essay about decline of reading

Why it matters that teens are reading less

Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University

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Jean Twenge has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and is a consultant for JANA Partners.

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Most of us spend much more time with digital media than we did a decade ago. But today’s teens have come of age with smartphones in their pockets. Compared to teens a couple of decades ago, the way they interact with traditional media like books and movies is fundamentally different.

My co-authors and I analyzed nationally representative surveys of over one million U.S. teens collected since 1976 and discovered an almost seismic shift in how teens are spending their free time .

Increasingly, books seem to be gathering dust.

It’s all about the screens

By 2016, the average 12th grader said they spent a staggering six hours a day texting, on social media, and online during their free time. And that’s just three activities; if other digital media activities were included, that estimate would surely rise.

Teens didn’t always spend that much time with digital media. Online time has doubled since 2006, and social media use moved from a periodic activity to a daily one. By 2016, nearly nine out of 10 12th-grade girls said they visited social media sites every day.

Meanwhile, time spent playing video games rose from under an hour a day to an hour and a half on average. One out of 10 8th graders in 2016 spent 40 hours a week or more gaming – the time commitment of a full-time job.

With only so much time in the day, doesn’t something have to give?

Maybe not. Many scholars have insisted that time online does not displace time spent engaging with traditional media . Some people are just more interested in media and entertainment, they point out, so more of one type of media doesn’t necessarily mean less of the other.

However, that doesn’t tell us much about what happens across a whole cohort of people when time spent on digital media grows and grows. This is what large surveys conducted over the course of many years can tell us.

Movies and books go by the wayside

While 70 percent of 8th and 10th graders once went to the movies once a month or more, now only about half do. Going to the movies was equally popular from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s, suggesting that Blockbuster video and VCRs didn’t kill going to the movies.

But after 2007 – when Netflix introduced its video streaming service – moviegoing began to lose its appeal. More and more, watching a movie became a solitary experience. This fits a larger pattern: In another analysis, we found that today’s teens go out with their friends considerably less than previous generations did.

But the trends in moviegoing pale in comparison to the largest change we found: An enormous decline in reading. In 1980, 60 percent of 12th graders said they read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned for school.

By 2016, only 16 percent did – a huge drop, even though the book, newspaper or magazine could be one read on a digital device (the survey question doesn’t specify format).

The number of 12th graders who said they had not read any books for pleasure in the last year nearly tripled, landing at one out of three by 2016. For iGen – the generation born since 1995 who has spent their entire adolescence with smartphones – books, newspapers and magazines have less and less of a presence in their daily lives.

Of course, teens are still reading. But they’re reading short texts and Instagram captions, not longform articles that explore deep themes and require critical thinking and reflection. Perhaps as a result, SAT reading scores in 2016 were the lowest they have ever been since record keeping began in 1972.

It doesn’t bode well for their transition to college, either. Imagine going from reading two-sentence captions to trying to read even five pages of an 800-page college textbook at one sitting. Reading and comprehending longer books and chapters takes practice, and teens aren’t getting that practice.

There was a study from the Pew Research Center a few years ago finding that young people actually read more books than older people . But that included books for school and didn’t control for age. When we look at pleasure reading across time, iGen is reading markedly less than previous generations.

The way forward

So should we wrest smartphones from iGen’s hands and replace them with paper books?

Probably not: smartphones are teens’ main form of social communication.

However, that doesn’t mean they need to be on them constantly. Data connecting excessive digital media time to mental health issues suggests a limit of two hours a day of free time spent with screens, a restriction that will also allow time for other activities – like going to the movies with friends or reading.

Of the trends we found, the pronounced decline in reading is likely to have the biggest negative impact. Reading books and longer articles is one of the best ways to learn how to think critically, understand complex issues and separate fact from fiction. It’s crucial for being an informed voter, an involved citizen, a successful college student and a productive employee.

If print starts to die, a lot will go with it.

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The long, steady decline of literary reading

The percentage of American adults who read literature — any novels, short stories, poetry or plays — fell to at least a three-decade low last year, according to a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts .

In 2015, 43 percent of adults read at least one work of literature in the previous year. That's the lowest percentage in any year since NEA surveys began tracking reading and arts participation in 1982, when the literature reading rate was 57 percent.

The NEA's numbers, released last month, are meant to capture reading for pleasure. They explicitly exclude required readings for work or school. The survey also makes no differentiation between physical books and works read on e-readers, in an attempt to capture the broadest possible range of leisure reading.

The 2015 data show that women (50 percent) are significantly more likely to read literature than men (36 percent). Whites (50 percent) are considerably more likely to read literature than blacks (29 percent) or Hispanics (27 percent).

But the biggest driver of literary reading appears to be education. About 68 percent of people with a graduate degree engaged in literary reading in 2015, compared to 59 percent with a bachelor's degree and 30 percent of those with only a high school education.

The stunning geographic divide in American creativity

Since the share of American adults with a bachelor's degree or more has nearly doubled since 1982 , you might expect to see a concomitant rise in literary reading. But that hasn't happened. Indeed, previous research by the NEA has found that drops in the literary reading rate have happened across the board, among all ages, races and educational levels.

But that analysis did point to some other possible drivers of the decline in literary reading. There are a lot more products and platforms competing for your attention today than there were 30 years ago — video games have exploded in popularity and movies have transformed from something you did at the theater to something you do at home. Perhaps most important, the Internet, with its infinite distractions, did not exist 30 years ago.

Does it even matter if people are reading fewer works of literature? What if we're reading less Tolstoy, but filling the void with, say, Facebook statuses from our friends and articles we read online?

That may or may not be the case — the NEA's surveys don't ask people how many tweets or angry Web comments they read. But it's nonetheless clear that when people don't read literature, they miss out on a unique reading experience that no other type of writing can match.

A number of recent studies have demonstrated that fiction — particularly literary fiction — seems to boost the quality of empathy in the people who read it, their ability to see the world from another person's eyes. And good works of literature, particularly novels, can grant you direct access to another person's mind — whether it be the mind of the author, or of one of their imagined characters — in a way that few other works of art can.

So if we're reading less literature, it stands to reason that we may be becoming a less empathetic country as a result ( research tends to bear this out ). If changing reading habits are indeed making us less able to see things from other people's points of view, that could have drastic consequences across the board .

The Pandemic Will Worsen Our Reading Problem. Another Outcome Is Possible

Illustration of teachers helping students climb books.

Corrected : A previous version of this essay misstated the name of Emily Freitag’s organization.

The data on the foundational literacy skills of the class of 2032—the children who were in kindergarten during the shutdown and 1st graders during this bumpy and inequitable 2020-21 school year—are terrifying. According to one commonly used reading assessment , the DIBELS benchmark measures, the percentage of students falling into the “well-below benchmark” category that predicts future reading failure grew from 26 percent in December 2019 to 43 percent in December 2020. All demographic subgroups were affected, but Black and Hispanic students were particularly impacted. There is no precedent for this kind of decline in the last 20 years of using these reading measures.

The foundational learning in early years makes future learning possible and builds confidence in students’ ability to learn. Delayed and disrupted schooling in K-2 creates gaps that compound over time. The patterns of education outcomes that followed past school closures caused by outbreaks or natural disasters suggest that we will see these heart-wrenching results continue in the class of 2032’s schooling data, income, and lifetime outcomes.

If these historical patterns hold true, we can expect everything from 3rd grade state test scores to Algebra 1 completion to high school graduation will show similarly stark and inequitable declines. Postsecondary completion, lifetime earnings, incarceration rates, and lifetime expectancy will correlate. The children of the class of 2032 will feel the effects. Our country will be able to measure the impact in contracted GDP.

However, another outcome is possible. While data predict these trends, no child is condemned to this path. We know there are teachers who help children beat these odds every year. If this can be done for some children, it can be done for all children. One hundred percent of the class of 2032 could learn to read with command and fluency. We might not be able to do it by the end of their 3rd grade year, but we can do it by the end of 5th grade. It is well within our collective capability to give every student in the class of 2032 and every class that follows command of reading.

We know more about how children learn to read than we do about any other content area. We know that learning to read starts by hearing and manipulating sounds. We know students then connect symbols to those sounds, unlocking a code we use to interpret and communicate in print. The English-language code is not simple—there are 44 unique sounds—but we know the best order in which to teach children those sounds. Teaching a child to read is both complex and doable.

The real challenge is how to engineer effective literacy instruction at scale. Every school system has individual teachers who are famous for helping every single child learn to read, and some schools consistently produce more readers than others. But very few schools and no school systems can deliver a guarantee.

The components of a functional early-literacy system are clear: high-quality, systematic curriculum; trained teachers; targeted assessments; effective data meetings; and sufficient time on task. There are also clear processes to assess, group, and instruct students, as well as monitor their progress. What we don’t yet know is how to help schools combine the component parts and move through the steps with sufficient precision to produce reliable results for every child, in every classroom.

If school leaders set the intention to ensure 100 percent of the class of 2032 achieves mastery of foundational reading skills, the path would require at least three things:

Leaders must track results with discipline, accountability, and the expectation that success is possible. This involves looking at school- and systemwide data every quarter, identifying by name the students who need support, conveying a clear message to teams that 100 percent of students are expected to get to proficiency, and continuously trying new approaches and improving the offerings until every student is successful.
Leaders must ensure every school has the key components of a cohesive literacy instructional program. Teachers, leaders, and support staff need to be trained on the science of reading. Every school needs a strong, evidence-based foundational reading curriculum as the basis for instruction. The curriculum must be supported by effective screeners and diagnostic assessments to indicate which students are falling behind and pinpoint where students are in the progression of foundational skills. Educators need sufficient time in the day for instruction and collaborative planning. And each school needs someone who knows how to make sure these pieces work together effectively.
Leaders must obsess over concrete progress. Progress comes when every teacher, caretaker, and staff member who engages with a student’s reading instruction can identify the exact letters, sounds, and sound-spelling patterns that child is working on in a given two-week interval. Anything more general will not power the progress students need. Getting everyone on the same page with this level of specificity will take concentrated and consistent leadership. Every school needs a leader who is focused on little else than literacy instruction, and every school system needs to allocate real focus and attention across the system.

Supporting every student to be able to read with proficiency is hard, but we can do hard things. In the past century, we eradicated smallpox and doubled the human lifespan ; in the last year, we developed and scaled vaccines for a novel virus. Educators are a profoundly capable group. We can eradicate illiteracy.

The stakes are high, and the alarm bells are ringing. If we cannot support our young learners during this critical time, we will all lose out. If we commit to get 100 percent of the class of 2032 to read on grade level by the end of 5th grade, we will find a way. And we will see the benefits to our country and communities for generations to come.

A version of this article appeared in the July 14, 2021 edition of Education Week as What It Would Take to Eradicate Illiteracy

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Twilight of the Books

By Caleb Crain

A recent study has shown a steep decline in literary reading among schoolchildren.

In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of American adults told the pollster George Gallup that they were reading a book. In 1955, only seventeen per cent said they were. Pollsters began asking the question with more latitude. In 1978, a survey found that fifty-five per cent of respondents had read a book in the previous six months. The question was even looser in 1998 and 2002, when the General Social Survey found that roughly seventy per cent of Americans had read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play in the preceding twelve months. And, this August, seventy-three per cent of respondents to another poll said that they had read a book of some kind, not excluding those read for work or school, in the past year. If you didn’t read the fine print, you might think that reading was on the rise.

You wouldn’t think so, however, if you consulted the Census Bureau and the National Endowment for the Arts, who, since 1982, have asked thousands of Americans questions about reading that are not only detailed but consistent. The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, “To Read or Not to Read,” which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”

This decline is not news to those who depend on print for a living. In 1970, according to Editor & Publisher International Year Book , there were 62.1 million weekday newspapers in circulation—about 0.3 papers per person. Since 1990, circulation has declined steadily, and in 2006 there were just 52.3 million weekday papers—about 0.17 per person. In January 1994, forty-nine per cent of respondents told the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that they had read a newspaper the day before. In 2006, only forty-three per cent said so, including those who read online. Book sales, meanwhile, have stagnated. The Book Industry Study Group estimates that sales fell from 8.27 books per person in 2001 to 7.93 in 2006. According to the Department of Labor, American households spent an average of a hundred and sixty-three dollars on reading in 1995 and a hundred and twenty-six dollars in 2005. In “To Read or Not to Read,” the N.E.A. reports that American households’ spending on books, adjusted for inflation, is “near its twenty-year low,” even as the average price of a new book has increased.

More alarming are indications that Americans are losing not just the will to read but even the ability. According to the Department of Education, between 1992 and 2003 the average adult’s skill in reading prose slipped one point on a five-hundred-point scale, and the proportion who were proficient—capable of such tasks as “comparing viewpoints in two editorials”—declined from fifteen per cent to thirteen. The Department of Education found that reading skills have improved moderately among fourth and eighth graders in the past decade and a half, with the largest jump occurring just before the No Child Left Behind Act took effect, but twelfth graders seem to be taking after their elders. Their reading scores fell an average of six points between 1992 and 2005, and the share of proficient twelfth-grade readers dropped from forty per cent to thirty-five per cent. The steepest declines were in “reading for literary experience”—the kind that involves “exploring themes, events, characters, settings, and the language of literary works,” in the words of the department’s test-makers. In 1992, fifty-four per cent of twelfth graders told the Department of Education that they talked about their reading with friends at least once a week. By 2005, only thirty-seven per cent said they did.

The erosion isn’t unique to America. Some of the best data come from the Netherlands, where in 1955 researchers began to ask people to keep diaries of how they spent every fifteen minutes of their leisure time. Time-budget diaries yield richer data than surveys, and people are thought to be less likely to lie about their accomplishments if they have to do it four times an hour. Between 1955 and 1975, the decades when television was being introduced into the Netherlands, reading on weekday evenings and weekends fell from five hours a week to 3.6, while television watching rose from about ten minutes a week to more than ten hours. During the next two decades, reading continued to fall and television watching to rise, though more slowly. By 1995, reading, which had occupied twenty-one per cent of people’s spare time in 1955, accounted for just nine per cent.

