Failed Reading: Sunday, September 12, 2004

A disappointing trend sweeps modern youth - the inability to read well. Much has been written about this already, and maybe there is little to add. Today's children, barring a few who have miraculously found the joy of reading, are for all practical purposes, quite illiterate, for an inability to read cripples the ability to write. Not knowing good reading is to have no idea of what good writing is either.

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; it requires talent to recognize genius." - Sherlock Holmes.

That is an important point. Standards in society are falling, because the most essential source of good standards is reading. I have not known anyone who set high standards and did not read voraciously and well. Good reading is widely available in our library system, yet there is plenty of rubbish too. But people are less likely to engage continuously with poor literature as with poor television. The difference lies in the fact that television is a passive engagement medium, and so, it is costless (in effort) to stay with it, even when it is barely keeping one's attention. Reading requires active involvement, and if the material is not captivating, which is the case with poor writing, the effort is just too much to continue reading. Hence, good writing overwhelms the bad. Yes, even good pornography trumps bad. And indeed, a person who reads well, upon finding poor television, will just as often switch off the set and turn to a good book.

Our school system totally de-emphasizes reading. I am apoplexic every time my son comes home and announces he has a quiz, and then produces a sheet of questions with answers for me to quiz him with. What do most children do? They read the questions, and do not read their books. They have one-liners written on their sheets. At most, their preparation involves reading 3-4 pages. Which is awful. Our children are capable of reading into the hundreds of pages if called on to, from which they will learn not only to access and enjoy an entire body of writing, but also engage with a subject for a long enough period of time to learn to concentrate and synthesize a "whole" picture of the material. Real engagement comes from lengthy reads, not from a hundred hyperlink jumps across the internet.

I am greatly in favor of tests that require full understanding of the material from reading. Giving practice tests in advance provides automatic curtailment of the subject coverage. How many students prepare by only working over past tests? Too many altogether. It should be pretty obvious that when students dont know what specifics to expect on a test, they will have to read widely and cover more material than when they are told what the boundaries are.

It is a vicious cycle. Unless we set standards high, reading will continue to decline, and that decline will lead to a further fall in standards. In the old days, when there was no internet, asking school students to write forced them to read first. Now it only makes them cut and paste. So, the problem has become even more difficult.

As I see it, there are four goals of reading: (a) for information, (b) for relaxation, (c) for understanding, and (d) for reflection. School children today seem to read for (a) and no other reason. Other media take care of (b), and (c) and (d) do not seem to even happen anymore. When children want to understand something, they do not turn to a book, they go to web sites. These are usually of such poor quality (from lack of editing, and the absence of economic filters) that the child fails to understand, or even worse, thinks he/she has understood when it is not so. And finally, reflection and self-awareness, which are deeply fostered with reading which is connected and grounded in active mental engagement, is now being replaced with extremist shows or sitcoms whose main purpose is to distract and remove people into an unreal world so they can run away from the stress that permeates everyday life.

So what are we to do? We must all take our children to libraries and book shops. Leave them there for hours, lead them to the water, and they will drink. But, it means being there and doing the same, which is not that hard. We are lucky to have excellent book shops and libraries. Who knows, it will also slow down our own pace of life, and overall, everyone will be better off.