The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy

A report issued this month by the National Endowment for the Arts said that Americans, particularly young Americans, were reading many fewer books, particularly literary books, than they were as recently as a decade ago. The report's release was accompanied by a chorus of criticism about the steady dumbing-down of American reading habits, amid the plentiful diversions offered by the Internet and television. Dana Gioia, the NEA's chairman, said that if literary people "don't take charge of the situation, our culture will be impoverished." In a commentary in this week's Chronicle Review, Carlin Romano turns the blame game on its head. It is precisely those literary people -- the editors of leading newspapers and magazines -- who are committing "a kind of cultural suicide" by filling their pages with trash, he writes. Assuming you've read this far, what is the average reader to make of these conflicting views? Read more in the daily news and Chronicle Review.

The key to reading this document, to me, is found in the conclusion, in which the authors point to the 1982 report "A Nation at Risk" as a successful launch of a reform movement they wish to emulate. That report was a hugely flawed neo-conservative jeremiad that played on xenophobia to initiate "reform." It certainly worked: Johnny still can't read, but we can give him tests he'll flunk, close his school down and hand him a voucher.

The report is full of curious assumptions and claims. First, that literature by definition does not include any form of non-fiction prose. Second, it assumes that people asked if they read novels will know what is meant by the question. (Many Americans who read for pleasure do not read "literary" fiction and will assume what they read doesn't count.) The third is that we must encourage reading (of books, not of other texts) because those who read also do other good works like volunteer and go to museums. Those who don't read are unengaged, passive slugs who sedate themselves with television and the internet. The authors don't consider that those who work two jobs and still can't earn a living wage may not have time to volunteer, go to museums, or read. The "sliding literary condition" of the country has nothing to do with economics, it's Johnny's fault. He's probably overweight, too. We'd better get together and cure him (though don't let's give him a raise - he'd just buy Twinkies without the proper intervention).

And then there's that odd mixed message - shame on us for not reading for pleasure, becuase reading elevates us, makes us better citizens, and is in every way improving - in other words, it's not much fun.

The irony is that the authors claim electronic entertainment media induce passivity and lead to general moral and cultural degeneracy - the very critique leveled a hundred years ago against novels. Mabye they should read some history. Only that doesn't count, not being literature.

I'm not sure what the agenda of this report really is, but anyone who points to "A Nation at Risk" as a successful example of inducing anxiety to create change, I get scared all right - not about reading, but about how this report will be read.

I suspect that there may be considerable differences of opinion regarding this issue.

First, any courses that require a command of fundamental concepts to be competent must not allow a student to circumvent knowledge of those fundamental concepts. This is an issue to be decided by each individual instructor, not by a blanket college policy. Those rules must be specified in the syllabi that each student should receive from each instructor on the first day of classes.

Allowing a student to circumvent fundamental knowledge of subject matter is inexcusable and enables that student to be incompetent.

Professor Foster can rale all that she wants about the subject of academic integrity being addressed in academe. As for myself, I feel very comfortable with the fact that somebody is addressing the issues of ethics in accounting classes, the classes from which corporate executives usually start their careers.

We all know that this is far past due in American society, and if academe does not do it, the situation will only get worse.

The ethics classes are not the only place that a student should become familiar with the societal demand to be ethical.

I am disppointed to see that the first contribution to the discussion is a flailing attack on several parts of the report. While the report is probably flawed in some aspects, to bypass information and proceed directly to assault demonstrates exceptional defensiveness. Why would someone have cause to be defensive? Could it be an agenda at variance with the perceived agenda of those who produced the report?

There are two points that I offer as evidence of what I believe are shortcomings in Ms. Fister's response.

1. "That report (1982 "A Nation at Risk") was a hugely flawed neo-conservative jeremiad that played on xenophobia to initiate "reform." It certainly worked: Johnny still can't read, but we can give him tests he'll flunk, close his school down and hand him a voucher."

