Has the Book Got a Pulse? Life after the “Terminal” Diagnosis
Alarming statistics emerge from two recent studies of American reading habits and skills. In "Reading at Risk" (2004), the National Endowment for the Arts issued a “dire” report about American reading habits. If the twenty-year trend continues, the NEA predicts that “literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.” Now the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) reports that prose literacy has significantly declined: it is not that college graduates don’t read,they can’t read. This appears to be the case for texts as straightforward as newspaper articles. Both reports attribute the respective declines to the rise of other media, in particular television and the Internet. This workshop will briefly present the findings of the studies and explore the assumptions that inform the interpretations of the data. Together members of the workshop—publishers, librarians, and academics— will address two over-arching questions. 1] If the data is true, what ought we to do about it to ensure that the rich literary traditions of the past thrive in the future? 2] If the assumptions about the threat from technology are false, what might we do to better understand the phenomenon?
Keywords: Reading at Risk, Literacy, Technology, Professional Practice
Prof. Marnie Jones
Professor of English, University of North Florida
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Ref: B06P0152