The most striking results were generational. In general, older Dutch people read more. It would be natural to infer from this that each generation reads more as it ages, and, indeed, the researchers found something like this to be the case for earlier generations. But, with later ones, the age-related growth in reading dwindled. The turning point seems to have come with the generation born in the nineteen-forties. By 1995, a Dutch college graduate born after 1969 was likely to spend fewer hours reading each week than a little-educated person born before 1950. As far as reading habits were concerned, academic credentials mattered less than whether a person had been raised in the era of television. The N.E.A., in its twenty years of data, has found a similar pattern. Between 1982 and 2002, the percentage of Americans who read literature declined not only in every age group but in every generation—even in those moving from youth into middle age, which is often considered the most fertile time of life for reading. We are reading less as we age, and we are reading less than people who were our age ten or twenty years ago.

There’s no reason to think that reading and writing are about to become extinct, but some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special “reading class,” much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy, in the second half of the nineteenth century. They warn that it probably won’t regain the prestige of exclusivity; it may just become “an increasingly arcane hobby.” Such a shift would change the texture of society. If one person decides to watch “The Sopranos” rather than to read Leonardo Sciascia’s novella “To Each His Own,” the culture goes on largely as before—both viewer and reader are entertaining themselves while learning something about the Mafia in the bargain. But if, over time, many people choose television over books, then a nation’s conversation with itself is likely to change. A reader learns about the world and imagines it differently from the way a viewer does; according to some experimental psychologists, a reader and a viewer even think differently. If the eclipse of reading continues, the alteration is likely to matter in ways that aren’t foreseeable.

Taking the long view, it’s not the neglect of reading that has to be explained but the fact that we read at all. “The act of reading is not natural,” Maryanne Wolf writes in “Proust and the Squid” (Harper; $25.95), an account of the history and biology of reading. Humans started reading far too recently for any of our genes to code for it specifically. We can do it only because the brain’s plasticity enables the repurposing of circuitry that originally evolved for other tasks—distinguishing at a glance a garter snake from a haricot vert, say.

The squid of Wolf’s title represents the neurobiological approach to the study of reading. Bigger cells are easier for scientists to experiment on, and some species of squid have optic-nerve cells a hundred times as thick as mammal neurons, and up to four inches long, making them a favorite with biologists. (Two decades ago, I had a summer job washing glassware in Cape Cod’s Marine Biological Laboratory. Whenever researchers extracted an optic nerve, they threw the rest of the squid into a freezer, and about once a month we took a cooler-full to the beach for grilling.) To symbolize the humanistic approach to reading, Wolf has chosen Proust, who described reading as “that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.” Perhaps inspired by Proust’s example, Wolf, a dyslexia researcher at Tufts, reminisces about the nuns who taught her to read in a two-room brick schoolhouse in Illinois. But she’s more of a squid person than a Proust person, and seems most at home when dissecting Proust’s fruitful miracle into such brain parts as the occipital “visual association area” and “area 37’s fusiform gyrus.” Given the panic that takes hold of humanists when the decline of reading is discussed, her cold-blooded perspective is opportune.

Wolf recounts the early history of reading, speculating about developments in brain wiring as she goes. For example, from the eighth to the fifth millennia B.C.E., clay tokens were used in Mesopotamia for tallying livestock and other goods. Wolf suggests that, once the simple markings on the tokens were understood not merely as squiggles but as representations of, say, ten sheep, they would have put more of the brain to work. She draws on recent research with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that maps blood flow in the brain during a given task, to show that meaningful squiggles activate not only the occipital regions responsible for vision but also temporal and parietal regions associated with language and computation. If a particular squiggle was repeated on a number of tokens, a group of nerves might start to specialize in recognizing it, and other nerves to specialize in connecting to language centers that handled its meaning.

In the fourth millennium B.C.E., the Sumerians developed cuneiform, and the Egyptians hieroglyphs. Both scripts began with pictures of things, such as a beetle or a hand, and then some of these symbols developed more abstract meanings, representing ideas in some cases and sounds in others. Readers had to recognize hundreds of symbols, some of which could stand for either a word or a sound, an ambiguity that probably slowed down decoding. Under this heavy cognitive burden, Wolf imagines, the Sumerian reader’s brain would have behaved the way modern brains do when reading Chinese, which also mixes phonetic and ideographic elements and seems to stimulate brain activity in a pattern distinct from that of people reading the Roman alphabet. Frontal regions associated with muscle memory would probably also have gone to work, because the Sumerians learned their characters by writing them over and over, as the Chinese do today.

Complex scripts like Sumerian and Egyptian were written only by scribal élites. A major breakthrough occurred around 750 B.C.E., when the Greeks, borrowing characters from a Semitic language, perhaps Phoenician, developed a writing system that had just twenty-four letters. There had been scripts with a limited number of characters before, as there had been consonants and even occasionally vowels, but the Greek alphabet was the first whose letters recorded every significant sound element in a spoken language in a one-to-one correspondence, give or take a few diphthongs. In ancient Greek, if you knew how to pronounce a word, you knew how to spell it, and you could sound out almost any word you saw, even if you’d never heard it before. Children learned to read and write Greek in about three years, somewhat faster than modern children learn English, whose alphabet is more ambiguous. The ease democratized literacy; the ability to read and write spread to citizens who didn’t specialize in it. The classicist Eric A. Havelock believed that the alphabet changed “the character of the Greek consciousness.”

Wolf doesn’t quite second that claim. She points out that it is possible to read efficiently a script that combines ideograms and phonetic elements, something that many Chinese do daily. The alphabet, she suggests, entailed not a qualitative difference but an accumulation of small quantitative ones, by helping more readers reach efficiency sooner. “The efficient reading brain,” she writes, “quite literally has more time to think.” Whether that development sparked Greece’s flowering she leaves to classicists to debate, but she agrees with Havelock that writing was probably a contributive factor, because it freed the Greeks from the necessity of keeping their whole culture, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, memorized.

The scholar Walter J. Ong once speculated that television and similar media are taking us into an era of “secondary orality,” akin to the primary orality that existed before the emergence of text. If so, it is worth trying to understand how different primary orality must have been from our own mind-set. Havelock theorized that, in ancient Greece, the effort required to preserve knowledge colored everything. In Plato’s day, the word mimesis referred to an actor’s performance of his role, an audience’s identification with a performance, a pupil’s recitation of his lesson, and an apprentice’s emulation of his master. Plato, who was literate, worried about the kind of trance or emotional enthrallment that came over people in all these situations, and Havelock inferred from this that the idea of distinguishing the knower from the known was then still a novelty. In a society that had only recently learned to take notes, learning something still meant abandoning yourself to it. “Enormous powers of poetic memorization could be purchased only at the cost of total loss of objectivity,” he wrote.

It’s difficult to prove that oral and literate people think differently; orality, Havelock observed, doesn’t “fossilize” except through its nemesis, writing. But some supporting evidence came to hand in 1974, when Aleksandr R. Luria, a Soviet psychologist, published a study based on interviews conducted in the nineteen-thirties with illiterate and newly literate peasants in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Luria found that illiterates had a “graphic-functional” way of thinking that seemed to vanish as they were schooled. In naming colors, for example, literate people said “dark blue” or “light yellow,” but illiterates used metaphorical names like “liver,” “peach,” “decayed teeth,” and “cotton in bloom.” Literates saw optical illusions; illiterates sometimes didn’t. Experimenters showed peasants drawings of a hammer, a saw, an axe, and a log and then asked them to choose the three items that were similar. Illiterates resisted, saying that all the items were useful. If pressed, they considered throwing out the hammer; the situation of chopping wood seemed more cogent to them than any conceptual category. One peasant, informed that someone had grouped the three tools together, discarding the log, replied, “Whoever told you that must have been crazy,” and another suggested, “Probably he’s got a lot of firewood.” One frustrated experimenter showed a picture of three adults and a child and declared, “Now, clearly the child doesn’t belong in this group,” only to have a peasant answer:

Oh, but the boy must stay with the others! All three of them are working, you see, and if they have to keep running out to fetch things, they’ll never get the job done, but the boy can do the running for them.

Illiterates also resisted giving definitions of words and refused to make logical inferences about hypothetical situations. Asked by Luria’s staff about polar bears, a peasant grew testy: “What the cock knows how to do, he does. What I know, I say, and nothing beyond that!” The illiterates did not talk about themselves except in terms of their tangible possessions. “What can I say about my own heart?” one asked.

In the nineteen-seventies, the psychologists Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole tried to replicate Luria’s findings among the Vai, a rural people in Liberia. Since some Vai were illiterate, some were schooled in English, and others were literate in the Vai’s own script, the researchers hoped to be able to distinguish cognitive changes caused by schooling from those caused specifically by literacy. They found that English schooling and English literacy improved the ability to talk about language and solve logic puzzles, as literacy had done with Luria’s peasants. But literacy in Vai script improved performance on only a few language-related tasks. Scribner and Cole’s modest conclusion—“Literacy makes some difference to some skills in some contexts”—convinced some people that the literate mind was not so different from the oral one after all. But others have objected that it was misguided to separate literacy from schooling, suggesting that cognitive changes came with the culture of literacy rather than with the mere fact of it. Also, the Vai script, a syllabary with more than two hundred characters, offered nothing like the cognitive efficiency that Havelock ascribed to Greek. Reading Vai, Scribner and Cole admitted, was “a complex problem-solving process,” usually performed slowly.

Soon after this study, Ong synthesized existing research into a vivid picture of the oral mind-set. Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to “think memorable thoughts,” whose zing insures their transmission. In an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument. Opponents in struggle are more memorable than calm and abstract investigations, so bards revel in name-calling and in “enthusiastic description of physical violence.” Since there’s no way to erase a mistake invisibly, as one may in writing, speakers tend not to correct themselves at all. Words have their present meanings but no older ones, and if the past seems to tell a story with values different from current ones, it is either forgotten or silently adjusted. As the scholars Jack Goody and Ian Watt observed, it is only in a literate culture that the past’s inconsistencies have to be accounted for, a process that encourages skepticism and forces history to diverge from myth.

Upon reaching classical Greece, Wolf abandons history, because the Greeks’ alphabet-reading brains probably resembled ours, which can be readily put into scanners. Drawing on recent imaging studies, she explains in detail how a modern child’s brain wires itself for literacy. The ground is laid in preschool, when parents read to a child, talk with her, and encourage awareness of sound elements like rhyme and alliteration, perhaps with “Mother Goose” poems. Scans show that when a child first starts to read she has to use more of her brain than adults do. Broad regions light up in both hemispheres. As a child’s neurons specialize in recognizing letters and become more efficient, the regions activated become smaller.

At some point, as a child progresses from decoding to fluent reading, the route of signals through her brain shifts. Instead of passing along a “dorsal route” through occipital, temporal, and parietal regions in both hemispheres, reading starts to move along a faster and more efficient “ventral route,” which is confined to the left hemisphere. With the gain in time and the freed-up brainpower, Wolf suggests, a fluent reader is able to integrate more of her own thoughts and feelings into her experience. “The secret at the heart of reading,” Wolf writes, is “the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than those that came before.” Imaging studies suggest that in many cases of dyslexia the right hemisphere never disengages, and reading remains effortful.

In a recent book claiming that television and video games were “making our minds sharper,” the journalist Steven Johnson argued that since we value reading for “exercising the mind,” we should value electronic media for offering a superior “cognitive workout.” But, if Wolf’s evidence is right, Johnson’s metaphor of exercise is misguided. When reading goes well, Wolf suggests, it feels effortless, like drifting down a river rather than rowing up it. It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone. Ruskin once compared reading to a conversation with the wise and noble, and Proust corrected him. It’s much better than that, Proust wrote. To read is “to receive a communication with another way of thinking, all the while remaining alone, that is, while continuing to enjoy the intellectual power that one has in solitude and that conversation dissipates immediately.”

Wolf has little to say about the general decline of reading, and she doesn’t much speculate about the function of the brain under the influence of television and newer media. But there is research suggesting that secondary orality and literacy don’t mix. In a study published this year, experimenters varied the way that people took in a PowerPoint presentation about the country of Mali. Those who were allowed to read silently were more likely to agree with the statement “The presentation was interesting,” and those who read along with an audiovisual commentary were more likely to agree with the statement “I did not learn anything from this presentation.” The silent readers remembered more, too, a finding in line with a series of British studies in which people who read transcripts of television newscasts, political programs, advertisements, and science shows recalled more information than those who had watched the shows themselves.

The antagonism between words and moving images seems to start early. In August, scientists at the University of Washington revealed that babies aged between eight and sixteen months know on average six to eight fewer words for every hour of baby DVDs and videos they watch daily. A 2005 study in Northern California found that a television in the bedroom lowered the standardized-test scores of third graders. And the conflict continues throughout a child’s development. In 2001, after analyzing data on more than a million students around the world, the researcher Micha Razel found “little room for doubt” that television worsened performance in reading, science, and math. The relationship wasn’t a straight line but “an inverted check mark”: a small amount of television seemed to benefit children; more hurt. For nine-year-olds, the optimum was two hours a day; for seventeen-year-olds, half an hour. Razel guessed that the younger children were watching educational shows, and, indeed, researchers have shown that a five-year-old boy who watches “Sesame Street” is likely to have higher grades even in high school. Razel noted, however, that fifty-five per cent of students were exceeding their optimal viewing time by three hours a day, thereby lowering their academic achievement by roughly one grade level.

The Internet, happily, does not so far seem to be antagonistic to literacy. Researchers recently gave Michigan children and teen-agers home computers in exchange for permission to monitor their Internet use. The study found that grades and reading scores rose with the amount of time spent online. Even visits to pornography Web sites improved academic performance. Of course, such synergies may disappear if the Internet continues its YouTube-fuelled evolution away from print and toward television.

