George Rebane

“Reading at Risk is not a report that the National Endowment for the Arts is happy to issue.”  Thus starts out the latest study on the reading habits and abilities of America’s adults.  The report “presents a detailed but bleak assessment of the decline of reading’s role in the nation’s culture.”  The following is an assemblage of salient points from the preface.

“Reading at Risk is not a collection of anecdotes, theories, or opinions. It is a descriptive survey of national trends in adult literary reading. Based on an enormous sample size of more than 17,000 adults, it covers most major demographic groups – providing statistical measurements by age, gender, education, income, region, race, and ethnicity.”

The data in the report are extensive and compelling, “but the report can be further summarized in a single sentence: literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young. The concerned citizen in search of good news about American literary culture will study the pages of this report in vain.”

The report recognizes the tremendous shift to an “oral culture” and other forms of communications made possible by the electronic media.  But that does not come without cost since “print culture affords irreplaceable forms of focused attention and contemplation that make complex communications and insights possible.”  Evaluate this statement in terms of the electorate’s ability to properly comprehend national issues such as climate change, healthcare, state of the economy, … necessary to understand your local politician or pundit and then vote.

Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts concludes with “Reading is not a timeless, universal capability. Advanced literacy is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural, and economic factors. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded. These are not qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose.”

(Download the 684KB PDF of Reading at Risk here.)

And Dear Reader, unfortunately that is today’s good news on our declining cultural and intellectual abilities as a people who seek to remain free and prosperous.  Today we also heard of the just released International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy published by the National Center of Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education.  The AP reports that “U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according to results of a global reading test.”  The global reading test cited is the Progress in International Reading Literacy test.  This news is so bad that today’s Wall Street Journal, using small print, hid the revelation in Section D page 4.  What’s a long-term investor to do?  At this point the studied reader knows that we haven’t even touched the tragedy that is the nation’s innumeracy problem.

(You can go here for the full story and read the report.)

So there you have two more flashing red lights.  Unless there is a massive change in our public educational system, the generation coming online in fifteen years will be made up mostly of the also rans.  All this will come to pass in a world that will see more nations than ever in human history compete fiercely in economic and intellectual arenas.  And the people in the up and coming nations already are willing to do more for less (See ‘The World is Flat’)

What does this mean?  Well, it’s clear that we will still have a small fraction of people smart enough to create some wealth that will have to be taxed to a fare-thee-well.  The law of large numbers insures that.  But will the rest of the people be satisfied with what they can earn from asking, “Will you be taking fries with that?”