Here’s an opinion piece in the New York Times by Andrew Solomon in response to the survey released by the National Endowment for the Arts which indicates that Americans are no longer reading for pleasure.
Solomon compares the “crisis in reading to a crisis in national health and a crisis in national politics.” He goes on to say;
“…It is important to acknowledge that the falling-off of reading has to do not only with the incursion of anti-intellectualism, but also with a flawed intellectualism… Even more immediate than the crises in health and politics brought on by the decline of reading is the crisis in national education. We have one of the most literate societies in history. What is the point of having a population that can read, but doesn’t? We need to teach people not only how, but also why to read. The struggle is not to make people read more, but to make them want to read more.”
Read More. [requires free subscription]
Reading about reading
I’m currently reading a book recommended on Sherry’s blog, The well-educated mind, by Susan Wise Bauer, about reading with a plan, but she recommends that in having or developing a serious reading plan that one not look at e-mail first–or you’ll never get around to it. Agreed.
here’s another op-ed response to the NEA study
… “Dude, where’s my dictionary?” by Philip Terzian at the Providence Journal.
(don’t forget to use BugMeNot, for all the kids who prefer to eschew promiscuous newspaper site registration)