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It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

theatlantic.com

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Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#21

Post by _doctor_love »

We were in an age of reading? I gave up about 10 years ago on people as readers. I have recommended so many books and articles to software people over the years and it's honestly depressing how many people have told me they don't like to read.

Like...you're a programmer? And you don't like to read? I assumed that people who enjoy software would be into intellectual stimulation but I've learned that this is wrong. More what seems to be the case is people have enjoyed coding as a kind of video game.

But this generalizes to the general population too. Marshall McLuhan's message remains a very important medium.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#22

Post by criddell »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #17
apparent wrote: post #16

> Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent. Shrinking the passages on the SAT from full-page to a few sentences will exacerbate this trend.

I don't think I learned this skill from the sat.

I think the point is that the design of the SAT influences what is taught in schools.

If the SAT stops testing the ability to deal with multi-paragraph text, then schools will spend less time teaching those skills.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#23

Post by lp4v4n »

It's been my impression that classic literature is going the same way as painting and other forms of high art.

It was certainly a great display of human intellectual prowess and artistic capacity in bygone times when the world moved at a much slower pace, but who has the time and the energy to read a long novel today?

Even cinema is dying and nobody seems to care that much.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#24

Post by joh6nn »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #17
apparent wrote: post #16

> Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent. Shrinking the passages on the SAT from full-page to a few sentences will exacerbate this trend.

I don't think I learned this skill from the sat.

The implication is not that people learned this skill from the SAT, but rather that not requiring it to score well on the SAT further lowers the baseline.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#25

Post by smith7018 »

lp4v4n wrote: post #23

It's been my impression that classic literature is going the same way as painting and other forms of high art. It was certainly a great display of human intellectual prowess and artistic capacity in bygone times when the world moved at a much slower pace, but who has the time and the energy to read a long novel today? Even cinema is dying and nobody seems to care that much.

Many people still read novels. I live in NYC and see numerous people read books and Kindles every day on the train.

> Even cinema is dying and nobody seems to care that much

It's being replaced with an even longer form of visual media; the mini series. Stories that used to be told in an hour and a half are now being told in 8 hour-long segments

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#26

Post by nearbuy »

TrackerFF wrote: post #3

I was somewhat surprised to find out that illiteracy does not mean that someone needs to be a total (or near) analphabet - but rather that it is a broad and wide spectrum. I always imagined that “teenagers can’t read” meant that they couldn’t read at all, but then I never met such a person. Reading is definitely a skill that needs to be learned and maintained. Going from reading a couple of hundred words, to even a l…

The UNESCO/World Bank literacy rate is basically defined how you thought. But high income countries don't usually report this because literacy by this measure is nearly universal. So they often report at higher thresholds (e.g. how many people can read at a grade 9 level), and news headlines often don't make it clear that this is not the same as the UNESCO definition.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#27

Post by gosub100 »

_doctor_love wrote: post #21

We were in an age of reading? I gave up about 10 years ago on people as readers. I have recommended so many books and articles to software people over the years and it's honestly depressing how many people have told me they don't like to read. Like...you're a programmer? And you don't like to read? I assumed that people who enjoy software would be into intellectual stimulation but I've learned that this is wrong. Mor…

I gave up on reading because the authors want to spend a considerable number of pages telling me the color of the buttons on an imaginary character's outfit. They have no such right to waste my time with (or even worse, charge me money for) that.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#28

Post by [deleted] »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #14
TrackerFF wrote: post #3

I was somewhat surprised to find out that illiteracy does not mean that someone needs to be a total (or near) analphabet - but rather that it is a broad and wide spectrum. I always imagined that “teenagers can’t read” meant that they couldn’t read at all, but then I never met such a person. Reading is definitely a skill that needs to be learned and maintained. Going from reading a couple of hundred words, to even a l…

I think that literate people can recover from a period of not reading (books) at all. I recently had more than a year of not reading any books that was interrupted when I found about The Culture series. I read Use of Weapons and had to read all novels from that universe. After that I tried to find some books similar to them, tried to read some recommended ones (didn't finish any of them) and stopped reading. In my ca…

[deleted]

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#29

Post by aboardRat4 »

>Americans also get much less of their news through reading than they once did. In 1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do.

Most of the news are not worth reading. I listen to news when eating, and I am very glad I don't have to waste my reading span on this crap.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#30

Post by quasiperfectus »

> Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book

I feel like if it took me 20hr to place a bet I'm probably not doing much of that either.

Anecdotal, but my 7y/o loves reading. She's flying through series' and it's getting pricey. I guess she falls in the 16% of people who enjoy it.

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