No effort of will is likely to make reading popular again. Children may be browbeaten, but adults resist interference with their pleasures. It may simply be the case that many Americans prefer to learn about the world and to entertain themselves with television and other streaming media, rather than with the printed word, and that it is taking a few generations for them to shed old habits like newspapers and novels. The alternative is that we are nearing the end of a pendulum swing, and that reading will return, driven back by forces as complicated as those now driving it away.

But if the change is permanent, and especially if the slide continues, the world will feel different, even to those who still read. Because the change has been happening slowly for decades, everyone has a sense of what is at stake, though it is rarely put into words. There is something to gain, of course, or no one would ever put down a book and pick up a remote. Streaming media give actual pictures and sounds instead of mere descriptions of them. “Television completes the cycle of the human sensorium,” Marshall McLuhan proclaimed in 1967. Moving and talking images are much richer in information about a performer’s appearance, manner, and tone of voice, and they give us the impression that we know more about her health and mood, too. The viewer may not catch all the details of a candidate’s health-care plan, but he has a much more definite sense of her as a personality, and his response to her is therefore likely to be more full of emotion. There is nothing like this connection in print. A feeling for a writer never touches the fact of the writer herself, unless reader and writer happen to meet. In fact, from Shakespeare to Pynchon, the personalities of many writers have been mysterious.

Emotional responsiveness to streaming media harks back to the world of primary orality, and, as in Plato’s day, the solidarity amounts almost to a mutual possession. “Electronic technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement,” in McLuhan’s words. The viewer feels at home with his show, or else he changes the channel. The closeness makes it hard to negotiate differences of opinion. It can be amusing to read a magazine whose principles you despise, but it is almost unbearable to watch such a television show. And so, in a culture of secondary orality, we may be less likely to spend time with ideas we disagree with.

Self-doubt, therefore, becomes less likely. In fact, doubt of any kind is rarer. It is easy to notice inconsistencies in two written accounts placed side by side. With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information. The trust that a reader grants to the New York Times , for example, may vary sentence by sentence. A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching. Like the peasants studied by Luria, he thinks in terms of situations and story lines rather than abstractions.

And he may have even more trouble than Luria’s peasants in seeing himself as others do. After all, there is no one looking back at the television viewer. He is alone, though he, and his brain, may be too distracted to notice it. The reader is also alone, but the N.E.A. reports that readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer. Proficient readers are also more likely to vote. Perhaps readers venture so readily outside because what they experience in solitude gives them confidence. Perhaps reading is a prototype of independence. No matter how much one worships an author, Proust wrote, “all he can do is give us desires.” Reading somehow gives us the boldness to act on them. Such a habit might be quite dangerous for a democracy to lose. ♦

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Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education

America’s reading problem: Scores were dropping even before the pandemic

Reading Remedies

Seven newsrooms joined together to report on the problem and find solutions for America’s reading problem.

‘The Reading Year’: First grade is critical for reading skills, but kids coming from disrupted kindergarten experiences are way behind

Retraining an entire state’s elementary teachers in the science of reading, states’ urgent push to overhaul reading instruction, masks, virtual instruction and covid-19 challenges made it hard for kids to learn reading, battling pandemic reading woes through teacher support, training, “guided reading” launched a district into one of california’s top performers.

Mackenzie Woll, a second-grade teacher at Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public Elementary School in Worcester, Massachusetts, said diagnostic tests at the start of the year revealed that most of her students were reading at a kindergarten or a first grade level. In previous years, some students would come in reading above grade level; this year, no one in her class did.

Woll now reviews kindergarten-level phonics with her second graders. On a recent day, a student held up flashcards at the front of the class and led her peers in a call and response chant through the alphabet. “A, apple, ah!” she said. Her classmates echoed the sounds back to her.

In a normal year, the exercise would have been scaled back by this point, Woll said. “But because of the pandemic, I’m still doing those letter sounds every day.”

Teaching aide Hannah Chancey faces the same problem in second grade classrooms at Rehobeth Elementary School in a small low-income community in southeastern Alabama, a state with reading scores near the bottom nationally.

“They couldn’t read; they couldn’t identify letters,” said Chancey, clutching a clipboard with the names of children who need extra instruction. “We couldn’t have enough help.”

Nationwide, test scores for younger students, who are just learning to read, dropped far more than for older students. The average third grader’s reading score fell 6 percentile points on the MAP test, twice the drop of the average eighth grader . In a separate pandemic study of second and third graders in 100 school districts, Stanford University researchers found that although teachers had figured out how to teach reading remotely during the 2020-21 school year, students didn’t catch up.

“They’re still behind,” said Ben Domingue, an assistant professor at Stanford who was one of the authors. Domingue said reading gaps in younger children could “mutate” into future academic problems. Students need to read in order to learn other subjects, from science to history.

Parents of young children are worried.

Before the pandemic, Albalicia Espino often took her 6-year-old daughter Sara to the West Dallas Library. On special occasions, they’d make the trip to downtown Dallas, where the towering library building has a dedicated children’s floor.

The pandemic halted those treasured visits.

“I didn’t want her to get started on the wrong foot and lose a lot of those basic things,” Espino said. She worries Sara didn’t get enough practice learning letter sounds and other foundational reading skills.

Related: What parents need to know about the research on how kids learn to read

Sara is back at school in person for first grade, trying to learn the elements of language from behind a mask. Her Dallas elementary school extended its school year in an effort to help students make up for lost time. Sara is also getting extra help in reading through a nonprofit organization in her neighborhood.

During the pandemic, students in low-income districts, already lagging, fell even further behind students from wealthier districts. In high-poverty schools, where more than three-quarters of students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, the drop in reading scores on the MAP test was often more than three times as large as it was in low-poverty schools, where a quarter or fewer students qualify for the lunch program.

“We’re teaching kids to read in a content and motivational vacuum.” Elena Forzani, a reading specialist at Boston University

Racial and ethnic gaps worsened too. Reading scores on the MAP test fell almost twice as much for Black and Hispanic students as they did for white and Asian students.

Researchers worry that the drop in reading achievement during the pandemic may be even worse than their figures indicate. All the estimates rely on some sort of test, but many low-income students didn’t take any tests in 2021. For the same reasons that many low-income students struggled to learn remotely during the pandemic, it was also hard, if not impossible, for students to take an online assessment of their progress.

Even before the pandemic, reading achievement was in a slump. In 2016, U.S. fourth graders slid seven points on an international reading test, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) . Then, fourth and eighth graders — particularly eighth graders — posted lower scores on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a benchmark test that is taken every two years by both age groups.

Related: Why reading comprehension is deteriorating

Analysts noted that reading scores of the lowest achieving students had been declining for a decade , and that the 2019 losses — especially steep among low performers — had erased 30 years of progress. In previous tests, the gains of the highest achieving students had offset the losses at the bottom, leaving the national average steady. But in 2019, the reading performance of all students deteriorated.

“We’ve never seen a significant decline like this before,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which has been monitoring and releasing data on student achievement for decades. “All the tests are showing these patterns. We’re seeing it everywhere.”

“Because of the pandemic I’m still doing those letter sounds every day.” Mackenzie Woll, a second grade teacher

The reason for the pandemic’s toll on reading achievement is obvious: It’s hard to learn when schools are closed. But the reason that reading scores fell before the pandemic is less straightforward. Educators and researchers are weighing three theories on what is responsible for the decline: money, instruction or reading itself.

After the 2008 recession, schools across the country cut spending by $600 per student, on average, and laid off thousands of teachers. It took state and local governments seven years to restore their tax bases, muster the political will to approve spending increases and send the money to schools.

“What’s causing these trends is no mystery,” Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank, posted on Twitter. “It’s almost surely the spending cuts that happened in the wake of the Great Recession. The 13-year-olds who did so poorly in 2019 would have been in grades K-2 during the worst of the cuts, from 2011-14. Those early years matter!”

Long before the pandemic, many reading experts argued that young children didn’t receive enough phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade to become smooth, fluent readers. More than half of Black fourth-graders and 46 percent of Hispanic fourth grade students scored below the lowest level on the NAEP test. For these students, “it is likely that if fluency were improved, comprehension would also improve,” a September 2021 analysis by three prominent reading scholars concluded.

Some educators have tried to respond by emphasizing phonics. The Wenatchee School District in Washington state switched all students to phonics-based reading instruction a few months before the pandemic. The district has long struggled with low reading scores, especially among its English learners, who make up nearly a quarter of the enrollment.

Superintendent Paul Gordon recalled a moment during a visit to a fourth grade classroom that underscored why the district needed to move quickly.

“I asked the kids what they found challenging and fun,” he said. “We had a lot of stories about lunch and recess. But I will never forget at the very end, a little girl raises her hand and says, ‘I can’t read. When I go out to recess, I feel like everyone is laughing at me because I don’t know how to read.’”

Allison Hurt, a first grade teacher who has taught at Lincoln Elementary School in Wenatchee for 20 years, said the switch required a complete overhaul of the way she taught — and thought — about reading.

“I didn’t realize that there is actually a sequential order in phonology that students should be learning their sounds — biggest to smallest,” Hurt said. “They have to be able to break a sentence apart into words, and chunk them apart into syllables.”

By the end of the first full year of teaching this way, Hurt said 80 percent of her class had aced a phonology test — a rate she hadn’t seen before.

Not every student has improved as dramatically, but Hurt said this structured method has made it easier to catch students who are stuck.

Many scholars are concerned that phonics alone won’t help children read proficiently as they get older. Elena Forzani, a reading specialist at Boston University, thinks the recent slide in eighth grade test scores could reflect ineffective teaching practices.

“We tend to take those kids and throw lower-level instruction at them,” Forzani said. “They get these rote phonics programs. It’s all focused on learning to read. They’re not having complex discussions about a text. At the same time, we’re also taking away science and history instruction where kids can develop knowledge and where they can put comprehension strategies into practice. We’re teaching kids to read in a content and motivational vacuum.”

Researchers are also zeroing in on changes in home reading habits. In student surveys that accompanied the NAEP reading assessments, the percentage of eighth graders who said they read 30 minutes or more a day, excluding homework, declined by 4 percentage points from 2017 to 2019. They were less likely to say they talked about books, went to the library or considered reading one of their favorite activities.

Related: U.S. education achievement slides backwards

It’s too soon to blame the distraction of texting, TikTok and Minecraft. More time reading doesn’t necessarily produce strong readers. Researchers sometimes find instances, such as in Mississippi, where students read less but their scores actually increased slightly . In other states, such as Rhode Island, reading habits were more stable but scores slid.

The root of America’s reading problem could take years to unravel. In the meantime, teachers have to help the students sitting in front of them right now.

Back in South Carolina, Yon is trying to get her seventh and eighth graders to re-engage with literature by giving them physical books. She finds they read better if they are looking at an actual page instead of a screen.

On Saturdays, her students can get one-on-one tutoring. Yon was surprised by the high turnout at recent sessions. It’s a sign, she said, that things will eventually improve.

This story about reading proficiency was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with the Christian Science Monitor and the Ed Labs at AL.com, the Dallas Morning News, the Post and Courier, and the Seattle Times. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter .

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It seems to me that the educational leadership goes out of its way to ensure that the remedial kids remain remedial kids. It think that the comment below sort of sums it all up. If you’re serious, recognize that equality comes first – equal opportunity to engage in a challenging content rich grade level curriculum that is effectively taught. Upon the foundation of equality there will be a greater showing of equitable outcomes. The other way, the easy way, which today’s educators seem bent on doing is, lower the standards until everyone is equally unable – that goes for academics and for student conduct. The following quote was taken from the article above:

You have a so called reading specialist from Boston University who actually cites a curriculum that ” only focuses on learning to read” as a cause of poor reading skills. Anyone remember the 80s and 90s when something called HOOKED ON PHONICS became enormously popular? That happened because the public schools had stopped the proven and correct way of teaching reading, which was Phonics, and all of the sudden American children were not learning to read. The sudden demand for Phonics instruction was created by the absolute failure of public education to teach reading and phonics instruction could only be obtained through a private company which parents had to use toh home school their kids. The problem is clear and so is the solution. All these incompetent, self proclaimed ‘experts’ have removed academics and replaced it with hack psychology. Public schools do not teach academic proficiency, rather they teach behavioral outcomes and that right there is the problem. Period. It is absolutely sickening that people who are so monumentally stupid are even involved in education much less running it. The only thing worse are the parents all over this country who are obvious too stupid to figure it out and put a stop to it.

What about home-schooled students? Presumably they had little or no interruption of classes during the pandemic. How do their reading scores compare with their peers in public school before, during and after the pandemic?

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The Decline In Reading In Modern Society Essay Sample

How has the use of books decreased and how technology, race, ethnicity and social class have impacted that decline? Reading is extremely beneficial to our education system, among other things. Books are in danger because reading is being diminished in our society today because of numerous reasons, some extremely crucial while others are less of interest.

One of the main reasons why books are hardly being read is because the cost of publishing a book has increased, which means book prices are also increasing. “The average cost to self-publish a high-quality book is between $2,000 and $4,000” (Dave Chesson). Social class is another major reason; if people are unable to have the proper transportation, they would not be able to go to libraries and bookstores. Another reason is because of race and ethnicity, in a study done by National Endowment for the arts in 2002, the percentage of white readers went down 6.6%, the percentage of African American readers went down 8.5%, and the percentage of Hispanic readers went down 7.5% from 1992-2002 (Page X). which leaves the overall reading rate of white readers at 51.3%, the overall rate of African American readers at 37.1%, and the overall rate of Hispanic readers at 26.5% (page 11). Technology is also an important reason books are declining.

Technology has impacted the way we read books today. For instance, before computers where common people would have to go to the library to pick up a book regarding the topic they were researching and read the book. Now people open their laptops and type in words or phrases and the information they are researching is easily provided. “One of the key things that have changed as a direct consequence of the advancing technology is our way of obtaining new information. The age of searching through dusty library shelves for books to find one piece of information is long gone. Now, one can access hundreds of resources on almost any subject with just a click of a button and by using search engines” (Erhan Kahraman). Technology has also made it easy to read books. In this day and age, we have the convenience of having books read to us with apps such as audible, half the work is done for you, and you do not even have to have picked up a book. Technology has also changed the way we read in classrooms.

