In a report on MSMBC titled "What is the Worth of Words, and subtitled " Will It Matter If People can't read in the Future?, recent studies indicate that only 5% of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.
While it is certainly true that not everyone needs the ability to read a complex book and extract knowledge from it that can be used in his or her everyday life, this statistic indicates that the general level and quality of literacy is on the decline. I am not a scientist, but I subscribe to Scientific American magazine. Each month I read many of the articles in this magazine. Although I do not fully understand the complex science that a given article is based on, I gain some additional knowledge about the discoveries and applications in many different areas. Given the current volume of material being published in print and on the Internet, it is not possible for any one person to absorb even a fraction of the new information available. We will truly suffer from information overload if we try to keep up with every subject, but exercising our brains by reading complex and challenging material on a regular basis contributes to our overall brain "fitness". The same example applies to out physical bodies. If we only did the absolute minimum physical exercise to function on a day-today basis we would limit our ability to respond to an unexpected need for additional strength, agility, speed, as well limiting our bodies ability to respond to any physical injury or disease.
The danger to all of us in taking the minimum approach to mental and physical fitness is that in times of stress we must depend on others to provide the skills we need. In an increasingly technical world if only a limited number of persons have the ability to understand and extrapolate from complex facts, then they can control the interpretation and application of that knowledge to their advantage. And, of course, there is always good old-fashioned human error, mistakes, misunderstandings and miscommunication. History is rife with examples of individuals or groups that claim to the exclusive knowledge on how to apply new knowledge to our lives, often with less than positive results. It is important for at least a basic understanding of science, and how the scientific method works, to be widely defused in the general population.
The passage below is a direct quote from the article written by Michael Rogers for MSMBC, and a link to the full text is posted at the end of this commentary.
The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once more being used to flail an education trend that is in fact going in just the right direction. Today's young people are not able to read and understand long stretches of text simply because in most cases they won't ever need to do so.
It's time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don't need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers.
We're not talking about complete illiteracy, which is most certainly not a good thing. Young people today, however, have plenty of literacy for everyday activities such as reading signs and package labels, and writing brief e-mails and text messages that don't require accurate spelling or grammar.
This is an excellent example of the "dumbing down" or the reducing of expectations trend we see in American education. Reading is fundamental to virtually all forms of education, in whatever form it is presented, newspaper, book, textbook, and magazine or on a computer screen. Reading well, having an adequate vocabulary and being capable of critical thought are essential to economic survival and today and in the future. I find the idea that adults today and in the future will be able to perform their job duties and function as citizens with a limited ability to read ludicrous. Perhaps Mr. Rogers thinks that the ability to read package labels, signs and writing brief e-mails are more important than being able to understand a ballot, the Constitution, and the many other basic texts of life and work, but I disagree.
Mr. Rogers makes the claim that for the majority of students, "reading and writing are difficult enterprises with limited payoffs in the modern world", but we also hear the exhortation that in order to compete in the new, global economy, future workers must have better communication and work skills so that they can compete more effectively.
It is possible that Mr. Rogers has written this article to be provocative or as a humorous /satirical piece, but it is not labeled as such. I can only hope that this vision of the future does not come to pass and that our educational system produces adults that have reading, writing and thinking skills that allow them to participate fully in our society, and have real choices about how they earn their living.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14823087
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Comments: 29
The unfortunate part of this whole discussion is there is no mention of the joys of being able to read, to dive into a book and live in that world for a while. More fun to play video games, I guess.
Our educational system is a disaster and is unable even to supply businesses with adequately educated employees. The NEA has a lock on politicos and has been successful at stopping any reform. When will voters wake up.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
Thanks for correcting me. I do believe the analogy to be accurate and have a lot of experiences to support that view.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
It is a good example that you gave of reading Scientific American for pleasure. I have gone through a similar experience when the magazine was available in my workplace library. It is not after all a technical magazine. The articles contained therein are of general human interest, informative and definitely helpful in widening one's perspective.
I reject the notion that the job of public education is to provide trained cogs for the industrial machine. (Jeez, the longer I'm here at Gather, the more I'm beginning to sound like an aging Commie! LOL) The job of public education is to create good citizens. Crucial to that "job" of citizenship is the ability to read and write and think critically -- to analyze, assess, weigh points, compare, contrast, all that good stuff. There is NO training in that any more.
I agree that the NEA is a good part of the problem but, in a more general sense, the whole field of education (as an academic discipline) is chocked full of people who have their heads in a deep, dark place. They're in love with "innovations" and half-baked theories that sound good but do little to forward learning.
A perfect example is the whole tendency in elementary schools to make a game out of reading. Give the kids points for reading books, and the more books they read, the more points they get which can then be turned in for prizes at the school store or whatever. This has had two results. One (which we at Gather can appreciate!) is that the kids read piece-o-crap, short books in order to plow through them an garner points. The other is that kids actually end up reading LESS after participating in one of these "games" than they did before. Because you have sent them the message that reading is NOT an activity with intrinsic rewards, it's a chore you perform in order to get something else. But do these results (validated by studies done nationwide) prevent school systems from thinking that games are a nifty way to teach? No, they do not.
I realize that when I went to high school, dinosaurs were roaming the earth and so my experience might not be relevant today, but I remember that the teachers we liked the most were the teachers who demanded the most from us -- not in terms of the amount of work they gave us, but the amount of THINKING we were required to do! They treated us like adults, with brains and the ability to reason. We loved it.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
As a parent, I expose my children to every aspect of American and world history. I allow them to use every bit of technology, but also encourage and teach them how to complete full novels, use a dictionary and complete a sentence or thought. We must take charge of this new future, before "dumbing down" brings us down!!
