Now that I have a son in a full-day kindergarten and I have to fight constantly to keep the teachers and staff from feeding him garbage, I realize there are other factors to be concerned about when we consider “why” kids don’t read anymore.

When teachers consider sugary sweets and trans fats are not just food but part of a daily lesson plan (e.g. graphing with skittles, counting m&m’s, learning that “o is for oreo” and so on), you can see the direct and immediate impact it has on a kid’s attention span. These kids can’t sit still for an entire story, let alone listen and follow what is happening. these same people who praise me for having a son who is so far “above the curve” in terms of his reading and math skills and his ability to reason treat me like a pushy, overbearing, uptight maniac woman for denying a daily dose of sugar and trans fat. They have told me (point-blank, no further discussion) that I DID NOT have a right to know the ingredients of the hot lunch offered to my son at school. For this reason I supply his own snack (typically trail mix with dried fruit–the rest of the kids eat some communal snack of crackers and oreos) and his lunch (he won’t touch bread, so this one is a challenge–usually homemade, grainless “protein muffins”, string cheese, fruit and so on).

Then there is the TV which is part of the classroom experience…don’t get me started on the subject of the “glass teat.”

Then there is the instantaneousness of communication and availability of information–this has been called the “now generation.” Delayed gratification is almost a foreign concept. (Dealing with complex matters is not something one can do on a web search. We have a generation that is used to “bottom line” information, whether or not it is correct.)

You have to wonder what we are doing to kids as a country these days. We expect them to do well…we insist that they do well, but we refuse to demand anything of them, we spoon-feed them and at the same time kill their attention spans and poison them so that they are not equipped to succeed in life. What is really going on?

Eh…sorry about the rant/ramble. I guess it is one of “those topics” with me.

I’m impressed with your reading list, especially since Flashy is at the top of it. You can certainly borrow my Graham Greene when I’ve finished with it as long as I get all my Colin Wilsons back first. Did you ever return Quest for Corvo?

For most of our history we’ve been oral and visual creatures. With today’s information storage, it might be that we now get the good of the oral tradition (history passed down from generation to generation) without the bad (the retelling of the information causing a shift away from the original information). If our natural abilities for discovering and discerning information about the world around us are visual and oral, then it might be that we are seeing a societal move that is taking us back to a way of communicating and preserving information that plays to our strengths. It turn out that we can process, access, and use information faster when it is presented to us this way.

To play devil’s advocate a bit more, why is reading important? A basic level of literacy is necessary to function in society because of the way our society is structured. So reading is important because that is how you access information and knowledge in our world. Educated people value reading because they know that is how you gain knowledge and all the things that come as a result of having knowledge.

However, if we were to live in a world where knowledge is stored visually and orally, then wouldn’t the ability to comprehend information presented to you in that fashion be important?

It is likely that some degree of reading or logical symbol recognition will always be necessary. Writing allowed us to overcome the limitations of our oral traditions, perhaps the information age will allow us to store the hard facts in a way that plays to our strongest ability to process that information.

For all we know we’ve been slowing down the educational process for centuries by having students have to learn to read and comprehend information presented to them, whereas a recorded image or oral presentation of the same information that could be accessed as often as book can be opened, might get the information across faster.

I can see arguments about loss of vocabulary, imagination, creativity and all, but without the written word, humans managed to create language to start with, invent the wheel, and create art.

I think the main problem that people have with the idea of visual and orally presented information is that they are used for video games and entertainment aimed at 12 year olds. People don’t use the medium to the extent that it can be used.

Sorry for the long post, but hey, it got me to thinking…

Ogden Sawyer
Boston, MA