The decline of books has impacted our education system quite severely especially recently, in an article by Stephen Krashen he says “The 2002 census shows that literary reading is down 10.2% from the 1982 census, which equates to the loss of 20 million potential readers. Even more striking is the numbers reported for young adults. In 1982, 60% of young adults engaged in literary reading, while in 2002, only 43% do.” young adults from the ages of 18–28 year-old are just not motivated anymore, they do not have time to read they might be too preoccupied doing homework, having hobbies, or working full time jobs. Recently due to covid-19 reading levels for students in elementary school are at an all-time low “In the Boston region, 60 percent of students at some high-poverty schools have been identified as at high risk for reading problems — twice the number of students as before the pandemic, according to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston.” (Dana Goldstein)

The prices of books increasing, and social class are significant in why books are declining because most people do not have the money to pay for books or the resources they need. It is shown that race and ethnicity have an enormous impact in why books are declining. Technology is one of the major reasons books are on the decline because of the easy convenience of opening a computer or app than going to the library. Education has also impacted the decline of reading because people need to learn to love reading

The use of books has declined over the years and major reasons are technology, race and social class along with other minor reasons. The art of literature is going extinct because people are not reading anymore.

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This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

The Decline of Reading: A Short Research

Introduction : The Decline of Reading

Table of Contents

When I conducted my brainstorming exercise regarding the decline of reading in schools and colleges, I delved into various viewpoints from diverse sources and explored perspectives from different angles. It became apparent that the advent of screens had disrupted the book market. However, I overlooked the flip side, which is the widespread use of screens for reading purposes—a practice I engage in frequently myself. Additionally, feedback from my professor prompted me to revisit my initial thoughts, leading me to arrive at a completely different conclusion and enabling me to approach various questions with fresh insight.

Three Significant Questions:

Has the proliferation of screens affected the reading habits of the adult population?
How has the emergence of smartphones altered public reading habits?
What are the implications of the transition from printed material to screen-based reading on overall reading habits?

As I began exploring different reading materials and sources, I followed the common practice of conducting more in-depth research. This led me to discover an intriguing article discussing how the digital revolution has reshaped reading habits. The article provides a comprehensive review of various relevant works, including “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” among others. It examines the reading process, current trends in online reading in the United States, the rise of digital texts, and the ebook revolution. Furthermore, it sparked my interest in neuroscience, prompting me to delve deeper into emerging trends, particularly regarding the transformative impact of smartphones.

David Denby on The Decline of Reading

This prompted me to conduct another Google search, leading me to stumble upon another compelling article by David Denby, published in The New Yorker, a highly regarded magazine. Denby’s article delves into the impact of smartphones on teenage users and their diminishing interest in reading. Drawing upon research from the Pew Research Center and other supporting evidence, Denby illustrates how teenagers are increasingly abandoning books and failing to engage in the reading habits typically associated with their age group.

While Denby expresses concern over this decline in reading among teens, he also highlights another troubling trend: the dwindling emphasis on humanities-based reading due to the pervasive use of smartphones. Teenagers, it seems, are becoming less inclined to engage in the rigorous reading required by humanities subjects. In light of these observations, I felt compelled to explore the industry perspective on this issue. It’s evident that many publishers are adapting to the digital age by offering a wide array of digital and ebook options online. This shift in publishing practices reflects the evolving landscape of reading habits and the increasing prominence of digital platforms in the literary world.

Sain Cain on The Decline of Reading

Does this mean that reading has not declined? In this context, I accessed databases and discovered another research article by Nadine Vassallo, titled as a chapter of a book. Vassallo asserts that with the advent of ebooks and the shift to reading via screens, it has become imperative for publishers to establish an online presence. However, this does not necessarily signify a decline in reading; rather, it suggests that reading itself remains unchanged, with only the mode of reading evolving. The traditional printed page is gradually being replaced by digital screens, prompting publishers to adapt by offering digital editions of books. While Vassallo acknowledges a decline in the sales ratio of printed books, she notes a corresponding increase in ebook sales. She opines that reading may have declined to some extent, but assessing the true extent of this decline will require more time, as not everyone has equal access to screens. Many individuals still prefer reading books in their traditional printed format.

This exploration led me to further investigate the comparison between printed books and ebooks, prompting me to read a compelling report in The Guardian, a reputable newspaper published in the United Kingdom. The opening sentence of this report by Sian Cain provides a starkly different perspective on actual readers. Cain describes students experiencing a “sigh of relief” upon encountering a physical book. The writer presents several compelling statistics to illustrate that the number of readers of physical books is indeed increasing. This contrasts sharply with what I previously read in The New Yorker. Cain utilizes an infographic to demonstrate that book sales have surged, and ebooks are also experiencing an upward trend. Additionally, the report references numerous global publishing houses affirming that books are making a vigorous comeback and are here to stay. This has prompted me to ponder whether books are competing with ebooks, and if so, where printed books currently stand in terms of readers’ preferences. Are people still opting for printed books, or are they increasingly favoring ebooks?

Carlyle on The Decline of Reading

In this context , I came across a compelling article by Alex Wright that delves into the evolving nature of books. Wright contends that books are assuming a fluid reality, transitioning to digital formats such as websites, screens, ebooks, and PDFs, offering readers multiple avenues for consumption. He provides a thorough exploration of the history of printing, encapsulated in the aptly titled piece, “The Battle of Books.” Wright traces this history from Swift to Carlyle, touching upon pivotal figures like Gutenberg and the advent of printed books, ultimately highlighting the emergence of digital books as a new evolution in the literary landscape.

Commenting on this new trend, Wright anticipates a growing anxiety surrounding the shift to digital formats, which he believes will ultimately foster a deeper connection between readers and writers regarding the act of reading. His article does not indicate any trend of decline in reading but rather underscores the transformative nature of digitalization in the literary sphere.

However, this exploration prompts a new question: the impact of digital reading on the brain. As I contemplate this query, I am intrigued by the potential effects of prolonged screen exposure on reading speed and comprehension. Will the transition to digital formats alter our reading habits, or will it lead to unintended consequences due to the effects of screen light on the brain? This question opens up a fascinating avenue for further exploration into the intersection of technology and cognition.

Conclusion : The Decline of Reading

The writer, Jabr Ferris, draws a parallel between the evolution of music consumption from physical devices to digital formats and the current shift from printed books to screen gadgets like Kindle. Ferris eloquently discusses his own reading preferences, highlighting the benefits of online reading and the enjoyment of graphics and webcomics. However, he ultimately emphasizes the superiority of text presented in print form, suggesting a nostalgic attachment to traditional books.

Despite Ferris’ sentimentality, the reality among many contemporary readers, including myself and my classmates, is a preference for ebooks over hardback textbooks. This preference reflects the convenience and accessibility offered by digital reading platforms. Moreover, proceedings from a conference on the future of books and libraries suggest that libraries are adapting to the challenge posed by digital reading by embracing ebooks and online resources.

My own experience echoes this sentiment, as I primarily access reading material through ebooks and online papers via the library. Consequently, it appears evident that ebooks are shaping the future of reading. Despite assertions that printed books are in decline, the rise of ebooks and online reading suggests that the future of reading is digital.

Therefore, my thesis posits that the decline in printed book reading has transformed into an increase in ebooks and online reading, positioning the future of reading to triumph over the proliferation of digital devices.

Works Cited: The Decline of Reading

Cain, Sian. “Ebook sales continue to fall as younger generations drive appetite for print.” The Guardian, 14 Mar. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/14/ebook-sales-continue-to-fall-nielsen-survey-uk-book-sales . Accessed 04 Nov. 2023.
“Conference Call: Should Libraries Jump on the E-Book Bandwagon?” American Libraries, vol. 31, no. 7, 2000, pp. 61–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25637720 .
Cull, Barry. “Reading revolutions: Online digital text and implications for reading in academe.” First Monday, vol. 16, no. 6, 2011, n. pag. Web. Accessed 4 Nov. 2023.
Denby, David. “Do Teens Read Seriously Anymore?” The New Yorker, 23 Feb. 202. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/books-smell-like-old-people-the-decline-of-teen-reading. Accessed 04 Nov. 2023.
Jabr, Ferris. “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens.” Scientific American, 11 Apr. 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ . Accessed 04 Nov. 2023.
Vassallo, Nadine. “An Industry Perspective: Publishing in the Digital Age.” Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users, edited by Suzanne M. Ward et al., Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 2016, pp. 19–34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4ds0.5 .
Wright, Alex. “The Battle of the Books.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 33, no. 4, 2009, pp. 59–64. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20700629 .

Relevant Questions about The Decline of Reading

What are the primary factors contributing to “The Decline of Reading” in printed books, and how do they compare to the rise of digital reading platforms?
How do societal attitudes towards reading, particularly among younger generations, impact “The Decline of Reading” in printed books?
In what ways are libraries and educational institutions adapting to “The Decline of Reading” in printed books towards digital reading, and what challenges do they face in maintaining accessibility to reading materials?

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We’re All Reading Wrong

To access the full benefits of literature, you have to share it out loud.

Black-and-white photograph of John Hollander reading from loose folded pages

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Updated at 4:32 p.m. ET on May 3, 2024

Reading, while not technically medicine, is a fundamentally wholesome activity. It can prevent cognitive decline , improve sleep , and lower blood pressure . In one study, book readers outlived their nonreading peers by nearly two years. People have intuitively understood reading’s benefits for thousands of years: The earliest known library , in ancient Egypt, bore an inscription that read The house of healing for the soul .

But the ancients read differently than we do today. Until approximately the tenth century , when the practice of silent reading expanded thanks to the invention of punctuation, reading was synonymous with reading aloud. Silent reading was terribly strange, and, frankly, missed the point of sharing words to entertain, educate, and bond. Even in the 20th century, before radio and TV and smartphones and streaming entered American living rooms, couples once approached the evening hours by reading aloud to each other.

But what those earlier readers didn’t yet know was that all of that verbal reading offered additional benefits: It can boost the reader’s mood and ability to recall . It can lower parents’ stress and increase their warmth and sensitivity toward their children. To reap the full benefits of reading, we should be doing it out loud, all the time, with everyone we know.

Reading aloud is a distinctive cognitive process, more complex than simply reading silently, speaking, or listening. Noah Forrin, who researched memory and reading at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, told me that it involves several operations—motor control, hearing, and self-reference (the fact that you said it)—all of which activate the hippocampus, a brain region associated with episodic memory. Compared with reading silently, the hippocampus is more active while reading aloud, which might help explain why the latter is such an effective memory tool. In a small 2012 study , students who studied a word list remembered 90 percent of the words they’d read aloud immediately afterward, compared with 71 percent of those they’d read silently. (One week later, participants remembered 59 percent of the spoken words and 48 percent of the words read silently.)

So although you might enjoy an audiobook narrated by Meryl Streep, you would remember it better if you read parts of it out loud—especially if you did so in small chunks, just a short passage at a time, Forrin said. The same goes for a few lines of a presentation that you really want to nail. Those memory benefits hold true whether or not anyone is around to hear your performance.

Verbal reading without an audience is, in fact, surprisingly common. While studying how modern British people read aloud, Sam Duncan, a professor of adult literacies at University College London, found that they read aloud—and alone—for a variety of reasons. One woman recited Welsh poetry to remember her mother, with whom she spoke Welsh as a girl. One young man read the Quran out loud before work to better understand its meaning. Repeating words aloud isn’t just key to memorization, Duncan told me—it can be key to identity formation too.

From the August 1904 issue: On reading aloud

Plenty of solitary vocal reading no doubt consists of deciphering recipes and proofreading work emails, but if you want to reap the full perks, the best selections are poetry and literature. These genres provide access to facets of human experience that can be otherwise unreachable, which helps us process our own emotions and memories, says Philip Davis, an emeritus professor of literature and psychology at the University of Liverpool. Poetry, for example, can induce peak emotional responses , a strong reaction that might include goose bumps or chills. It can help you locate an emotion within yourself, which is important to health as a form of emotional processing.

Poetry also contains complex, unexpected elements, like when Shakespeare uses god as a verb in Coriolanus : “This last old man … godded me.” In an fMRI study that Davis co-authored in 2015, such literary surprise was shown to be stimulating to the brain. Davis told me that literature, with its “mixture of memory and imagination,” can cause us to recall our most complex experiences and derive meaning from them. A poem or story read aloud is particularly enthralling, he said, because it becomes a live presence in the room, with a more direct and penetrative quality, akin to live music. Davis likens the role of literature and live reading to a spark or renewal, “a bringing of things back to life.”

Discussing the literature that you read aloud can be particularly valuable. Davis told me doing so helps penetrate rigid thinking and can dislodge dysfunctional thought patterns. A qualitative 2017 study led by Josie Billington at the University of Liverpool found that, for those who have chronic pain and the depression that tends to come with it, such discussion expands emotional vocabulary —a key tenet of psychological well-being— perhaps even more so than cognitive behavioral therapy . (The allure of an audience has one notable exception: If you’re anxious, reading aloud can actually reduce memory and comprehension . To understand this effect, one need only harken back to fifth grade when it was your turn to read a paragraph on Mesopotamia in class.)

Read: How to keep your book club from becoming a wine club

The health benefits of reading aloud are so profound that some doctors in England now refer their chronic-pain patients to read-aloud groups. Helen Cook, a 45-year-old former teacher in England, joined one of these groups in 2013. Cook had a pelvic tumor that had sent anguish ricocheting through her hip and back for a decade, and medication never seemed to help. Before she joined the reading group, Cook had trouble sleeping, lost her job, and “had completely lost myself,” she told me. Then, she and nine other adults began working their way through some 300 pages of Hard Times , by Charles Dickens.