There is no consideration of the data here, only a sharp attack on those whose political position may vary from Ms. Fister's. This passage coming from the opening paragraph in Ms. Fister's response does not exactly inspire confidence that she has carefully examined the actual data submitted in either the 1982 or 2004 reports.

2. "The authors don't consider that those who work two jobs and still can't earn a living wage may not have time to volunteer, go to museums, or read."

This point I will take personal issue with because my folks did often work two jobs as I was growing up - and still read books, papers, and magazines, and served in various volunteer capacities. I work two jobs now, one of them as a staff person at a private, liberal arts university, which has recently cut my position to half-time for budgetary reasons - and I still read several books each week, and serve in various volunteer capacities. I kindly suggest that Ms. Fister is attempting to 'represent' or 'defend' people who need no defense. Least on all one that is misguided.

I have not yet read the report and therefore cannot - ethically at least - make declarations about the its validity. I can however respond to potentiall inaccurate and misplaced criticism of the report.

Ms. Fister's response appears to be a common liberal and excessively defensive diatribe rather than a reasoned response to data.

" The irony is that the authors claim electronic entertainment media induce passivity and lead to general moral and cultural degeneracy - the very critique leveled a hundred years ago against novels."

I agree with you here. Good insight.

Novels ended up becoming a major engine for social change, because the problems of a complex society can be addressed in a novel with a thoroughness and detail not possible in any other creative medium.

The Internet is also an engine for social change, even better than the novel, because the characters in the drama literally speak for themselves. They put up their own web pages. You can read literally everything on their minds. With music and video and a forum to record your own reaction.

The Internet is a work of words, like a giant interactive novel in progress.

I confess, I have not been reading enough myself and it is because I have become deeply involved in social and political activism and it is directly because of the Internet.

However that being said -- the first thing I ever bought over the Internet was a book.

Thanks to the Internet it has never been so easy to buy out of print books.

Now I just have to find the time to read the ones I've bought!!!!

Rod wrote:

> Ms. Fister's response appears to be a common liberal and
> excessively defensive diatribe rather than a reasoned response
> to data.

The vast majority of novels that have been written express what I would call liberal social views.

The novel has in the past served as an amazing tool for spreading liberalism and arguing for liberal humanism.

The novel has been the perfect medium for liberals and I would even argue that liberalism and the novel were essentially intertwined in the 20th century.

So I thank you for supporting the overall cause of liberalism by defending the literary novel and arguing for its future.

Why was the snarky comment about the President not reading newspapers included in the Chronicle article? How is that germane to the discussion? I don't read newspapers either - they are poorly written, poorly researched, and anything but objective. And they wouldn't "count" as reading in this report anyway.

Nor would biographies, histories, science fiction, etc etc etc

Americans are still reading. This report just didn't seem to ask the right questions. And it would be nice if authors and responders could keep their politicizing to themselves.

You are welcome. Glad to help. One question - are we talking about reading or liberalism?

I fully support and encourage reading anytime I have the opportunity to do so, even supporting what you refer to as 'liberal' novels. Further, identifiers such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' have shifted significantly in their respective definitions over the course of generations. So, what the Founding Fathers propogated was considered liberal by many. Today conservatives argue for maintaining those same principles. Are those principles liberal or conservative?

So far as twentieth-century liberalism and its spread, there is considerable debate over whether certain aspects of that liberalism were or are necessarily a good thing. That however is a topic for another discussion.

I do have a problem with what I perceive to be academic elitism and sweeping attacks like those I responded to earlier. The individual I originally responded to did not cite data or argue a point derived from the data. She made a sweeping attack on the people who did the research, assembled the data and published the report.

I too have a problem with academic elitism, and I too wonder at the difference bteween conservatism and liberalism in a time when the Bill of Rights has never been in greater danger from the supposedly good intentions of both sides.

I'm actually trying to write a novel now, and I make most of the money from my web site by selling books.

But I sell physics and math textbooks. People are snapping those up like crazy. I do very well for a small web site from that business.

The world is much more complicated now and maybe nonfiction is more important than fiction today.

