A Nation of Illiterates

The New York Daily News laments our inability to read thoughtfully anymore.

From the piece...

We are becoming a nation of illiterates. That is all I can conclude.

Yes, I know that many adults enjoy "The Hunger Games" and "Harry Potter" in their leisure time. So do kids, of course. But the report, "What Kids Are Reading," is at least partly based on classroom assignments, even though Renaissance Learning, which commissioned the report, did not break down inside/outside classroom reading. Still, it recorded the 2,290,522 books read by 388,963 9-12th graders during the 2010-2011 school year. In purely statistical terms, "The Hunger Games" could not be the most popular high school book in the nation unless a significant number of teachers and school librarians either assigned it or actively, repeatedly encouraged students to read it.

Another surmise: They aren't reading "The Hunger Games" in China. Or in Finland. Or in any of the other countries that consistently beat us in standardized tests. Fair bet is that they're reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen and Hurston (or their high-culture equivalents), all of which are on the Common Core standards for high school and yet, by and large, remain ignored in the American classroom, where the intellectual rigors of the fifth grade linger right up until college.

Not only that, but some openly celebrate the demise of serious literature. “I don’t like Shakespeare,” writes novelist Dan Gutman in the report’s confounding foreword, confessing to never having finished “Madame Bovary,” “Don Quixote,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Ulysses.” With the ease of a supermarket shopper choosing between detergents, he calls “The Great Gatsby” dull.

The diatribe is transparently glib. For this is how it concludes: “This year my 100th book will be published.” Previous masterpieces include “The Kid Who Ran For President” and “The Million Dollar Shot.” Gutman’s point seems to be that his books are more relevant to today’s youth, and for good reason. Unlike Shakespeare and Joyce, they aren’t boring.