Cook told me she recognized her experience in the characters’ travails, and within months, she “rediscovered a love for life,” even returning to college for a master’s degree in literature. She’s not the only one who found relief: In Billington’s 2017 study, everyone who read aloud in a group felt emotionally better and reported less pain for two days afterward.

Hearing words read aloud to you also has unique advantages, especially for kids. Storytelling has been shown to increase hospitalized children’s levels of oxytocin while decreasing cortisol and pain. Julie Hunter, who for more than 20 years has taught preschool kids (including my daughter), told me that interactive reading increases young children’s comprehension , builds trust , and enhances social-emotional skills . A recent study by researchers at the Brookings Institution found that children smiled and laughed more when being read to by a parent than when listening to an automatically narrated book alone.

Read: An ode to being read to

Anecdotal evidence suggests that adults, too, can benefit from such listening. For 25 years, Hedrick and Susan Smith, ages 90 and 84, respectively, have read more than 170 books aloud. They started by reading in the car, to pass the time, but it was so much fun that they started reading every night before they turned out the light, Hedrick told me. Together, they tried to comprehend One Hundred Years of Solitude , narrated Angela’s Ashes in four different Irish accents, and deduced clues in John le Carré thrillers. They felt more connected, and went to sleep in brighter moods. If they liked the book, they couldn’t wait for the other to read the next chapter aloud—even, and perhaps especially, when the sound of the other’s voice sent them off to sleep.

Due to an editing error, this article originally misidentified the author of a 2017 study.

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REASONS FOR POOR READING CULTURE AND HOW IT CAN NURTURED

Related Papers

The African Book Publishing Record

Hans M Zell

This is the fourth in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and the book sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Extensively annotated and/or with abstracts, the present list brings together new literature published during the course of 2018, a total of 114 records. Records are grouped under a range of regional/country and topic-specific headings. The literature review covers books, chapters in books and edited collections, journal articles, Internet documents and reports, theses and dissertations, interviews, audio/video recordings, podcasts, as well as a number of blog postings. Starting with the 2018 edition it now also includes a ‘Guest essay’ feature preceding the literature survey. The first contribution is Richard Crabbe’s ‘Revitalizing the Book Chain for National and International Cooperation’, his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 16th Ghana International Book Fair on 30 August 2018, an eloquent and timely address, and which at the same time offers a succinct summing-up of the state of publishing and the book sector in Africa today.

Joyce Wambura

Academic success at the tertiary level is a result of several factors, which include effective teaching, use of appropriate study strategies and students’ personal characteristics. However, reading is the backbone of academic success. To master the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes, the students need to develop a self-driven urge to research. This entails a passionate love for reading and access to the relevant resources. However, owing to the current deplorable state of libraries in Kenyan public universities, students have limited access to relevant reading resources. The libraries in public universities are stocked with obsolete learning materials, which have been badly mutilated. The problem of lack of relevant reading resources in the libraries has been worsened by the steadily increasing enrolment and shortened semesters. This study investigated the reading culture of students in Egerton University. The study was designed to examine the constraints to students developing reading habits and the measures that can be taken to address the identified constraints. The population of the study comprised of students, lecturers, administrators and workers in Njoro, Kisii and Laikipia campuses. Stratified random sampling was used to select respondents for the study. Data was collected by means of questionnaires and interview schedules. Data analysis was done using SPSS. The data was presented using charts and tables. The study found out that reading is not a leisure activity and a continuous process for students at the university and that students mainly read when they are preparing for continuous assessment tests (CATs), and when they have an assignment or in preparation for the final examinations. The study also found that lecturers do not motivate the students to read. Further, the study found that the poor reading culture in the university can be attributed to the inadequate libraries, lack of reading materials, reduced semesters, too many assignments and overloaded curricula at university. The study recommends that the courses offered and teaching strategies should be tailored towards encouraging student readership. It is further recommended that the university library system be expanded and that current book and periodical library collections are continuously replenished.

Wacango Kimani

tinotenda agatha

popi manganye

For a country to realize full economic potential education is paramount. A population with ability to read and write compounded with technology savvy is key ingredients for growth. One of the pillars identified in the MDG is among others universal primary education for all. It is within this pretext that the government of Kenya introduced free primary education in Kenya. The main aim of introducing free primary education was to fight illiteracy; five years down the line a lot of facts still have to be addressed so that the appropriate scheme could be addressed in real time to fight the real problem at hand. Though a noble gesture, it has had its share of challenges and pitfalls. The current study highlights the challenges of free primary education in fighting illiteracy. Some of the challenges identified included Under Staffing, Poor working conditions, inadequate funding, Kenya's primary Education system and acquisition of literacy and Lack of school libraries. The study concludes that a clear policy on FPE implementation that defines the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders must be stipulated. For the program to succeed there must be continuous dialogue with stakeholders such as parents, school committees, and local communities to inform them from the onset of their specific roles in supporting the policy.

This is the second in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and book development in sub-Saharan Africa. Extensively annotated and/or with abstracts, the present list brings together new literature published during the course of 2016, a total of 164 items. The literature review covers books, chapters in books and edited collections, journal articles, Internet documents and reports, theses and dissertations, interviews, audio/video recordings and podcasts, as well as a number of blog postings, Records are grouped under a range of regional/country and topic-specific headings.

The third in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and the book sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Extensively annotated and/or with abstracts, the present list brings together new literature published during the course of 2017, a total of 157 records. The literature review covers books, chapters in books and edited collections, journal articles, Internet documents and reports, theses and dissertations, interviews, audio/video recordings and podcasts, as well as a number of blog postings. Records are grouped under a range of regional/country and topic-specific headings.

Rachel Heavner

In pursuit of inclusive and quality education opportunities for all, this paper highlights the importance of access to books and the need for a format neutral approach to reading programs in the Global South. Format neutrality allows for the provision of books in both analog (paper) and digital formats. In this paper we highlight the ways in which a variety of organizations are using the digital reading ecosystem to contribute towards education for all. We highlight four areas that we believe support a greater embrace of technology: the dramatic increase in the availability of local content, the overall cost effectiveness of digital reading programs, improved access to reader data, and accessibility for the print disabled. The paper also identifies areas where costs are likely to drop even further in the years to come due to market forces. Finally, we offer recommendations for the international education community to leverage digital formats alongside print materials in reading programs to promote greater scale and cost effectiveness.

Katia Nobre

A vibrant reading culture is very important to the individual and the society at large. It is through reading that one gains knowledge and is able to avail him or herself to the advantages that literacy brings to one´s personal, academic and professional progress. For many scholars, reading is a cultural process that brings many benefits. But if, reading is the key to lifelong learning, why are there so many people who do not read? This paper researches the reading habits, constraints, and the role of advocacy for an improved reading culture in Cape Verde. It identifies the actors in the three learning spaces: home, school and society, and how they in concert can better advocate for an improved Cape Verdean reading culture in school as well as in the society at large. Field research included surveys completed by the general public, questionnaires conducted in public high schools, and interviews with librarians and a published author. The research revealed that Cape Verdeans in general do not have a strong reading habit which results in a weak reading culture. Motivation was identified as the key factor for increasing one´s reading habit and improving the reading culture. It was concluded that the only way one´s reading culture can be systematically enhanced is to advocate for reading starting at the earliest age possible. Keywords: reading culture, reading habit, motivation, advocacy

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, new sat essay prompts: how are they changing.

SAT Writing , New SAT

The CollegeBoard has once again completely revamped the SAT — the changes debuted in March 2016 (tests can have debuts right? Right). We have an overview about all of the changes that have been made, but how do the changes apply to the SAT essay questions in particular? Read on to find out more about the new SAT Writing prompts .

feature image credit: RAFFAELLO SANZIO The Sistine Madonna (detail) 1513-14 by carulmare , used under CC BY 2.0 /Resized and cropped from original.

UPDATE: SAT Essay No Longer Offered

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In January 2021, the College Board announced that after June 2021, it would no longer offer the Essay portion of the SAT (except at schools who opt in during School Day Testing). It is now no longer possible to take the SAT Essay, unless your school is one of the small number who choose to offer it during SAT School Day Testing.

While most colleges had already made SAT Essay scores optional, this move by the College Board means no colleges now require the SAT Essay. It will also likely lead to additional college application changes such not looking at essay scores at all for the SAT or ACT, as well as potentially requiring additional writing samples for placement.

What does the end of the SAT Essay mean for your college applications? Check out our article on the College Board's SAT Essay decision for everything you need to know.

What’s Different About The New SAT Essay Prompts?

To start off with, let's compare an old SAT prompt with a new one. Here's an old SAT essay prompt:

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

"We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we make a mistake, until something fails to go as we had hoped. When everything is working well, with no problems or failures, what incentives to we have to try something new? We are only motivated to learn when we experience difficulties."

Adapted from Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

Assignment: Does true learning only occur when we experience difficulties? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

And here's an example of a new SAT essay prompt from the College Board :

As you read the passage below, consider how Dana Gioia uses

evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims.
reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence.
stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed.

Write an essay in which you explain how Dana Gioia builds an argument to persuade his audience that the decline of reading in America will have a negative effect on society. In your essay, analyze how Gioia uses one or more of the features in the directions that precede the passage (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage.

Your essay should not explain whether you agree with Gioia’s claims, but rather explain how Gioia builds an argument to persuade his audience.

At a quick glance, the most obvious difference between the two kinds of prompts is that the old prompt asked you about your opinion on a topic , using specific examples to support your reasoning, while the new prompt asks you to explain how author builds an argument , using specific elements from the text to support your reasoning. On the new SAT essay, your thesis does not require your stating an opinion on a topic, but instead involves identifying WHAT the author’s argument is and HOW she/he supports it .

What does this look like in action? Take a look at this sample thesis for an essay on the above prompt:

In this passage, Gioia argues that young Americans are less engaged with the arts (particularly literature) than in the past, which has a dire effect on multiple aspects of society. Gioia uses statistics and surveys, diction, and the organization of the article to support his conclusion that “As more Americans lose [the] capability [to engage with the arts and literature], our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded.”

The new prompt also requires students to read a passage and then analyze it , rather than coming up with their own opinion on a topic and having to support it with examples they come up with. This means that there will be no more discussing of World War II or Animal Farm on the essay (unless, of course, the author of the passage in the essay prompt discusses those things); instead, all students will draw their examples from the same primary source.

The other major change with the new SAT essay is the amount of time you have to write the essay: instead of a paltry 25 minutes to read the prompt, think of examples to support your argument, and write the essay, you now have 50 minutes to read and analyze the prompt and write your essay.

What’s Still The Same With The New SAT Essay Prompts?

Although you no longer will be able to prepare ahead of time for the essay by gathering examples from literature, history, or your own life to use as support for your thesis, in the new SAT essay you still need to use specific examples to support your logic and reasoning. Even though the evidence you'll be using to support your analysis of the author's argument will be coming directly from the text included in the essay question, you still need to be specific.

Take the sample SAT essay question from earlier:

Let's say that one of your points is that Gioia uses statistics and survey data to support his argument for the importance of literature. In order to support your point, you will need to cite specific instances of where Gioia does this in the text. It wouldn't be enough to simply say "Gioia discusses surveys, which makes his point seem stronger" or "Gioia starts out by being general before getting more specific." You would need to go into more detail, like so:

Gioia's discussion of the findings of the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts serves to provide context for his argument. By stating that "arts participation by Americans has declined for eight of the nine major forms that are measured" before going on to present the specific information about "the declining percentage of Americans, especially young adults, reading literature," Gioia draws the reader in from the general to the specific.

You'll also still have to write well and in an organized fashion . Using varied sentence structures and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a must for a high essay score, as is making sure that your thesis is clear and your ideas are presented in an orderly way. Just as on the old SAT essay, keeping to one example or piece of supporting evidence per paragraph will make it easier for your essay's graders to follow your lines of reasoning.

Finally, in order to get a 2+ score (out of 4) in each of the three essay scoring categories (Reading, Analysis, and Writing), you should plan to write more than one page . You'll need at least that much space to write even a middle-scoring essay that articulates your central claim about how the author supports her argument, analyzes the text using specific examples, and shows your comprehension of the material.

Cartoon artist sketch by Evan , used under CC BY 2.0 /Cropped and resized from original.

Main Strategies for the New SAT Writing Prompts

I've taken advice from our guides on the old SAT essay and altered it to apply to the new essay.

Old strategy : Think up examples beforehand that you'll be able to use on the test. If you're having trouble coming up with any, we have a list of 6 examples that can be used for most current SAT essay prompts .

New strategy : Think up categories of examples beforehand and practice writing about them. Start out by considering the suggestions provided in the standard prompt (evidence, reasoning, and stylistic or persuasive elements), then come up with some ways that authors might build an argument on your own (like citing statistics or quoting experts). Read other persuasive passages and see if you can explain in words how the author is building his/her argument.

Old strategy : Make up examples out of thin air for any prompt. Because the SAT essay graders do not have time to fact check , they have to take any "facts" you present in your essay at face value (as long as they support your argument. For example, you could claim that the horses end up killing the pigs over accounting error at the end of Animal Farm , and as long as this supports your thesis, the graders cannot take off points.

New strategy : ABANDON MADE-UP EVIDENCE for the most part. You MUST use proof from the passage to back up your thesis . The only exception to this rule would be if, for example, you were able to make up a study showing that sentences that include the word “intellectual” are inherently more persuasive, and so the author's constant use of the word "intellectual" adds to the persuasive impact of the essay (or something like that).

Old strategy : Ignore the quote in the essay prompt and skip straight to the "assignment" part.

New strategy : Do not ignore! You MUST read the passage, and read it closely (so that you can thoroughly analyze the way the author builds his/her argument). Luckily, you now have twice as much time, so use it well.

Old strategy : Go into the SAT prepared to get the essay out of the way at the beginning.

New strategy : Now that the essay is at the end of the SAT, you'll need to make sure you save energy so that you're not completely delirious by the time you get to your essay . On the other hand, because the new SAT essay will be optional and scored separately from the rest of your SAT Reading/Writing score, you can opt not to take the essay on a particular test without it affecting your overall SAT score. Make sure to check with the colleges you plan on applying to for their policies on accepting the new SAT essay - you may not even need to take it!

