[Bridging_the_digital_divide] Report shows big drop in reading

[Jason Barkeloo]

Report shows big drop in reading
Only 57 percent of Americans read a book in 2002
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:33 a.m. ET July 08, 2004

NEW YORK - The reading of books is on the decline in America, despite 
Harry Potter and the best efforts of Oprah Winfrey.

A report released Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts says 
the number of non-reading adults increased by more than 17 million 
between 1992 and 2002.

Only 47 percent of American adults read “literature” (poems, plays, 
narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. 
Those reading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57 percent, down from 61 
percent.

NEA chairman Dana Gioia, himself a poet, called the findings shocking 
and a reason for grave concern.

“We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer 
engaged readers,” Gioia said in an interview with The Associated Press. 
“This isn’t a case of ‘Johnny Can’t Read,’ but ‘Johnny Won’t Read.”’

The likely culprits, according to the report: television, movies and 
the Internet.

“I think what we’re seeing is an enormous cultural shift from print 
media to electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that 
shift,” Gioia said.

The decline came despite the creation of Oprah’s book club in 1996 and 
the Harry Potter craze that began in the late 1990s among kids and 
adults alike. Reading fell even as Barnes & Noble boasted that its 
superstore empire was expanding the book market.

In 1992, 72.6 million adults in the United States did not read a book. 
By 2002, that figure had increased to 89.9 million, the NEA said.

“Whenever I hear about something like this, I think of it as a call to 
arms,” said Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers 
Association. “As booksellers, we need to look into what kinds of 
partnerships we can get into to encourage literacy and the immediacy of 
the literary experience.”

In May, the nonprofit Book Industry Study Group reported that the 
number of books purchased in the United States in 2003 fell by 23 
million from the year before to 2.22 billion.

The NEA study, titled “Reading at Risk,” was based on a Census Bureau 
survey of more than 17,000 adults.

The drop in reading was widespread: among men and women, young and old, 
black and white, college graduates and high school dropouts. The 
numbers were especially poor among adult men, of whom only 38 percent 
read literature, and Hispanics overall, for whom the percentage was 
26.5.

The decline was especially great among the youngest people surveyed, 
ages 18 to 24. Only 43 percent had read any literature in 2002, down 
from 53 percent in 1992.

Gioia said the electronic media that are contributing to the problem do 
offer possible remedies. He praised Winfrey’s use of television to 
promote literacy and said he wished for a “thousand variants” of the 
idea.

“There’s a communal aspect to reading that has collapsed and we need to 
find ways to restore it,” Gioia said.

The title “Reading at Risk” is modeled on “A Nation at Risk,” a 1983 
government study that warned of a “rising tide of mediocrity in 
elementary and secondary schools” and led to numerous reforms. But 
Gioia avoided specific proposals in the NEA report.

“I don’t believe the NEA should tell the culture what to do,” he said. 
“The reason we are bringing this study out is that we consider it a 
crisis situation that requires a national conversation.”

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5389382/

---

Jason Barkeloo
President
TouchSmart Publishing
http://www.touchsmart.net
tele 513.225.8765


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