New NEA Report on Reading: Seems like old times
The National Endowment for the Arts (also know as the NEA) yesterday released a follow up report to its landmark 2004 study about literacy, “Reading at Risk.” What the 2004 report stated was that Americans were reading less across all social and economic sectors, while kids — despite the success of Harry Potter — were turning away from reading in near-record numbers. The new report, entitled “To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence,” delivers yet more bad news on the state of reading in America. Put bluntly, the decrease we witnessed three years ago has continued unabated, while troubling new statistics are starting to rear their ugly heads.
But first, here’s some background on the report, according to the NEA website:
This report is a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns of children, teenagers, and adults in the United States. To Read or Not To Read assembled data on reading trends from more than 40 sources, including federal agencies, universities, foundations, and associations. The compendium expands the investigation of the NEA’s landmark 2004 report, Reading at Risk, and reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society.
All of this shows that recent downward trends are beginning to look permanent, and that literacy is becoming an endangered species. As NEA Chairman Dana Gioia states in his preface to the report, “It is no longer reasonable to debate whether the problem exists. It is now time to become more committed to solving it or face the consequences. The nation needs to focus more attention and resources on an activity both fundamental and irreplaceable for democracy.” I couldn’t agree more, which is why I think we waste valuable energy with battles between eBook aficionados and bibliophiles, with one group saying you can’t “curl up” with an electronic device while the other insists that you can. (Just for the record, I think that you can.)
Because what’s rarely mentioned in the future of the book debate is the fact that people are reading less and less. So what’s the point of discussing the future of the book if no one will care enough to read one, whatever format it happens to morph into? It’s like debating the future of the automobile while we run out of oil (which is, to a degree, happening). The NEA’s most recent, and depressing, report should act as a wake-up call, rousing us all from the narcotized sleep which inhaling the fumes of our books has lulled us into. The real battle is now being fought — and potentially lost — and it has nothing to do with pages or screens, bindings or devices. It has instead to do with eyes and words.
6 Comments so far
Leave a reply
OK, lets say that reading disappears. One of the weird side effects print books will not. That is the illegible artifacts of the print books can convey to the new culture an exemplar of extraction of formal conceptual works from the mind to a persistant medium outside the body. The core function of the print book will still be at work.
As you eloquently put it “The real battle is now being fought — and potentially lost — and it has nothing to do with pages or screens, bindings or devices. It has instead to do with eyes and words.”, but I wonder if they really did account for ALL kinds of reading when determining that reading is declining.
I’m in my 40’s and I read more now than I ever have at any point in my life - hours per day. However, I read less print than I ever have before.
I’ve watched my kids read the equivalent of a sci-fi novella to get through a video game - does that count? If they sat and read 100 pages of a book or an eBook - would that be any different?
I’ll admit that the quality of what they’re reading may not be the same, but I just can’t help but feel that they ARE reading (of course I also make them read a book for at least 30 minutes a day, but that’s me!).
I also understand that a few examples does not a statistic make, however, as you put it - it’s about eyes and words.
(Sorry, I’m done now!)
Its worth digging into the report. It has a woefully narrow definition of reading….
Some criticisms of the selectivity of the survey here
http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/11/reading-books-or-web.html
The USA’s National Endowment for the Arts has produced a report based on a survey of american reading habits. Respectable blogs, Resource Shelf and Print is Dead included, have been giving its conclusions more weight than the report deserves….
Before we go into mourning for the death of reading, does it bother anybody else that the NEA apparently polled everybody EXCEPT readers and booksellers to come up with their conclusion?
Well, okay, apparently Mr. Hodgkin noticed.
So, is this conclusion really statistically viable, or is it just a way to try and drum up support for No Child Left Behind, which is, in the opinions of just about every educator I’ve talked to, an abysmal failure? And, ironically, given as one of the reasons young people DON’T read for entertainment.
It’s not just that the definition of reading is narrow. It is also the case that the NEA cooked the data.
Here’s how. The NCES reports reading proficiency scores for 17 year olds from 1971 to 2004. The NEA uses the data from the National Assessments of Education Progress (NAEP) long term trends but it TRUNCATES the data series, choosing to look only at the data from 1984 to 2004. If you examine the whole series, it is clear that reading proficiency scores have remained nearly flat and that the latest scores, from 2004, are identical to the first scores, from 1971.
Similarly with the data on adult proficiency, taken from the NCES National Assessment of Adult Literacy report called “Literacy in Everyday Life.” The NAAL report says between 1992 and 2003, there were no statistically significant changes in average prose … literacy for the total population ages 16 and older…” (p. iv).
So the entire basis for the NEA’s report — the claim that reading proficiency is declining — does not appear to hold up under more careful readings of the underlying data.
I say shame on the NEA.
Adam Hodgkin wrote: “I’ve watched my kids read the equivalent of a sci-fi novella to get through a video game - does that count? If they sat and read 100 pages of a book or an eBook - would that be any different?
I’ll admit that the quality of what they’re reading may not be the same, but I just can’t help but feel that they ARE reading (of course I also make them read a book for at least 30 minutes a day, but that’s me!)”
I was thinking something of the same thing as I was reading this post. I read easily as much as I ever did. But I’m certainly not reading as much “literary” content as I used to.
It used to be books, books, books, and a newspaper a day. Now it’s internet surfing, blog posts, magazine articles, 1 to 2 newspapers a day, and a book in my bag in reserve for rare down time. I recently went for such a long period of time of not reading prose that it was quite startling to work my way through a book again. Your kids read a game manual thicker than many novellas. Sure they *can* read, effectively and quickly. But the content and purpose is fundamentally different, both in your example and mine.
Reading of blogs/magazine articles/manuals and the reading of a novel are as different for a reader as building a house and playing basketball are for an athlete. Both are fundamentally similar activities, but vary wildly in their specifics, purposes and results.