What’s Next?

Want to dive deeper into the details of this change? Our complete guide to the new 2016 SAT contains an entire section on the new SAT essay .

Not sure whether or not you need to take the essay? Read up on which schools require or recommend the SAT essay here .

In need of some good examples of persuasive argumentative techniques? Then be sure to check out our article describing different types of examples to use in your SAT essay .

Want to get serious about improving your SAT score? We have the leading online SAT prep program that will raise your score by 160+ points, guaranteed .

Exclusive to our program, we have an expert SAT instructor grade each of your SAT essays and give you customized feedback on how to improve your score. This can mean an instant jump of 80 points on the Writing section alone.

Check out our 5-day free trial and sign up for free:

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Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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Not Lost in a Book

Why the “decline by 9” in kids pleasure reading is getting more pronounced, year after year..

Those of us who believe in the power of books worry all the time that reading, as a pursuit, is collapsing, eclipsed by (depending on the era) streaming video, the internet, the television, or the hula hoop. Yet, somehow, reading persists; more books are sold today than were sold before the pandemic. Though print book sales were down 2.6 percent in 2023, they were still 10 percent greater than in 2019 , and some genres—adult fiction, memoirs—rose in sales last year.

But right now, there’s one sector of publishing that is in free fall. At least among one audience, books are dying. Alarmingly, it’s the exact audience whose departure from reading might actually presage a catastrophe for the publishing industry—and for the entire concept of pleasure reading as a common pursuit.

Ask anyone who works with elementary-school children about the state of reading among their kids and you’ll get some dire reports. Sales of “middle-grade” books—the classification covering ages 8 through 12—were down 10 percent in the first three quarters of 2023 , after falling 16 percent in 2022 . It’s the only sector of the industry that’s underperforming compared to 2019. There hasn’t been a middle-grade phenomenon since Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants spinoff Dog Man hit the scene in 2016. New middle-grade titles are vanishing from Barnes and Noble shelves, agents and publishers say, due to a new corporate policy focusing on books the company can guarantee will be bestsellers.

Most alarmingly, kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. It’s called the “Decline by 9, ” and it’s reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators. According to research by the children’s publishers Scholastic, at age 8, 57 percent of kids say they read books for fun most days; at age 9, only 35 percent do . This trend started before the pandemic, experts say, but the pandemic accelerated things. “I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how disruptive the pandemic was on middle grade readers,” one industry analyst told Publishers Weekly . And everyone I talked to agreed that the sudden drop-off in reading for fun is happening at a crucial age—the very age when, according to publishing lore, lifetime readers are made. “If you can keep them interested in books at that age, it will foster an interest in books the rest of their life,” said Brenna Connor, an industry analyst at Circana, the market research company that runs Bookscan. “If you don’t, they don’t want to read books as an adult.”

What’s causing the Decline by 9? It might be screens, but it’s not only screens. It’s not like kids are suddenly getting their own phones at age 9; recent survey data from Common Sense Media reveals that phone ownership holds steady, at around 30 percent, among kids aged 8 and 9. (It isn’t until they reach 11 or 12 that the majority of American kids have their own phone.) Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back things from the backlist. There’s not anything like that right now for the middle-grade age group.”

“It’s not like we want these kids to have phones, that’s not the solution,” one executive in children’s books told me ruefully. “But without phones, we’re really struggling to market to them.”

Traditionally, middle-grade book discovery happens via parents, librarians, and—most crucially—peers. At recess, your best friend tells you that you have got to read the Baby-Sitters Club , and boom, you’re hooked. That avenue for discovery evaporated during the pandemic, and it hasn’t come back. “The lag in peer-to-peer recommendations seems to be lingering,” said Joanne O’Sullivan, a children’s book author and PW reporter. “Kids are back in school, so why aren’t they sharing recommendations with each other? Why aren’t they as enthusiastic about books as they were prepandemic?”

Experts I spoke to pointed to any number of causes for middle-graders’ lost love of reading. Yes, screen time is an issue: “We know that screen time increased for many kids during that initial phase of the pandemic,” said Circana’s Connor. “Some of that increased screen time still remains, even though the pandemic is mostly behind us.” Or, as O’Sullivan asked, “Is this generation just iPad babies?”

But others also pointed to the way reading is being taught to young children in an educational environment that gets more and more test-focused all the time. “I do not blame teachers for this,” said O’Sullivan, but the transformation of the reading curriculum means “there’s not a lot of time for discovery and enjoyment in reading.” She noted a change I, too, had noticed: Reading in the classroom has moved away from encouraging students to dive into a whole book and moved toward students reading excerpts and responding to them. “Even in elementary school, you read, you take a quiz, you get the points. You do a reading log, and you have to read so many minutes a day. It’s really taking a lot of the joy out of reading.”

Of course, even many teachers and librarians who buck the curricular pressure—who dream of fostering a love of aimless, testless reading in their young charges—are finding that substantially more difficult in 2024. “Libraries are getting defunded,” said O’Sullivan. “Librarians are being let go. In some states, teachers can’t even keep a classroom library because they have to protect themselves from book bans.” As Jensen wrote in a recent blog post , it sure doesn’t help the children’s book industry when “chat rooms and library board meetings fill up with a small handful of people calling librarians Marxist communist groomers.”

It all adds up to an environment where kids are less passionate about reading and, even if they somehow do get excited, they’re less likely to discover the book that will keep them excited. What are publishers trying to do about it? They’re doubling down on the kinds of books that have been hits for middle-grade readers over the past few years: graphic novels and illustrated novels. Graphic novels, comics published in trade-book form, are a sales bright spot; last year they made up a quarter of all middle-grade sales. And “illustrated novels” have only become more and more popular since the birth of Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid in 2007. Pilkey’s Captain Underpants and Dog Man books live somewhere in that graphic novel/illustrated-book mode—blocks of simple text followed by pages of drawings—and more and more, publishers are looking for light, funny stories-with-pictures that can help uncertain readers make the leap from picture books to big-kid books.

It’s great that the kids who love these books—or Spider-Man comics, or manga, or for that matter off-putting kid-lit “histories” about tragedies that happened in my lifetime —are reading something . For sure! Yet I can’t help but be worried that the kinds of books that changed my life between ages 8 and 12 are falling by the wayside. Is there room for the thoughtful, serious, beautiful young-person’s novel in 2024? Can you publish Bridge to Terabithia in the age of Captain Underpants?

It does seem to be just a little harder to sell that kind of novel these days. “Editors are looking for highly illustrated projects, shorter word counts, a bit more humor and adventure,” said Chelsea Eberly, director of the children’s book agency Greenhouse Literary . Connor was more blunt: “Maybe you think a book about a school shooting is really important,” she said, “but kids want to read a fun book. That’s what kids want today—they want to have fun.”

“If you’re an established author and you have an established reputation” for serious, heartfelt books, said O’Sullivan, you’ll be fine. But if you’re a new author who’s written a quiet, issue-oriented debut, “you might have to think about adapting, in a way.” A publisher might, for example, suggest bringing an illustrator aboard.

One side effect: Those established authors with established reputations tend to be white. The younger, newer authors who are being dissuaded by the market from writing unillustrated non-comedies? They’re increasingly people of color, thanks to the industry’s notably successful attempts at diversification over the past five to 10 years. The result may be a two-tiered system of awards-worthy book publishing, as older, whiter writers continue to publish moving, sensitive novels, while younger, Blacker authors are shut out of that particular market. “When you make it harder for new writers to break through, you’re perpetuating the problems that children’s publishing has been trying to address,” said Jensen.

For her part, Eberly, the book agent, doesn’t think the supply of serious, “award-winning” books will dry up. “Knowing the editors that I sell to, those are the types of books they want to shepherd into the world.” The danger, she says, isn’t that publishers will stop publishing such books; it’s that children won’t be able to find them due to book bans and pressure on librarians and teachers. Which books face the most challenges from book banners? Books by Black and queer authors.

What nearly everyone I spoke to in children’s publishing agrees would solve the problem in a snap is a new blockbuster, the kind of Harry Potter –style success that raises all boats. The industry can’t depend on Captain Underpants forever, even though, as Connor noted, “The devil works hard, but Dav Pilkey works harder.” While more than one person I spoke to expressed an existential fear—what if that next blockbuster never comes? What if we’re in the post-children’s-blockbuster era?—Eberly was more sanguine. “I don’t worry that we’re not going to have another blockbuster,” she said. “I’m hoping that the tent expands. I’ve always kind of hated it when there’s only one tentpole, like Harry Potter or whatever. I want there to be more tentpoles with room for more people underneath.”

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Using Reason to Understand the Abuse and Decline of Reason

By rosolino candela.

By Rosolino Candela, May 6 2024

A Liberty Classics Book Review of Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents , by F.A. Hayek (edited by Bruce Caldwell). 1

Hayek attempted to answer this question in what was an unfinished project that he had been writing in the late 1930s through the 1950s. Hayek expressed his enthusiasm for a new book that would not only investigate the “history of the influence of scientific and technological development on social thought and policy (to be called The Abuse and Decline of Reason )” (quoted from Hayek 2010, p. 312), but also “the fundamental principles of the social development of the last hundred years (from Saint-Simon to Hitler)” (quoted in Caldwell 2010 [2018], p. 1).

Though this greater project was never realized as Hayek had intended, readers are now fortunate to have a reconstruction of what Hayek had completed reassembled as Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents , edited by Bruce Caldwell as part of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek (Volume 13). Special credit must be given to Caldwell not only for his masterful introduction to this volume, but also the archival material provided in the appendix and the supplementary footnotes that provide further context to the text.

With the aid of Caldwell’s editorship, I will first briefly summarize Hayek’s argument before, secondly, situating the argument not only in the immediate historical context within which Hayek was writing, but also (and lastly) turning to the broader, and more fundamental, intellectual basis of Hayek’s argument.

Hayek’s Argument

Hayek’s fundamental motivation behind The Abuse and Decline of Reason project was to explain how human reason used in the natural sciences, as evidenced by the amazing scientific and technological advances of the 18th and 19th century, would later become the basis for hubris among social scientists. Such hubris rested on the belief that human beings could deliberately or consciously create economic, political, or social changes as a direct outcome of their own reasoning.

The “the fatal conceit,” as Hayek would later put it, of this intellectual attitude is based on an “intellectual somersault” (Hayek 2018, p. 148) among social scientists that Hayek refers to as scientism, the misconceived application by social scientists of the methods of the natural sciences to understanding the nature and causes of social order. According to Hayek, scientism is characterized by the “blind transfer of the striving for quantitative measurements to a field in which the specific conditions are not present which give it its basic importance in the natural sciences” without taking into account the plans or purposes attached to human action (2018, p. 114).

In order to understand what Hayek means by scientism, we must first understand the nature of social science in the first place. Any social science, including economic theory, attempts to explain the existence of a particular phenomenon through generalizable and systematic chains of cause and effect that is compositive of, but not directly reducible to , its ultimate source: the universal tendency of individuals to utilize the most effective means to achieve their ends. For example, money emerges as a generally accepted means of exchange for the purpose of avoiding a double coincidence of wants. But the source of that knowledge, according to Hayek, requires humility, not conceit. The explanation of social phenomena requires the social scientist to be concerned with explaining human action based on the appropriate “facts” of the social sciences: what people believe and think.

As Hayek states, “it is probably no exaggeration to say that every important advance in economic theory during the last hundred years was a further step in the consistent application of subjectivism. That the objects of economic activity cannot be defined in objective terms but only with reference to a human purpose goes without saying. Neither a ‘commodity’ or an ‘economic good,’ nor ‘food’ or ‘money,’ can be defined in physical terms but only in terms of views people hold about things” (Hayek 2018, p. 94).

Hayek’s emphasis on methodological subjectivism, however, is not synonymous with methodological behaviorism, or the notion that social science can be directly reduced to quantifiable, physical explanations of cause and effect. “It is a mistake,” Hayek writes, “to which careless expressions by social scientists often give countenance, to believe that their aim is to explain conscious action. This, if it can be done at all, is a different task, the task of psychology. It is only insofar as some sort of order arises as a result of individual action but without being designed by any individual that a problem is raised which demands a theoretical explanation” (emphasis in original; Hayek 2018, p. 103).

Though the purpose of all social sciences is to explain spontaneous order in terms of systematic chains of cause and effect, the source of such explanation in the social sciences is human reason, or the purposes and plans of human beings. However, by replacing the method of the social sciences with that of the natural sciences, the irony of scientism is that it dismisses human reason as an “unscientific” source for explaining the spontaneous order of society, while embracing human reason as the scientific basis for the deliberate organization of society .

To purge such subjective and qualitative knowledge as unscientific not only purges economic science of its “data,” but also purges scientists of the very theoretical knowledge upon which social order is understood. This leaves us with a notion of science that explains social outcomes only in terms of direct relationships of cause and effect that can be either quantified, deliberately determined by human reason, or otherwise explained by historical laws of nature.

The intellectual origins of socialism can thus be traced back to the narrowing of what the term science meant and how the practice of science came to be understood.

However, the tragedy of socialism that emerged in the 20th century cannot be explained by scientism alone nor by malevolent ends. “As Hayek always emphasized,” Caldwell writes, “both he and his opponents typically see similar ends and differ principally on the means that they think are best to achieve them” (Caldwell 2010 [2018], p. 40).

Moreover, Hayek’s critique is not directed against the scientist “in the special field in which he is competent, but against the application of his mental habits in fields where he is not competent” (Hayek 2018, p. 166). Rather, the tragic results of totalitarianism emerged from the application of central planning as a means to achieve a more prosperous and just society among the poorest and least advantaged.