The future needs bright, capable people, not humans that can only program a VCR or play a great video game, while listening to an ipod, whlie talking on the cell phone, while text messaging a blackberry.. It's never to late to learn!!!
Prof. T
First off, what are they defining as a "complex book"? Second, how do these statistics compare to historical statistics. Both of these questions are completely important. I think that the former is important in that a complex book might be Moby Dick which is really not just complex, but it is verbally outdated. For a college graduate to extrapolate something from such a book is not quite as important as one might think. If a complex book, however, is something like Life of Pi then I would agree that there is a problem. The thing of it is, I know that Lice of Pi is understood by its readers. The latter question is important in that the author of this article claims that the problem is getting worse and not better. I'm not quite sure if that is even a logical claim. I can't imagine that reading/comprehension levels were better 80, 100, or 150 years ago than they are today. In fact, I'm positive that they weren't.
Finally, everyone must understand that extrapolating upon what one reads is another thing entirely than reading itself. I think that the statistic might be more accurate in stating that only 5% of college graduates are able to extrapolate upon what they read in a confluent manner. Just because college graduates have a problem expressing what they've read doesn't mean that they didn't understand it, only that they have trouble telling you what about it they understood. And this would not a problem of literacy, this would be a problem coherent expression.
Additionally, students have always stared flat-nosed at the teacher. Aristotle, himself referenced the problem of the upcoming generation way back when. It seems to me that all ya'll are just reiterating what ever single generation before you has reiterated and what every single generation ahead of you will re-re-re-reiterate. But, I suppose you see something different in this generation that has never been seen in any other generation before. I guess your generation is just wiser than every other generation before you. Perhaps that thought ought be extrapolated upon.
Prof. T
I heartily disagree, however, with the notion that "longer is better," particularly in reference to articles, etc. There's also a great deal to be said for the excellent concept that "brevity is the soul of wit." A twelve-line sonnet can be just as life-altering as all of "Paradise Lost," and I think something similar can be said about expression of thoughts. It's too bad that people don't take the time to read the longer pieces on Gather, but some of the short ones deserve a much greater degree of respect than J. Johannes seems inclined to give them.
Sheryl O.
So if the conversation is about whether or not a kid can understand Shakespeare, well I'd have to side with Josh -- not only is it an unfair indicator, but probably meaningless.
I also agree that kids have it harder than we did when it comes to learning about the world around them. I just read somewhere that when John Stuart Mill died, he was heralded as being the only man who KNEW EVERYTHING THERE WAS TO KNOW. I don't know if that story is apocryphal, but it is interesting to realize what we knew about the world was such a small body of knowledge that it was actually considered possible for one person to know it all. Since the advent of computers and the internet, it is impossible for someone to keep up with all the information in even the tiniest field of human research. Even thirty years ago, I remember working at a financial institution where one man's job was to keep up-to-date on all the information about computers! (This, kiddies, was in the good ole days before personal computers, when the things were the size of a room.) Even that long ago, he could not even begin to keep up with all of the information. Imagine how much more difficult it is today for a kid to keep up with stuff. The schools need to seriously look at re-prioritizing what they teach. Is it REALLY so important that they read Hamlet? Or is it more important that they learn HOW to read critically, so that no matter what they're reading, they are able to analyze it effectively?
I think we're seriously letting kids down in that regard.
I used to teach music in public school in the inner city. Most of my kids were minorities, poor, a lot of learning disabilities. My principal wanted me to do rap with them. I told him they already know about rap. I taught them Medieval chant, Bach, Beethoven and Louis Armstrong and they were fascinated. One kid spent the only money he got for Christmas on a CD of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti. But, it was all in the way it was studied. They were able to relate to these icons of the past just as much as the biggest rap star of the day. Humanity...it's all in seeing the common humanity.
One of my favorite people was a teacher who was VERY into teaching grade school children Shakespeare -- we're talking like third graders here. They totally got it.
The other problem is the bureaucratic mentality which basically says, "Everything is like everything else." A couple of Tylenol are the same thing as a vial of crack and should be treated the same way if you have a "no-drug" policy. A six-year-old boy kissing another little girl is the same thing as an 18-year-old molesting a classmate in a dark corner of the school, or a teacher screwing a student. And so on. They cannot teach children to think critically because they cannot, or will not, do it themselves. CYA is the rule of the day.
He should spend some time in China, Japan and Europe and then write another article.
To say that 5% of the graduates cannot read or write up to any level is an easy thing, you just have to set the level at 5% and say these people are below it. It would be just as easy to say that 5% are above this other level. Literacy cannot always be so quantified. In order to educate you first have to get their attention, and that is never easy with children.
Perhaps we need to find a way to turn society around so that we don't have so many children being left unattended, or attended in large groups. If the economy was such, or social values were such, that one parent could stay at home whenever the children were not in school, instead of putting them in "day care", which is just another type of classroom where the children are not handled individually as they would be at home, it could make a difference, because to make a difference, a person must first be an individual, not part of a group. They have to think about who they are, not just who they are to everyone else.
Humans are social creatures, and need group activities, but they are also individuals, and this is being robbed from them when they are not programmed to focus on their individuality in order to better themselves for the good of the society.