My question is this: With the popularity of video games, Internet, and various smart phones increasing by the hour, is traditional reading on its way to becoming extinct and books becoming an endangered species? If so what can we do as a society to reverse this phenomenon and still foster a culture that embraces technology and advancement?
You probably already know that young people today are watching more telivision, surfing the web, playing video games, and doing all of the above on their cell phones, and doing less reading. Changes in young peoples reading habits are taking place at unpresidented levels and if we are not careful, the simple act of picking up a paper back book and reading it may someday become irrelevant and perhaps not even an option for many people.
A report released by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007 highlights some scary statistics:
Only 30% of 13-year olds read almost every day.
Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.
The average person between the ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2.5 hours a day watching TV and only 7 minutes reading.
Books are simply losing the battle for kids and young adults spare time and it is starting to show at an intelectual level. The same report cited above found that the more books that are in a young persons home, the higher the test scores in science and math. Even more provacitive was the claim that, regardless of income, levels of reading for pleasure correlate closely with level sof social life. Probably the most sobering statistic of all was that only about one-third of high school seniors read at a proficient level. How are we ever going to compete with a world-wide work force if we are actually becoming less intelligent?
So how do we as a society continue to foster an enviroment that embraces technology and still promote the act of reading books for pleasure and eductional purposes, even when it is less convinent or accessible than our laptops and blackberries?
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/11/19/young_people_reading
http://abcnews.go.com
Reading & Happiness By Lawerence Baines
I think it is hard to find a good balance between reading literature and technology. I don't have children so it is hard to say what ways I would go about fostering a love for reading as well as balancing it with technology. I do think that technology is just as important as reading. The internet has given us so much access to new things and we can learn things at the push of a button. I guess what I would do to keep the love of books going in a world of technology is try and show how much fun it can be to enjoy literature. I wouldn't push it on a child, but I would encourage them to read and show them how much enjoyment they can get out of it. Even though movies and television have seemed to take over reading, I think at other times it has fostered reading more. I think that Harry Potter books were popular, but they became even more popular because of the movies. I think maybe it would be a good idea if books were promoted like movies. I don't know how well that would work, but I think it would be worth a shot. I have every once in awhile seen a commercial about a book coming out and it does make it more appealing to hear what it's about, then if I had heard nothing of it at all. We definitely are a society that needs advertised to and I think that could be a good way to encourage children and adults to try new books out.
ReplyDeleteMary had a great idea. Why don't they promote books like they do movies? This would surely help sells. Our local library still has a reading program every summer and kids get pencils and stickers and all kinds of fun stuff when they come in to get books. Whatever we can do to make reading appealing is helpful.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that you shouldn't force reading on kids. I know teachers mean well, but when you demand that a child reads for exactly 20 minutes each night, this is making it homework and not reading for pleasure. There should just be incentive to read and not punishment for not reading a certain amount each day.
Yes, forcing kids to read is not going to work. I know that when I was forced to read something I did not want to for a specific amount of time, I was always watching the clock and, more often than not, just staring at the page.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that technology is very important. And kids now have access to information that my generation had to look up in an encyclopedia, if we were lucky to have a set at home. But reading for pleasure is also very important and I think an individual approach would work best. Maybe not the most practical with larger class sizes, but if a teacher could find a way to reach each child and find the way to encourage that child to read. I do think paperbacks may become a thing of the past, but hopefully not for a while now. I had a hard enough time giving up VHS tapes and I (slightly shamefully) still use cassettes. Shh, don't tell.
Some of the facts you presented were very interesting. The claim that about half of young adults never read for pleasure was not as surprising as I hoped it would be. I wonder also if it was considered which percentage of people polled from this age group were also attending school. During the semester, I would say that I don't read for pleasure because I am reading what I consider excessive amounts for all of my classes and cannot go from reading a text book to reading a book I chose for recreational reading. In the summer, I do read for pleasure on a much more frequent basis. I was also questioning whether the same survey that said the average person only spends seven minutes reading per day accounted for all sorts of media, or if it was clearly focused on book reading. We are surrounded by letters and words everywhere we go! There are people who chose to serve as walking billboards by advertising the brands they wear, street signs, advertisements, newspapers, and that isn't even accounting for the many other visual/non-word things we read (clocks, maps, etc.). If all of these things that we read as part of our functional lives were also accounted for, I think the seven minute statistic would increase exponentially.