But, central planning, as “fully recognized by its advocates” from “Saint-Simon to Marx to Lenin” (Hayek 2018, p. 161, fn. 8), was “nothing but such an application of engineering principles to the whole of society based on the assumption that such a complete concentration of all relevant knowledge is possible” (Hayek 2018, p. 161). Thus, the tragedy of socialism in the 20th century was defined by the unity of both statism and scientism , the use of state power in an effort to deliberately organize society as if it were an engineering problem (i.e., the allocation of given resources to achieve a single end) rather than a coordination problem (i.e., the discovery of the most appropriate means among an infinite set of unknown ends).

Historical Context

The immediate historical context of Hayek’s project, and why it was never completed as intended, can be understood by comparing Hayek’s originally intended organization of the project with the chronological order in which pieces of the project were published. Both the manner in which Caldwell has organized this volume and the correspondence between Hayek and Fritz Machlup , provided in the appendix, explain what Hayek had in mind. As clearly stated in his correspondence with Machlup, dated October 19, 1941, Hayek’s project was motivated by the immediate threats to Western civilization: “If one cannot fight the Nazis one ought at least to fight the ideas which produce Naziism” (quoted in Hayek 2018, p. 319).

In particular, Hayek wanted to disabuse individuals of the idea, popular at the time among British intellectuals, that Naziism is a reactionary, capitalist movement. This immediate motivation was intended to be the tail end of this broader project on The Abuse and Decline of Reason, but ended up being the initial pieces published, first as a pamphlet, Freedom and the Economic System (1939)—and later with greater exposition as The Road to Serfdom (1944).

Yet even after revelation of the horrors that had transpired in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, intellectuals were not disabused of the hopes that central planning promised. Why not? As historian Tony Judt states in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 , there “was a great faith in the ability (and not just the duty) of government to solve large-scale problems by mobilizing and directing people and resources to collectively useful ends” (Judt 2005, p. 68). However, the fact that intellectuals across the political spectrum of his time could agree on the primacy of central planning was Hayek’s entire point (Caldwell 2010 [2018], p. 29), the fundamental intellectual origins of which Hayek wished to uncover in The Abuse and Decline of Reason project.

Intellectual Basis

The scientific justification for both the positivism and the socialism of Hayek’s time are descended from a common intellectual origin going back to Henri de Saint-Simon. This intellectual origin can be understood as the attempt to purge the social sciences of its explanandum , namely how the subjective knowledge that resides in the minds of individuals gives rise to the spontaneous formation and evolution of institutions as an indirect outcome of their own reasoning. Although the word socialism had been used in Italian by Giacomo Giuliani as early as 1803 (Hayek 2018, p. 229, fn. 57), according to Hayek, the positivistic and statist components of “scientific socialism” can be traced back to Saint-Simon’s Introducion aux travaux scientifiques du dix-neuvième siècle (2 vols, 1807-1808), which “combines, for the first time, nearly all the characteristics of the modern scientistic organizer.

The enthusiasm for physicism (it is now called physicalism) and of ‘physical language,’ the attempt to ‘unify science’ and to make it the basis of morals, the contempt for all ‘theological,’ that is anthropomorphic, reasoning, the desire to organize the work of others, particularly by editing a great encyclopedia, and the wish to plan life in general on scientific lines are all present. One could sometimes believe that one is reading a contemporary work of an H. G. Wells, a Lewis Mumford, or an Otto Neurath.

Nor is the complaint missing about the intellectual crisis, the moral chaos, which must be overcome by the imposition of a new scientific creed” (Hayek 2018, p. 195). As Hayek further explains, Saint-Simon’s work “is the beginning of both modern positivism and modern socialism, which, thus, both began as definitely reactionary and authoritarian movements” (2018, p. 195). Thus, we can trace the intellectual trajectory of Karl Marx back to Comte and Hegel and ultimately to Saint-Simon.

Although Hayek’s project was ultimately historical in nature, it cannot be understood without acknowledging that the ultimate source of modern socialism can be traced back to its very first casualty: the intellectual humility taught by the “compositive method” of economic science.

Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason, by F.A. Hayek. Bruce Caldwell, ed. Liberty Fund, Inc.
“Hayek, Mises, and the Methodology of the Social Sciences,” by Adam Martin. Library of Economics and Liberty, Apr. 1, 2019.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Christian Lange is quoted as saying that technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master. If Hayek’s Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason can teach us anything, human reason is no different: it can be used to understand its own limitations, from which the rules that govern a free civilization can emerge to allow individuals to cope with such ignorance in pursuit of their own ends. In this sense, human reason can be a useful servant. Without such humility, however, “the individual whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them” (Hayek 2018, p. 154). In this regard, the conscious use of reason can become a dangerous master.

Caldwell, Bruce. 2010 [2018]. “Introduction.” In The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Volume 13: Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason , edited by Bruce Caldwell (pp. 1–45). Carmel: Liberty Fund.

Judt, Tony. 2005. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 . New York: The Penguin Press.

Hayek, F.A. 1939. Freedom and the Economic System (Public Policy Pamphlet, No. 29). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F.A. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F.A. 2018. The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Volume 13: Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason , edited by Bruce Caldwell. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

[1] Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents , by Friedrich A. Hayek. Edited by Bruce Caldwell. This 2018 Liberty Fund paperback edition is Volume 13 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek , published by arrangement with The University of Chicago Press.

* Rosolino Candela is a Senior Fellow in the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and Program Director of Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

For more articles by Rosolino Candela, see the Archive .

The internet is in decline – it needs rewilding

The online world was meant to be an open system but has become dominated by huge corporations. If we are to revive it, that must end

B rowsing through a history of online public messaging last week, I came across a magical photograph from 1989 or 1990. It shows the world’s first web server. It was Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT workstation in Cern, the international physics research lab, where he worked at the time. On the case is a tattered sticky label, on which is scribbled, in red ink, “This machine is a server DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!”

Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, had come up with the idea for a “world wide web” as a way of locating and accessing documents that were scattered all over the internet. With a small group of colleagues he envisaged, designed and implemented it in the late 1980s and eventually put the whole thing – protocols, server and browser software, HTML specification, etc. – on one of Cern’s internet servers, and in doing so changed the world.

He was able to do this because the internet, which had been publicly available since January 1983, enabled it. The network had no central ownership or controller; and it did only one thing – transfer data packets from one edge of the network to their destination at another edge. If you were smart enough to build an application that used data packets, then the internet would do it for you, no questions asked.

The result was an extraordinary explosion of creativity, and the emergence of what was, essentially, a kind of global commons. At that point in its history, the internet was, as one scholar later described it , “an architecture for permissionless innovation” or, more prosaically, a global machine for springing surprises. The first such surprise was the web. And because it was decided the web would grow better without profit considerations, Berners-Lee released it as a platform that would also enable permissionless innovation.

However, the next generation of innovators to benefit from this freedom – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple et al – saw no reason to extend it to anyone else. They built fabulously profitable enterprises on the platform that Berners-Lee had created. The creative commons of the internet has been gradually and inexorably enclosed, much as agricultural land was by parliamentary acts from 1600 onwards in England.

The result, as Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon put it in a striking essay in Noema magazine , is that our online spaces are no longer open ecosystems. Instead “they’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farms that madden the creatures trapped within”.

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And these industrial farms have concentrated into a series of duopolies. Google and Apple’s browsers have nearly 85% of the world market share. Microsoft and Apple’s two desktop operating systems have almost 90%. Google runs about 90% of global search. More than half of all phones come from Apple and Samsung, while 99% of mobile operating systems are from Google or Apple. Apple and Google’s email clients manage nearly 90% of global email. GoDaddy and Cloudflare serve about 50% of global domain name system requests. And so on.

One of the consequences of this concentration, say Farrell and Berjon, is that the creative possibilities of permissionless innovation have become increasingly constrained. “Two kinds of everything may be enough to fill a fictional ark,” they write, “but can’t run an open, global ‘network of networks’ where everyone has the same chance to innovate.”

“The internet”, Eric Schmidt, former chairman of Google, famously observed, “is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” Since Dr Schmidt once ran the Google plantation, what he regards as anarchy is doubtless what ecologists would call diversity.

And of course for a plantation owner, diversity is a bug, not a feature. Farrell and Berjon make intriguing use of this metaphor. Their essay opens with an account of the notion of “scientific forestry” took hold in late 18th century Prussia and Saxony when officials began to rearrange their complex, diverse forests into straight rows of single-species trees: “Owners no longer relied on skilled local foresters to manage forests. They were replaced with lower-skilled labourers following basic algorithmic instructions to keep the monocrop tidy, the undergrowth bare.”

You can guess how this panned out. The first felling of the tidy trees yielded vast profits. Fresh trees were then planted, but were attacked by pests and disease. “The first magnificent bounty,” write Farrell and Berjon, “had not been the beginning of endless riches, but a one-off harvesting of millennia of soil wealth built up by biodiversity and symbiosis. Complexity was the goose that laid golden eggs, and she had been slaughtered.” As we Irish discovered in the great famine of 1845-49, monocultures are generally not a good idea and we abandon biodiversity at our peril.

Farrell and Berjon make the same point about our online world: the internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. We can revitalise it, but only by “rewilding” it – hence the title of their essay. I guess it will be as attractive to Silicon Valley as George Monbiot is to the National Farmers’ Union.

Tim Berners-Lee

Review: In ‘Reading Genesis,’ Marilynne Robinson treats the Bible like a great work of literature

Considering how often the Bible is characterized as a great work of literature, it is rarely read like one. Few would suggest a piecemeal approach to Crime and Punishment , jumping from chapter to chapter with little regard to the whole, but a book like Genesis is often studied only as a collection of isolated episodes.

In her latest book, Reading Genesis , Marilynne Robinson argues that such a reading is “so deeply ingrained that the larger structures of the text, its strategies of characterization, its arguments, can be completely overlooked.”

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 352p $29

Perhaps Robinson’s concern about missing the forest for the trees explains why she decided not to divide her exploration of Genesis into chapters, sections or even subheadings. It is a bold choice for a book so dense, but at the very least, it forces readers to take in the Scripture as a grand narrative, one that resists easy fragmentation. The result is a meandering journey through Genesis guided by one of the foremost Christian humanists of our age. Robinson’s sharp literary eye and clear, lyrical prose shine new light on some of our oldest stories.

Robinson argues that the early chapters of Genesis tell the story in detail of “a series of…declensions that permit the anomaly” of how human beings, flawed and foolish as we are, are so beloved and exalted by God.

Through her comparison of the Hebrew creation and flood narratives with the Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh , Robinson illustrates how distinct the Hebrew story’s insistence upon the goodness of God and creation would have been among other Near East peoples. Her comparative-literature approach reminds modern Western audiences just how radical the notion really is that there is one God who made all things good—and how much responsibility that bestows upon human beings. Since the Hebrews believed all things were made good, human agency is the root of toil, suffering and even natural disaster, as in the story of the flood.

Adam and Eve’s sin leads God to curse the ground but not humanity; our culpability affects the world but never denigrates our being, Robinson insists. She faces our faults dead-on, unflinching in her commitment to humanity: “That human beings were so central to Creation that it would be changed by them, albeit for the worst, is, whatever else, a kind of testament to who we are,” Robinson writes. Human beings are co-creators with God.

Because Robinson constantly jumps back and forth between episodes while drawing comparisons to other Near East literature, reading the first 80 or so pages of Reading Genesis can feel like wading through a “formless void” (Gen 1:2). The structure is sometimes circuitous and difficult to follow, but patient readers will find astute insights on the power and gravity of human agency, and even some hope. After all, our great power points to our divine origins. In her stirring prose, Robinson asks, “If we could step back from the dread we now stir in ourselves and look at all of this with some objectivity, would we not feel awe? Would we not feel struck by how absolutely unlike everything we are, excepting God Himself?”

But Reading Genesis is strongest when it turns to Robinson’s analysis of the lives of Abraham and his descendants. As a novelist, Robinson is most comfortable in the domestic, intimate complexities of human relationships, making her well-suited to tell the story of this remarkable family. As a result, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the other men and women throughout Genesis are shown to be living, breathing human beings, flawed and complex, who nevertheless play major roles in providential history.

Although Robinson insists on a broad, thematic read of Genesis, she is ever-attentive to the sequence of the narrative in her analysis. For example, she sees Hagar and Ishmael’s exile in the desert and the binding of Isaac as parallel cases, told one after the other. They are commentaries on child sacrifice: two people exercising profound faith, entrusting their sons’ lives to God’s word, only for God to deliver them from harm’s way.

This attention to structure invites sometimes startling revelations. She says, for instance, that Isaac’s journey to find a wife and Jacob being cast out after stealing Esau’s birthright frame Isaac’s life to show his decline in fortune. But she takes this a step further to suggest that it also calls attention to Rebekah’s unhappiness: “Though the text says that Isaac loved Esau and Rebekah loved Jacob, there is really no evidence that Rebekah loved anyone.” And as she traces out Rebekah’s life from Isaac’s arrival to her pregnancy to her relationship with her sons, Robinson makes a strong case that this might be true, and even providential.

And so while Robinson explores the family feuds that exist throughout Genesis, her writing is attentive to God’s presence even in the most silly, self-serving and confounding moments of the book. “The remarkable realism of the Bible, the voices it captures, the characterization it achieves, are products of an interest in the human that has no parallel in ancient literature.” She treats all of Genesis’s “domestic malaise” with deep reverence, because, after all, so does God.

Unfortunately, Robinson’s vastly connective interpretive vision sometimes comes at the expense of accuracy. For example, early in the book she says that the boast of Lamech (Gen 4:23-24) closely mirrors his son Noah’s drunken rage (Gen 9:18-29) in order to comment on humanity’s tendency toward vengeance; it is a powerful insight. The only problem is that Lamech, the boastful descendent of Cain, is not Noah’s father, but rather a distant cousin. Noah’s father is also named Lamech, but he descends from Seth, not Cain.

So her conclusion, over 100 pages later, that “providence would act through the life of Cain to arrive at Noah,” is less of a brilliant callback than a stuttering reminder of Reading Genesis ’s shortcomings. A more thorough investigation of Robinson’s claims throughout the book would require a biblical scholar, or at least a bibliography. (At no point does she cite any external source, save the occasional, offhand reference to another book of the Bible. You wonder how she got away with it. You then remember that she wrote Gilead ; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists earn a certain editorial license that theologians lack.)

