Sunday, November 21, 2004

Reading and Writing In Decline Earlier this fall, Bob and Roxanne Newell sent me a story about a book by Patrick Allitt, a history professor at Emory University: I'm the Teacher, You're the Student, which laments the deline of literacy in his college students. Mostly they are out of practice, he says, and the same situation prevails at other USA schools. This decline began in the 1990s, when cable television and the Internet boomed. Books and reading are no longer a dominant part of family lives. As a result, children have smaller and weaker vocabularies, less memory for detail, and stunted imaginations. If they are addicted to computer games, the mental atrophy is even more evident. Our generation was more fortunate: we had books, records, films, and radio; all of which stimulate visual imagination and provide indelible memories. I should also include newspapers and magazines; I lay on the floor each week and read Life, Look, Collier's, McCall's, and let's not forget Boy's Life. What will change this trend? Possibly grandparents. Reading to children, supplying them with books, and insisting on talking about what they have read; that can all make a difference. The best students I meet at Princeton are those who (a) rarely watched television (b) spent each summer on an island or at a ranch with a stack of books. Home-schooling seems to help, also, but that's another story! What do you think? Are there other ways to get youngsters back to books? 11:47:20 AM    comment []

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