This report worries me but not enough to stop me from writing my own novel.

If the novel publishing industry goes under, then i will use the Internet to self publish.

It's a new world now. Maybe we don't understand it all just yet.

I've spent the last ten years learning to do great web pages and web sites and now I am going back to The Word. Maybe other people will do that, too.

I think the Harry Potter generation will be reading more, I'll bet Harry Potter has done a great deal for reading but the Harry Potter kids are not 18 yet so they don't show up in this report yet.

Yes, literature was good once. Now that it's but an agent of class distinction (fine art, what a silly idea!) and liberal hegemony, let's shut down the department. Comp's the only thing that keeps it afloat anyway. All one needs to live well can be found in Harry Potter.

After all, it's all political.

I do take issue with this sentiment of Carlin Romano's:

> So we're left with a general media environment in which the >readerly commit a kind of cultural suicide in pursuit of the >less readerly.

In the Internet Age, "we" are not "left" with a "media environment" -- the newspapers and TV stations are also struggling to compete with the Internet.

One solution is to go to the Internet and start your own readerly media and compete with the media that neglect books.

We don't have to be victims or adopt a victim-oriented outlook around this issue.

Jeanette Winterson has a nice web site that keeps her readers mindful of reading:

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/

People nowadays have more interactive expectations. They expect to be able to talk back to things they read. The Internet has created this change and everyone who writes needs to adapt to it now.

I don't think novel publishing is going to go under. I have three children, who range in age from 14 to 21. All three are voracious readers - my youngest once asked me to go to the local bookstore because she was "hungry for words". NONE of them has read, or wants to read, Harry Potter, and they get very irritated at adults who assume that 1) they've OF COURSE read it, and 2) they don't read anything else. They read Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, James Clavell, Isaac Asimov, Suzanne Massey, David McCullough, and a host of other authors. They write poetry and short stories. We have so many books in our house that every shelf is double stacked. We've lent out more books of all types than we can keep track of, to adults and children alike.

My children are not unique, as most of their friends are equally as interested in the written word (and *uninterested* in Harry). None of them come from academic families (nor do mine; my PhD, in a technical subject, is very new). Most of them are public school kids in an urban setting.

From my admittedly individual experience, considering the amount of money I have spent for my children, nieces, and nephews at Borders, Waldenbooks, and Amazon - reading is alive and well, and books are here to stay.

Piscator wrote:

> All one needs to live well
> can be found in Harry Potter.

My point in bringing up Harry Potter was that kids under 18 have a different experience than their older siblings and parents.

For kids under 18, the Internet is no longer a big new thing. The Internet is old, video games are old. Harry Potter was the big new exciting thing for them. Each new Harry Potter release was a big media event for that age cohort.

Maybe reading will come back again when they reach adulthood.

The NEA report spells doom but it's doom by linear extrapolation. Linear extrapolation always spells doom, one way or another, because it's linear, and it's always wrong, because human society is not linear.

Serious reading is also declining abroad.

At the WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY website is the article "Reading in the 21st-Century":

http://www.wfs.org/ikehara03.htm

I suspect that the circumstances that we are discussing here have parallels in history.

Before the invention of the printing press, there was not significant literacy in the world and what there was was limited to reading the Bible and a very few works that had to be copied by hand. In those days, the work of manufacturing books was very tedious, to say the least.

After the invention of the printing press books could be mass-produced and distributed. Still, there were contols over what was written and what made it into print. Making the book profitable was a primary concern and it was imperative that the book sold enough copies to justify its printing.

Also, in earlier tiimes we had those who would contro ideas by burning books that the didn't like, en mass, and the so-called "banning" of books for various reasons, mostly because the tyranny of the majority of readers did not like what the book said. Once something is on the Internet, it is out there and cannot be destroyed or limited in potential for distribution. Ideas, some not too savory, and non-conformity to protocol, be it rules of language or whatever, all exist on the Internet today with no possibility of control of content.