And yet, from her attention to the intimate, human reality at the heart of Genesis, we gain insight into this family affair that only a once-in-a-generation novelist like Robinson could provide. Noting that “at no point are the actors’ motivations insufficient to account for events, and at no point are their actions out of character,” Robinson concludes, “The story could, no doubt should, function as a theological proof that the earthly and the providential are separate things in theory only.”

God’s will is not dependent on us, but using the unique, fickle motivations of each of his co-creators, God is able to make something great. To anyone who wonders where God could be in such a broken world, Reading Genesis reminds us that this question has always plagued humanity, and God has always drawn near to us anyway. Robinson’s book is an insightful exploration of “the ways in which the faithfulness of God is manifest in the world of fallen humankind.” The stability of the covenant is not due to our worthiness, but to God’s love for human beings.

In her 2004 novel, Gilead , Robinson’s protagonist, the Congregationalist minister John Ames, reflects on how the theologian is never truly separate from the God about whom he or she writes: “I suppose Calvin’s God was a Frenchman, just as mine is a Middle Westerner of New England extraction.” In the same way, Marilynne Robinson’s God is in love with humanity. In all our flaws and folly, power and glory, she insists, “Human beings are at the center of it all.”

This article also appeared in print, under the headline “Abraham and Family,” in the April 2024 , issue.

Delaney Coyne is a Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., Fellow at America.

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Effort to Keep Biden on the Ballot in Ohio Stalls Out Ahead of Deadline

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state said the Legislature had until Thursday to fix a procedural issue with President Biden’s nomination.

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President Biden, wearing a dark blue suit and a lighter blue tie, walking out of the White House with an aide, also wearing a suit and tie, at left.

By Chris Cameron

May 9, 2024

A partisan battle in Ohio has stalled an effort by state lawmakers to ensure that President Biden is on the ballot in the state this November, teeing up what could be an expensive and protracted legal battle ahead of this year’s election.

Ohio was one of three states that had warned the Democratic Party that Mr. Biden could be left off the ballot because the Democratic National Convention would take place after certification deadlines for presidential nominees. This is usually a minor procedural issue, and states have almost always offered a quick solution to ensure that major presidential candidates remain on the ballot.

Alabama, for example, resolved the issue with little fanfare last week, when the State Legislature overwhelmingly passed a law granting an extension to the deadline accommodating the late date of the Democratic convention, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 19. Election officials in Washington State also signaled that their state would accept a provisional certification of Mr. Biden’s nomination.

Legislation similar to the law adopted in Alabama was proposed in the Republican-dominated General Assembly in Ohio but stalled out ahead of a Thursday deadline given by Frank LaRose, the Republican secretary of state, to change the law. Mr. LaRose has said that the legislature could still resolve the issue with an emergency vote.

Republicans in the Ohio Senate advanced a bill on Wednesday that would resolve the issue but attached a rider that would ban foreign money in state ballot initiatives, over the objections of Senate Democrats. The House speaker, Jason Stephens, who is fending off a monthslong effort by some Republicans to oust him and needs support from Democratic lawmakers in the minority to stay in power, did not take up the measure, and the legislature adjourned with no solution in place.

Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said that Mr. Biden would be on the ballot in all 50 states.

“Election after election, states across the country have acted in line with the bipartisan consensus and taken the necessary steps to ensure the presidential nominees from both parties will be on the ballot,” Mr. Lutvak said, pointing to efforts by states to resolve similar issues in past elections. Ohio passed temporary extensions to its certification deadline for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012 and for President Donald J. Trump in 2020.

At the heart of the issue is a partisan fight over donations by foreign nationals in support of ballot initiatives in Ohio, which Republicans in the state blamed for the passage last year of a constitutional amendment enshrining access to abortion in the state . Hansjörg Wyss , a Swiss billionaire, is a major donor to one of the progressive groups that campaigned in Ohio in support of the measure, and Republicans supporting the measure have repeatedly singled out Mr. Wyss as a target of the ban.

Republicans in Ohio have said that passing the ban on foreign donations is the price that Democrats will have to pay to ensure that Mr. Biden is on the ballot in the state.

“Democrats would rather protect Hansjörg Wyss than get Joe Biden on the statewide ballot,” Mr. LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, who first warned Democrats of the deadline issue, said in a statement on Thursday.

Added Mr. LaRose, who finished third in the state’s Senate Republican primary this spring: “I hope the House does the right thing and takes action soon.”

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida who focuses on election law, said the Biden campaign could sue the state to put Mr. Biden on the ballot. She pointed to the Supreme Court’s ruling in March that states could not bar Mr. Trump from running for another term under a constitutional provision, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, that prohibits insurrectionists from holding office.

“If Ohio bars Biden from the ballot, the Supreme Court should order him back on the ballot just like it did with Trump in Colorado,” Ms. Torres-Spelliscy said.

But it took six months of legal wrangling from when Colorado voters sued to take Mr. Trump off the ballot to when the Supreme Court put the issue to bed. Ohio is not considered a swing state — Mr. Trump won there with an eight-point lead in 2020 — but the Biden campaign could be drawn into a monthslong legal battle to ensure that the president is on the ballot in all 50 states.

Chris Cameron covers politics for The Times, focusing on breaking news and the 2024 campaign. More about Chris Cameron

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

Donald Trump leads President Biden in five crucial battleground states, a new set of polls shows , as young and nonwhite voters express discontent with the president over the economy and the war in Gaza.

With Democratic Senate candidates running well ahead of Biden , the new battleground polling shows a ticket-splitting pattern, Nate Cohn writes .

In an extended riff at a rally in New Jersey, Trump compared migrants to Hannibal Lecte r, the fictional serial killer and cannibal from “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Dodging the Question: Leading Republicans, including several of Trump’s potential running mates, have refused to say flatly that they will accept the outcome of the election .

West Virginia Senate Race: Gov. Jim Justice’s companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them as Justice campaigns for a seat in the Senate.

Ohio Senate Race: Bernie Moreno, the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown, tells a riches-to-rags-to-riches tale. But the reality isn’t so tidy .

Maryland Senate Race: The Democratic Senate primary between Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive, and Representative David Trone has grown tighter as they vie to take on Larry Hogan, the popular former two-term Republican governor.

IMAGES

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Reading books is on the decline
Decline in Reading Skills Among Students

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COMMENTS

Why We Don't Read, Revisited
Here there's a little bit of good news: the average American reader spent 1.39 hours reading in 2003, rising to 1.48 hours in 2016. That's the very gradually rising blue line in the graph above.
Teens today spend more time on digital media, less time reading
The decline in reading print media was especially steep. In the early 1990s, 33 percent of 10th-graders said they read a newspaper almost every day. By 2016, that number was only 2 percent. In the late 1970s, 60 percent of 12th-graders said they read a book or magazine almost every day; by 2016, only 16 percent did. Twelfth-graders also ...
Why it matters that teens are reading less
But the trends in moviegoing pale in comparison to the largest change we found: An enormous decline in reading. In 1980, 60 percent of 12th graders said they read a book, newspaper or magazine ...
PROOF POINTS: Scholars weigh decline in reading habits
First, the numbers. In survey questions that accompany the NAEP test, eighth graders reported how much time they spent reading outside of school. The percentage of public school students who said they read 30 minutes or more a day, besides homework, declined by 4 percentage points from 53 percent in 2017 to 49 percent in 2019.
Reading literature in/against the digital age: Shallow assumptions
While the decline of reading is a constant complaint, literary reading is, by some measures, booming on the internet (Pianzola et al., 2020) and it can be argued that the web is now producing the most viable media for the deep reading that it is understood to be eroding (Dowling, 2014). Web-based annotation appears to bridge the gap between ...
The long, steady decline of literary reading
September 7, 2016 at 6:00 a.m. EDT. The Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin. (John D McHugh/Getty Images) The percentage of American adults who read literature — any novels, short stories ...
The Pandemic Has Worsened the Reading Crisis in Schools
Given the depth of many students' struggles with reading, the work has taken on "a level of urgency," said Garensha John, a first-grade teacher at the school. "Let's get it done. As soon ...
Is Literacy Declining?
The result: a spate of articles that claim that literacy is in steep decline. Recent headlines blare, " America is facing a literacy crisis .". " Literacy rates have declined during the pandemic .". " Nearly half of adult Canadians struggle with literacy .". Of course, the claim that literacy is falling precipitously does not mean ...
Do Teens Read Seriously Anymore?
When they become twelve or thirteen, kids often stop reading seriously. The boys veer off into sports or computer games, the girls into friendship in all its wrenching mysteries and satisfactions ...
The Pandemic Will Worsen Our Reading Problem. Another Outcome Is
There is no precedent for this kind of decline in the last 20 years of using these reading measures. The foundational learning in early years makes future learning possible and builds confidence ...
Twilight of the Books
Twilight of the Books. By Caleb Crain. December 16, 2007. A recent study has shown a steep decline in literary reading among schoolchildren. PHILIPPE PETIT-ROULET. In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of ...
(PDF) Doing the Reading: The Decline of Long Long-Form Reading in
Sustained reading, however, has been on the decline in recent years (Baron, 2021; Baron and Mangen, 2021). Reading research has shown that the more people read shorter texts, the less they seem to ...
America's reading proficiency scores were dropping before the pandemic
Estimates of just how sluggish vary. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company calculated that U.S. students had lost the equivalent of almost half a school year of reading instruction. An analysis of test scores in California and South Carolina found that students had lost almost a third of a year in reading. A national analysis of the test scores of ...
The Decline In Reading In Modern Society Essay Sample
The decline of books has impacted our education system quite severely especially recently, in an article by Stephen Krashen he says "The 2002 census shows that literary reading is down 10.2% from the 1982 census, which equates to the loss of 20 million potential readers.
The Decline of Reading: A Short Research
Despite assertions that printed books are in decline, the rise of ebooks and online reading suggests that the future of reading is digital. Therefore, my thesis posits that the decline in printed book reading has transformed into an increase in ebooks and online reading, positioning the future of reading to triumph over the proliferation of ...
The Decline In Reading In Modern Society: [Essay Example], 917 words
Published: Apr 11, 2019. In today's society the marvel of reading has drastically decline from what it used to be. As Mitchell Stephens states, "Our homes barely make room for reading" (Stephens 137). I strongly agree with this point because when you look back into the ancient days, there were home libraries in utmost ninety percent of ...
(PDF) THE CAUSES OF A DECLINING INTEREST IN READING ...
The paper deals with the issue of a declining interest in reading among teenagers as evident from a qualitative research group. This study follows up on two studies presented at the ICERI 2018 in ...
Staying Awake, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Notes on the alleged decline of reading. by Ursula K. Le Guin, S ome people lament the disappearance of the spotted owl from our forests; others sport bumper stickers boasting that they eat fried spotted owls. It appears that books, too, are a threatened species, and reactions to the news are similarly various. In 2004 a National Endowment for ...
We're All Reading Wrong
Reading, while not technically medicine, is a fundamentally wholesome activity. It can prevent cognitive decline, improve sleep, and lower blood pressure. In one study, book readers outlived their ...
Is This the End of Reading?
Testing culture also discourages deep reading, critics say, because it emphasizes close reading of excerpts, for example, to study a particular literary technique, rather than reading entire works.
PDF Practice Essay 2
WRITING — 2. This response demonstrates little cohesion and limited skill in the use and control of language. There is no clear, organizing central claim, as the introduction only focuses on summarizing the argument (for example, Dana Gioia has a very strong belief that the decline of reading in America).
PDF The SAT® Practice Essay #2
The decline in reading has consequences that go beyond literature. The significance of reading has become a persistent theme in the business world. The February issue ... The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can read and comprehend a passage and write an essay analyzing the passage. In your essay, you should ...
REASONS FOR POOR READING CULTURE AND HOW IT CAN NURTURED
Children with poor reading skills end up receiving poor grades at school, get easily distracted and frustrated, have behavior problems, seem to dislike school and often fail to develop to their full potential. According to Dorothy (2002), kids with poor reading habits have higher chances of anti- social behavior.
New SAT Essay Prompts: How Are They Changing?
Write an essay in which you explain how Dana Gioia builds an argument to persuade his audience that the decline of reading in America will have a negative effect on society. In your essay, analyze how Gioia uses one or more of the features in the directions that precede the passage (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and ...
Decline Of Reading Essay
Decline Of Reading Essay. What Dillon shows us is that reading in smaller bursts are slowly hurting our ability to comprehend information and texts. Dillon shows us that there is a huge difference between reading online and reading a physical copy. He finds it funny that we have not noticed this sooner, we rely so much on digital information ...
The Real Reading Crisis Involves the Kids Who Don't Have Phones
Most alarmingly, kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. It's called the "Decline by 9," and it's reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators ...
Using Reason to Understand the Abuse and Decline of Reason
Hayek attempted to answer this question in what was an unfinished project that he had been writing in the late 1930s through the 1950s. Hayek expressed his enthusiasm for a new book that would not only investigate the "history of the influence of scientific and technological development on social thought and policy (to be called The Abuse and Decline of Reason)" (quoted from Hayek 2010, p ...
The internet is in decline
Their essay opens with an account of the notion of "scientific forestry" took hold in late 18th century Prussia and Saxony when officials began to rearrange their complex, diverse forests into ...
Review: In 'Reading Genesis,' Marilynne Robinson treats the Bible like
In her latest book, 'Reading Genesis,' Marilynne Robinson writes of a God that is in love with humanity. In all our flaws and folly, power and glory, she insists, "Human beings are at the center ...
Effort to Keep Biden on the Ballot in Ohio Stalls Out Ahead of Deadline
A partisan battle in Ohio has stalled an effort by state lawmakers to ensure that President Biden is on the ballot in the state this November, teeing up what could be an expensive and protracted ...