ReplyDeleteSomething else to consider in encouraging kids to do more reading of the book type is to focus on the variety of ways they can access informational sources and emphasize they use all means. Teachers I've had have required integrated sources into papers from various media means. This encouragement by force can initiate learning the way we used to do.
Jason, Very intereting subject. I often think what the world will be like when my kids are my age. I do not think that books will ever go away. I believe there is something that a book has that an electronic device does not, no need for power. Books are by far the most portable reading device because they require nothing but light to pull out and read. Electronic devices will always rely on power and or a connection to the world wide web. I do not feel that books will share the same fate as the newspaper and become replaced by your computer or hand held device. Also there is something to be said for being able to take your book out ans sit under a tree, it just would note be the same with your electronic version. I do not feel this view willimpact how the upcoming generation view technology, I still think it will be embraced. I also think many people will choose the electronic format but it will never overtake the book.
ReplyDeleteJason,
ReplyDeleteI think that the times are definetely changing to electronics. I just went on the library page today and was able to download a book to my laptop. I love books and will always want a hard copy in my hadn, because I love the smell for one.. My husband thinks I am weird. Other things are changing too. I took my kids to the library to look up something in the encyclopedia, and guess what? They don't have any anymore. You have to go to the internet for what information you need. That is a change from when I was a kid.
I do think that it is sad that more people don't read. I think it is because the Discovery channel and Animal Planet are easier than getting a book. I guess it depends on what we value and what changes we allow to take place in our life. Do we value reading and are we going to instill that in our children and students?? We will have to make the difference so the libraries don't go instinct.
Thank you for the thoughts...
I think that what you found is astounding! I love to read and it amazes me that so many people my age don't have that fascination. I think that if we want to make sure that reading does not go into the stone ages we need to keep making kids and young people realize that it's not boring. That reading is just like a movie, it just takes a little bit longer. If parents keep reading to their kids and if students continue reading in their classes, they will soon realize that it isn't so bad. Or I hope so anyways. I personally am not a big gadget and technology person, I do have a blackberry, but it's because I liked the color of the phone and the keypad. I think someone needs to come up with a way to persuade people to learn more through reading and to understand that it's not as boring as they think. Great topic! Hope we can get a movement to stop those stats!
ReplyDeleteHi, Jason. Thanks for posting the information about the NEA report. One of the things I find ineresting about this report is that reading correlates with other activities we would assume substitute for reading, such as exercise and socializing, so it's not really a reading vs. everything else debate.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this suggests one of the ways to encourage reading is to treat it as one of the things we do for ourselves? Individually, parents can read with children not because they should but because they just do. Schools can encourage reading as just something that we do, not a chore. Maybe there's a half-an-hour window at the beginning of the school day where everyone reads, including teachers and administrators, and followed by that are a few minutes where people can talk about what they're reading.
Maybe for adults, there's some kind of incentive to read more--a jogging group that talks about reading while they run? If Rotary Club is investing in literacy, maybe members take five minutes at each meeting to talk about what they've been reading? Maybe corporations maintain a website of employee-recommended books?
We could do these things, but I wonder if our culture in general sees them as important enough to take the time? Nancy
Jason-
ReplyDeleteI totally agree when Natalie said "why don't they promote books like movies?" That is probably why we're losing the battle. We advertise technology like it's going out of style.. but the sobering fact is, literature and books are going out of style and that is sad and unacceptable. This nation is becoming less and less intelligent, and no one's trying to fix that yet. We're graduating kids from high school with no real requirements, making them unprepared. We're not doing them any favors in life and we're setting them up for failure. Hopefully we fix this issue soon, or we'll have a whole generation of "less than intelligent" adults in society that aren't prepared for the "real world".
-Sara