Today, we have the Internet. No longer does a literary work have to be popular, if the author of the work has enough money to maintain his/her website. There are no editors demanding anything of an author, they can write in any manner that they like and they can write anything that they like. It does not have to be factual but it can claim to be factual. The line between fact and fiction is blurred in many cases. However, as has already been pointed out, some of us do not trust the news media, so we already doubt the written works that proport to be factual, don't we?

So, we see that the technology of the Internet frees us from the tyranny of the printing press. The Internet frees us from the tyranny of critics. We are even able to put graphical messages on the Internet and uncensored material of all sorts. There is no demand for accountability. If there was to be such a demand, please explain how the standards for that accountability are to be established.

The question is, is the world ready for unlimited freedom in the written word and the visual message conveyed by images that are on the Internet?

Do we really need to control this? Is it possible for humanity to actually decide what they will view instead of having these decisions made for them by editors, publishers and the financial support provided by popularity of readership? Did it ever matter what literary critics had to say?

Is humanity ready for true freedom of communication, or does mankind still need every thing that they think about and write criticized and subjected to the will of the majority? Do we need to be "censored" by the will of those who set themselves up as the ultimate judge of "truth" and what is "fit to read"? Is this not censoring what we read ipso-facto?

How can we not "read" when we "surf" the Internet?

The question is, can humanity handle the unlimited freedom provided by the Internet?

Please, just what is it that we fear?

Are those fears justified?

Is the educated "elete" in our world simply another minority that wishes to impose their "superior" ideas upon the majority?

I claim that the Internet will prove to be as revolutionary as the printing press was in times past to the free exchange of ideas and concepts.

All of the age-old questions regarding the nature of mankind and good and evil may now be debated regarding the Internet and new communication technologies that have created "Cyberspace".

What is it that you believe?

I read the interesting and alarming article "Reading at Risk" that was recently in the Chronicle.

One thing I haven't seen in the article, as well as my review of the report, is an accounting of the time spent reading electronic text via the Internet. That is, reading equals books, magazines and newspapers in in all of this. But what of reading time on the net? Much reading of books seems certainly to be migrating to other activities. Time spent away from reading books on the Internet is, for all practical purposes, time spent reading.

John Fraim
www.symbolism.org

Carlin Romano's focus on the dumbing-down of print media was eerily prescient. From 1980 to 1992 our local newspaper carried a weekend's worth of quality reading -- fiction, essays, columns, drama and music reviews, and an award-winning book review section -- in a nationally lauded, 24-page tabloid magazine. Amazingly, all the contributors were local. (We are a university town with a number of bestselling authors; but our paper also had top-notch editors who took pride in nurturing fledgling contributors as well.)

This publication was in addition to our daily newspaper, which was considered the best of its size in North America, both for its literate content and its award-winning investigative journalism.

Sadly, our newpaper was acquired by a chain in 1992 and followed the trend that grew during the 1990s, as media conglomerates, anxious to wring every last dollar from their acquisitions, downsized and replaced editorially-trained publishers with advertising executives. In the case of our own newspaper, the newsroom was decimated and the paper's editorial content "refocused" on pop pap. The rationale, we were told, was that paper had become too "elitist" and didn't speak to "the 17-to-35-year-old demographic."

More than 10 years after our journal of record was Mcnewspapered, the forces of cliche and disposable, forgettable writing seem to be winning. Embedded journalism, anyone?

M.A. Seymour states,

"...Sadly, our newpaper was acquired by a chain in 1992 and followed the trend that grew during the 1990s, as media conglomerates, anxious to wring every last dollar from their acquisitions, downsized and replaced editorially-trained publishers with advertising executives."

and also,

"...More than 10 years after our journal of record was Mcnewspapered, the forces of cliche and disposable, forgettable writing seem to be winning. Embedded journalism, anyone?..."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Certain change is enevitable. I concur that management in all areas in America has made and is making some deplorable decisions in the name of economy and in the name "downsizing".

The newspaper business in America should not compete with the Internet. They will never survive if they do. Instead, they need to concentrate on local issues and needs. They need to provide local interest stories that carry news of community. They need to maintain local culture through journalism.

