By M&C News Nov 20, 2007, 10:15 GMT
Both the AP and the NYT have released articles that indicate according to a government study, Americans are doing less reading.
To Read or Not to Read is a 99 page study that is also a follow up to the 2004 survey Reading at Risk.
The numbers are lower than what they’ve been before. One of the facts that the AP article indicated was, “The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in reading prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003,” according to the AP.
Doug Whiteman, the president of the Penguin Young Readers Group stated, “Reading scores don't necessarily have any relevance to today's sales," according to the AP article.
The AP article also noted the Harry Potter phenomenon, but also indicated that merely those books alone are not enough to solve the problem.
“We live in a society where the media does not recognize, celebrate or discuss reading, literature and authors,” Dana Gioia is quoted in the NYT.
Gioia is the Chair for the National Endowment for the Arts. Writer and critic Dan Schneider has noted that much of the dumbing down of culture begins with the NEA and Gioia's giving of grants to "bad writers."
"Dana Gioia has somehow parlayed this weird assortment of mediocre qualifications into a phat job heading 1 of the most worthless bureaucracies on the planet," Schneider writes. Click here to read more.
Click here to read the AP full article, then go pick up a book.
Also read the NYT piece.
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