America's Literary Apathy

There's a disturbing trend afoot. I'd talk about how discerning our political quagmire is "elementary, Watson." Or about how "those who would give up a little freedom to gain a little security deserves neither and will lose both." Or about how our right to privacy has flown away in an Orwellian nightmare. The problem, however, is that most readers under the age of 20 just wouldn't understand.

The issue here isn't politics (that's an issue in itself...a rant for another day). The issue is American illiteracy, especially in teens. I recently read a Washington Post article (clipped to my column) about American illiteracy as it relates to overall American intelligence. Good article, worth the read. Today I read of a library in Michigan (seeded in my column) that is using video games to draw teens. Video games, to draw teens to a library?? Here's a thought...might we not want them to read while they're there?

I'm not trying to cast a sweeping generalization, but the fact is that a disturbing number of Americans of all ages never read a book for pleasure in a given year, and that number is growing. A large percentage, according the Washington Post article, of college students only read what they are assigned to read. Have we stopped to count the cost of this? Have we bothered to imagine an America that doesn't read, that can't remember the great literary heritage of the world because generations have never read it? Where other media has completely replaced the printed page? Steve Jobs was perhaps far more accurate than he realized when he recently blew off Amazon's Kindle device by stating that no one reads anymore.

While television and film are beautiful mediums of expression, much of their content is vacuous and without substance. Moreover, we are beginning, as a culture, to permit these mediums to replace literature. What will we have lost when an entire generation doesn't know the introspection to the human condition that poetry brings? Or the catharsis to which dramatic literature leads? The thrill of following the clues of a crime novel, or the warnings that allegories cast on society? The written word, even as it moves to the Web, is of critical importance to our culture.

Perhaps part of the issue is that those of us without children, such as myself, don't realize the depth of the apathy toward reading that is held by teens in today's culture. Or we don't encounter the adults that never open a book. I manage to gain so many blank stares through the course of the average week from friends who don't understand a comment or joke that I make containing a literary reference. The issue isn't that I'm greatly intelligent or well-read...just that I do read. Suddenly, that places me in a disturbingly large subculture.

Is it the discipline that reading requires that turns many off? Perhaps. How much easier to let the images wash over us than to muster the mental energy to picture them for ourselves as the words on the page paint them. Written communication skills top the list of employer's dissatisfaction with employees. Poor readers are poor writers.

The solution to the problem begins with awareness ourselves. Read a book this month. Start with one. Re-discover the genre you enjoy, and read it. Encourage your children to read. Make it enjoyable. Force it to take priority over screen time. We've created a difficult battle for ourselves, but it is not insurmountable. At least not yet. It will be soon, however, if we don't begin to reverse the tide of disinterest in the written word.

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