M. A. Seymour is correct and it is a shame that this will probably stand in his local newspaper. It has already made it for 10 years. It will stand because the readership that they lost will cause a loss that will be compensated for by the money that is saved in the "downsize".

This will result in no net financial loss and probably a financial gain by the newspaper in question and the managers will claim that they responded to the loss in readership or the "coming" loss in readership and that they "saved" the newspaper. Nothing is further from the truth. This type just succeed in ruining the quality of a newspaper without affecting the profit margin.

The crime in this scenerio is that those in management who decimated the quality of the newspaper and caused the downturn of readership will have in the end maintained similar profit margins to the former format of the newspaper will be viewed as the newspaper's saviors. They can do this even though what they know about journalism and newspapers can be written on a postage stamp in a font that is readable without reading glasses.

This is happening all over corporate America and it is the money-grubbing managers that are ruining this country, one industry at a time, making themselves look like heroes in the process. Newspapers are not the only area in which this is happening.

However, the ones who were layed off can still create an e-newspaper. In e-newspapers there are no circulation departments, no overhead and the local authors can write, and make money. Local e-advertising can be used to support the whole thing.

If it is done correctly, a local e-newspaper on the Internet can put a local newspaper that is printed and hand-delivered out of business.

There is no building, no printing equipment and the overhead is extremely low in an e-newspaper. Usually, such a venture on the Internet can be supported entirely by advertising and start-up costs are very, very low.

You can even advertise the new e-newspaper in the conventional newspaper in question. That should open a few eyes. However, no one can force somebody to put something on their website, so they cannot do the same on an e-newspaper.

The bottom line here is to embrace new technology, especially when the resulting product can be superior to what currently exists.

M.A. Seymour, perhaps it is time to get something started on the Internet and to put the inept management out of your local newspaper business. A website is easy to start and easy to maintain.

Perhaps the Internet is the answer and not the problem.

The fact that newspapers, broadcast, and the book business is owned by corporations who are more concerned with profits thand products (or with customer satisfaction) is an interesting point and one not addressed by either the NEA report or (if I am not mistaken) by the Chron commentary. In the case of books, there's a lot more money (because of corporate ownership) that can be put on the table to buy the next big-ticket McBook but often those gambles fail to pay off because its notoriously hard to predict what people want to read and a book just like the last one that a lot of people read isn't always it.

It has also led to silly management decisions that lead to fewer editors, fewer journalists in the newsroom, and more marketers and managers trying to figure out how to get more sales - without considering that their cost-cutting has damaged the product and annoyed the customer.

I hate talking about news and books as product, but that's what they are to their corporate owners. I just wish publishers were smarter about understanding the audience/market and try to make better news or books/product.

Agreed! To assume that a decline in book-buying represents a decline in reading--even book reading--may be unsupportable. I just finished reading an e-book (fiction, too--which I said I'd never do) on my PDA and found it to be not the kind of unpleasant experience I'd led myself to believe it would be. I suspect I'm not alone.

As an historian with an eye on long-term trends (both past and present), I find it hard to be real concerned about the deficiency of reading in America today. I do not know what percentage of Americans read literature in 1704, 1804, or 1904, but I am willing to bet that the figures for those years are lower than for 2004. The problem is that we base everything upon figures from the years immediately before and after World War II, when America was far more democratic politically, intellectually, economically, and culturally.

That culture (which pushed all Americans to read more and reach for more both before and after 1945) is rapidly slipping away. However, it did not exist in 1704, 1804, or 1904. Why are we worried that it will no longer exist in 2004? Literature was always in an elite occupation in past ages; its democratization really only came about in the years immediately preceding World War II and the generation or so after the war ended.

It may be sad that America is becoming more elitist socially, economically, and culturally. However, this has traditionally been the case in American society, and I do not see any forces that will change this any time soon. I would imagine that literary scholars will simply have to be satisfied teaching an increasingly elite portion of Americans about literature.

