The Sad State of Reading in America–Even for Adults
By Andrew Grabois - Dec 03 , 2007
They say things–good or bad–come in threes.
If so, those who care about the state of reading must wonder what’s next — and if the news can get any worse.
Two weeks ago, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a study showing (or at least strongly suggesting) that there is a direct correlation between declining test scores and the precipitous drop in voluntary reading across age groups, education levels, and genders. They warned that this can have serious political, economic, social, and cultural consequences.
Now, on the heels of the NEA’s gloomy assessment, comes the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Based on tests given to 215,000 10-year-olds from 45 countries and provinces, and data gleaned from background surveys of pupils, their parents and teachers, the findings tell the same sad story.
Since 2001, the U.S. dropped from 4th place to 18th place; the U.K., from 3rd to 19th. The average scores for U.S. and U.K. students did not drop as much as their places on the new list would suggest, but they didn’t make any progress compared with the spectacular improvement shown by 10-year-olds in Russia, some Canadian provinces, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
The best that can be said is that the average scores for children from the world’s two largest book markets were above the international mean. So far, there’s been no official response to our relatively poor showing. Over in the U.K., however, the reaction was immediate and heated.
The U.K.’s Department for Children, Schools, and Families launched an investigation of the findings. Ed Balls, the CSF Secretary, blamed parents for not doing more to strike the “right balance between play, reading, TV, and computer games at home.” Much was made in the British press of the finding that 37% of 10-year-olds in the U.K. spend nearly three hours a day playing computer games, a time allotment that was higher than many other countries on the list.
Below are the top ten performing countries and provinces by test score:
- 565 — Russian Federation
- 564 — Hong Kong
- 560 — Alberta, Canada
- 558 — Singapore
- 558 — British Columbia, Canada
- 557 — Luxembourg
- 555 — Ontario, Canada
- 551 — Italy
- 551 — Hungary
- 549 — Sweden
I’ve always been skeptical of polls and studies, but it’s hard to ignore the eerily similar findings from these last two. In the U.S., U.K., and other developed countries, test scores have declined along with rates of voluntary reading. And, ominously, those with the most education have seen the steepest declines in both performance and time spent reading, especially girls and women.
How have we gotten to this uncomfortable place? The easy answer, of course, is alternative entertainment choices. All of these studies show the largest declines in voluntary reading and test scores during the Internet era (which also saw the introduction of a cornucopia of seductive electronic diversions). That all of these entertainments have stolen some time from reading is self-evident. Less well appreciated – though noted in passing in the latest NEA study – is that electronic/digital entertainments have also intruded on and degraded the reading experience for many of those who do read.
We also have to take a close look at how reading has been affected by the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. The NEA didn’t because one arm of government does not publically criticize another. One of the more interesting findings of the PIRLS report was that fourth grade teachers in the U.S. have, on average, five fewer years of experience than teachers in other countries. Is this the result of a generational transition, or something related–intended or not–to No Child left Behind?
Internationally, is it a coincidence that the U.S., U.K., and other Western European countries (except for Italy) dropped out of the top ten of the PIRLS literacy list? Do the countries of “New Europe” and authoritarian capitalist tigers like Russia and Singapore know something we don’t?
In the PIRLS background survey for the U.K., the percentage of respondents that reported having a table to work on declined from 89% in 2001 to 75% in 2006. One wonders if our electronic entertainments are not only occupying more of our time, but also more of our living space. We have club chairs to watch TV and desk chairs to surf the Net. Could reading be suffering because people don’t have a comfortable place to read?
BBC
AP
