NEA report tells a scary story
Not sure if it’s the side-effect of being named for an obscure literary character or the result of growing up within walking distance to the public library, but I’ve always loved to read…
If you share my interest in society’s future here in the good old US of A, especially within the realm of culture, I suggest you check out a new report released by the National Endowment for the Arts. Aptly titled “To Read or Not To Read“, the authors surveyed mountains of data collated from a large spectrum of agencies to investigate correlations between literacy and society.
One section that troubles me:
“The 2003 assessment revealed that average American reading scores are truly average. U.S. 15-year-olds barely placed in the top half of average reading scores for 31 participating nations. Their scores lagged far behind those of readers in such countries as Australia, Canada, Ireland, Korea, Finland, Sweden, and The Netherlands. Especially in a global marketplace, with highly skilled and educated workers increasingly in supply, such mediocrity may become untenable.”
In the Ex. Summary’s conclusion, it suggests future studies could examine the effects of digital media and on-screen reading (a point that hit home as I downloaded the 100 page pdf).
What can the arts do to get more people reading? hmm…
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