Unfortunately, it is far too easy to blame the dumbing down of American reading habits on the media. I'd like to offer another scenario that has put this entire debate into keen perspective for me.

I homeschooled my 14 year old son until he entered the seventh grade two years ago. I had two requirements while I homeschooled my son: 1) that he do a couple of pages of math each day, and 2) that he read at least an hour each day. Most days, he did more than a couple of pages of math. And most days, he read for more than an hour.

Then he started Ann Arbor Public Schools. I was upset to discover that ninety percent of his school work required that he fill-in mimeographed sheets. He learned very quickly that it was a waste of time for him to read a chapter in history or science, because all he had to do was scan the page in order to fill in the blank. Entire sentences and paragraphs were lifted directly from the page with no effort put forth what so ever to challenge a student's reading comprehension.

It became very difficult for me to convince my son that he should read the material to comprehend it rather than to complete the homework. Yet, he had a valid argument to contest my position; that the teachers gave him so many mimeographed sheets to fill in the blanks, he would never finish his homework if he actually read the material.

Now my son is a master at scanning for the correct answer. I have noticed that his SAT and MEAP scores in reading comprehension have dropped in the past two years. He entered school reading at a college-level, now he is merely reading at grade level. I hope that my experience sheds some light on what I deem to be the real culprit of dumbing down reading in American culture. Our public schools do a terrible job at fostering reading. Too many of our language arts instructors do not enjoy reading, and assign a lot of low-brow and unchallenging books to our students. We all should be appalled by this.

I've been teaching at research one, tier one institutions all of my academic career, and I am always disturbed by the inability of my students to comprehend some of the most basic aspects of literature. Recently I taught a course in What is Literature? and my director asked me if I used literary terms in my lecture. At first, I was taken aback by his question, feeling strongly that he was questioning my abilities as an instructor. Then it dawned on me that too many students enter the university without really understanding how to read and use the appropriate language for discussing literature. I promptly typed up a list of 100 literary terms and definitions and passed them out to my students.

Literacy is an ongoing challenge in our culture, and there is not one culprit to blame the dumbing down of reading in American culture. Unfortunately, this is a culture that values materialism and not intellectualism. We give lip service to advancing ideas and independent thinking, aspects in a civil society that are strongly fostered through reading.

If all of the smartest people insist on teaching at top universities, well, then who does that leave to teach everyone else?

If you choose to live by heirarchy then maybe you have to accept dying by hierarchy too.

Reading for pleasure is not fostered in the public schools and it's considered a waste of time by most college students. They dismiss reading because they have too many other things to do, despite the fact that students who read good writing on a regular basis do better in school than those who don't. I live in a rural area that has one school district. Until 6th grade, our kids are part of a reading program that is more focused on getting points and rewards than becoming a better reader and reading with a purpose. Testing is killing good reading skills and it's killing comprehension even more---in my upper level English courses, I'm constantly coming up against English majors who can't interpret readings for themselves. I'm teaching a graduate class right now in which I'm having to interpret poetry instead of leading discussions because my grad students don't have good interpretive skills. The Internet is part of the problem--just because a web site exists, that doesn't mean it's a good site, that its content is worthwhile or that it's well written. My students rarely read anything in hard copy that isn't required for class and they _use_ the internet for their school work rather than to read newspapers or other material.

Our students are less likely to pull books off library shelves than go to the internet where work is done for them via search engines. It's gotten so bad at my university that I've started to limit or ban internet research until the students do research with books and journals. Velcro sneakers have kept kids from learning to tie their shoes and now something is keeping them from learning solid reading skills.

It has been said that everyone is reading more today, but everyone is reading the same book. There's some truth to that. Walk through an airport. Not everyone is working at a laptop, but the many who are reading are reading a book by John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, et al. This also reflects the publishing industry's shift to conglomerate ownership and bottom-line fixation. (And yes, it is often an ignorant fixation; witness the fact that the Harry Potter books were not immediately scooped up by a greedy New York conglomerate.)

