HAS READING BECOME OBSOLETE?
Jim Hite

Has reading become obsolete?

For those of you reading this, the answer would probably be "No way!"

But there seems to be a cloud on the horizon for those who feel the written word is and should be the basis of learning, mental activity, and, yes, enjoyment.

And the cloud may have been forming for some years. For decades, we've heard how television has become the occupier of our time. Add to that the growth in the use of the Internet and video games, and one can readily see that with only 24 hours in every day, the time left for reading has shrunk to a great degree.

Media have reported on this trend, of course. And the National Education Association, in a 2004 report entitled "Reading at Risk," reported a survey of adults showing that for the first time in history, the majority of Americans showed no interest in literature. A follow up survey in 2007 showed it was worse, with younger people (ages 15-24) spending an average of two hours a day watching TV and seven minutes in leisure reading. And that did not even count time spent on music, video games, emailing, surfing the web, instant messaging, and the like.

The NEA also notes that reading on the Internet, while a powerful information tool, is not a very powerful reading tool. Online readers do not read in a linear way, they jump around a lot, lessening comprehension.

Obviously, a decline in reading leads to a decline in writing, grades, workplace performance, and understanding of one's culture.

It is also unfortunate that most students, when assigned reading as preparation for the next day's class, just don't do it, necessitating that the teacher "read" the passage for the students.

Thus, no wonder that surveys show many students in college have never read a whole book in their lives.

I think this lack of reading, of silently entering into the mind of the writer, of mentally letting ideas and concepts challenge ideas and concepts already in our minds, is what has led to "sound-bite" news and the narrowness of view and confrontational approach so prevalent today.

Understanding our world today means to understand the ideas that made it what it is, the ideas that were the force behind the movements within that history. For example, to understand the Middle East, one must have some idea of its centuries of history dating to time before the written word as well as its time as a colonial outpost of Western powers. To understand the political system, one must have some idea of how it developed out of English law and dissatisfaction with the monarchy, but one should also be able to trace those concepts back to ideas found in the philosophers of Greece and Rome. In the same way, to understand the Bible, one must have some idea of the languages of the Bible from Hebrew to Greek to Latin as well as some idea of the historical context in which the many books were written.

All this is not to say reading must be of serious topics to be real reading, by any means. Leisure reading can provide the mental stimulation that will open our minds to the world around us. Granted, the Internet and television can take us around the world in an instant. I do not mean to denigrate these marvels of our age. To talk with someone, to exchange emails, to see someone across the state, country, or even the world is an absolute marvel and a fantastic experience.

But books provide that silent time for our minds to understand that world we can cross so rapidly. Historian David McCullough has said that when we don't read, we cut ourselves off from our past; "We are what we read more than we know."

And it's fun to curl up with a good book!