitor, Editor & Publisher, rarely, if ever, covered.
No comments:
Post a Comment