At the same time, it offers opportunities. University presses are being offered midlist titles that they would never have seen in the past. That has helped them solve some of their own budget problems.

Since Ms. Fister has opened a political door. . . is it possible that literary reading has declined (certainly the number of literature majors has declined precipitously) because students have been taught that putatively 'serious' literature is actually a hegemonic weapon that has been used to victimize women and minorities? If you are continually shown how evil literature has been, isn't it possible that you would be dissuaded from studying it? There is no question that the study of literature has been politicized. (I know, it has always been political.) That, however, is a turnoff to many students. There are a lot of people who prefer to read distinguished fiction or verse rather than writing whose principal thrust is to 'give voice to the voiceless.' The bottom line is that many literature teachers are more interested in the politics of writing than the aesthetics of writing. They are more interested in ideology than, e.g., the creative process. The professoriate HAS had an impact on reading, but it can be argued that it has lowered the interest in writing as art and foregrounded the interest in writing as an element within the political process. Dick Cavett once said that "politics bores my ass"; the professoriate must face the fact that many share that view, particularly when the conclusions of their politicized scholarship are often totally predictable exercises in self-validation or 'theory' validation.

Re: the internet, there is no question that students think and read differently than their predecessors. They are often overwhelmed when a long (i.e. more than 200 pp.) novel is assigned in class. They desire something as ghastly dull and oversimplified as PowerPoint lecture notes. They are comfortable with 'electronic' anything, even if it reduces possibilities or actually involves greater labor.

We should also pay more attention than we do to some of the more positive developments, such as books on tape, in some ways a throwback to the Victorian practice of reading to one another in family groups. Listening to a serious book may not be the safest thing to do in traffic, but it's safer than talking on a cell phone, smoking, and drinking coffee (particularly if you're trying to do all at once).

The technology of the book will survive. It could have been replaced years ago. It would have been simple, e.g., to replace personal libraries with a box of microfiche and a small reader. It never happened. Who wants to read that way? Similarly, it is now possible to construct a neat little leatherbound electronic instrument which looks like a book and feels like a book, but into which texts would be downloaded. You could travel with ten books in one container, etc. It's not happening; at least you never see it in nature. The technology of the book is simply too good. A book is not just a medium of expression; it is serious furniture. As such it will survive very nicely.

It has always been the objective of education to make education available to everyone. True, systems of elitism existed and continue to exist to a degree in higher education, but for the most part, education IS available to any who want it.

The problem is that not everyone wants it.

Why?

Well, some are content with their meager state of existance and prefer to live their lives in the pursuit of simple things that are not necessarily connected to intellect or education.

Indeed, being an intellectual is not seen, nor has it ever been seen, as desirable by a large percentage of humanity. In western culture, there are many distractions from edcuation. The recent trend is to "accountability" and "testing" but the end result will be the restriction of education and intellectualism.

The intellectuals who are educators are bound by unreasonable demands to produce the oppositional elements of desire for an education and benchmarks of the accomplishment of objectives of that education. Generally, this is impossible because of the attitudes of society and because of the distractions of the modern world in which we live.

The Internet is only one of those distractions as others in this thread have already stated much more eloquently than I can. We have pop culture, the media, professional sports and many, many other pursuits that while not intended to be anti-intellectual, in effect are anti-intellectual.

Whole segments of our society look down upon intellectualism, only pay lip-service to education and look up to distractions from the pursuit of education. Education can lead to financial success, but being financially well-off is, in the end, just another distraction from education and intellectualism. Bill Gates, who dropped out of college to become the richest man in America, is a good example of this.

The whole intellectual segment of our society has been given derogatory names such as geek and nerd. Intellecutalism is shunned by the majority to a degree, unless they need the intellectual or the education for a reason.

Bemoaning the decline in the reading of significant literary works is something that does little to make the situation better. Indeed, it does nothing to raise the opinion of intellectuals by common folk.

A society in general seeks intellectualism and education only to the degree that they can use it to accomplish their purpose. That purpose is usually knowledge about a small area. This is what we should call technology. It has always been this way.

What we think of a decline is actually a change of focus. No longer do people have to read great volumes to acquire knowledge. Perhaps they should, however, to know what to do with the knowledge that they acquire. Intellectuals are all around us, yet, education does not always make a great intellectual. It is the attitude toward life and humanity that makes the intellectual. It is education that makes us see the world in a different light. However, at times, those with a tremendous education may not behave like they possess such a precious thing. When this happens, their intellectualism is in question.

In the end the world is not changed through education and intellectualism. Instead, education and intellectualism slowly changes the world. Zen philosophy has said that in time, the gentle rain will wash a mountain into the sea.

However unfortunate, the world or a society must seek a change before change is effectively made. As long as humanity exists there will always be educated intellectuals. This group will continue to to be an ipso-facto minority not from eliteism, or from popularity, but from desire.

It never rains constantly, but rain comes in periods with starts and stops. However slowly, and with whatever significant starts and stops, I still believe that the mountain of ignorance in mankind IS slowly being washed into the sea of oblivion. It just takes time, perseverance and patience.

Now, go read a good book and quit fooling around on the Internet.

The NEA study shows that literary reading is especially low among men, young people, blacks and Hispanics. One place where people in these groups are concentrated is the military.
I did a Google search and found several organizations that send books to soldiers. So, faculty and others who are concerned about the decline in literary reading could get involved in organizing efforts to collect and send good books for U.S. military personnel. One could even assign students in a freshmen English course the task of collecting books for soldiers. This would get them involved in thinking about the importance of literary reading and may effect their long term reading habits as well as that of the soldiers. (They might want to send cookies too.)

Mike Sullivan
Assoc. Prof.
Math Dept.
Southern Illinois University

Let me propose that people don�t read because books have become a luxury to many. After hearing business consultant C.K Prahalad give a conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about how private enterprise only makes products for the rich disregarding the poor, we at La Nacion (Costa Rica`s main daily) started a program called "Reading for pleasure".
We now produce, distribute and sell short novels and stories by well known authors (Wilde, Zweig, Turgueniev among others) whose works are now in the public domain. After 12 months we have solds 1.1 million of these books for less than US$0.50 and make a reasonable profit at it.
We sell these books using the same distribution channel as we use for our newspaper, namely street vendors. Our research shows that people not only buy the books but read them and share them with their friends and family. In a country with a population of 4 million we are quite satisfied with the results. We publish a new title every two weeks and sell 50.000 copies.
If a book costs as much as 4 beers and a pack of cigarrettes, a low income person will chose the previous nine out of ten times. If it costs less than half of the cost of a single beer, maybe, he/she will do without the 8oz of malt.
Happy reading,
Alejandro Urbina
Editor-in-chief
La Nacion
San Jose, Costa Rica

...homeschoolers. The average homeschool parent encourages reading for the majority of their learning experience. I'm not talking about fluff reading--I mean good, wholesome, living books, historical fiction, classics (e.g. the Great Books), etc. Even audio books are encouraged, not to get the child away from the written word, but to encourage vocabulary, pronunciation, context, exposure to good literary form.

ONE KEY THING...I (we) do believe that children are often influenced by what they read, therefore, the choice of reading is crucial. Many homeschool curriculum providers will offer re-prints of great books of moral character and upstanding values. For example, my son is a voracious reader of G. A. Henty books. Most young people--and even adults--wouldn't have a clue who he was. He wrote for young boys/men in the late 1800s. Through historical fiction, he not only taught about historical periods, but his characters were the types of men that you'd want your sons to have as heros. Who are the heros they have now? What are the posters you see on their walls? Who/what are they idolizing today? Sports stars? Rock/pop musicians?

It's amazing what influences these children build their lives around...and we let them. Get their nose in a good book--like Robinson Crusoe...then they'll find out about bravery, cunning, faith! And what does the basket-ball star promote? Cool sneakers???

Reading and writhing