Readers – surprising stats

 

A survey by The Jenkins Group, an independent publishing services firm, has shown that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school.

Check out the stats:

33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42% of college graduates never read another book after college.

80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57% of new books are not read to completion

 

While I understand that these stats are American and therefore do not reflect the Canadian reality, I would suggest that we are not much better off.  If anything it gives us a look into a new reality.  If our youth are not reading, what are they doing?  I envision a bunch of hands flying up in the cyber world.  People are now on-line, tweeting, texting, torrenting and trolling.  People are still reading, still consuming information, just likely not in a traditional manner.  While my generation got “In the know” and also could escape to other places and times through the power of the written word, this generation has so many more options.  With a click of the mouse, they can access almost anything from the weather in Rio to the history of the ballpoint pen (not that interesting, don’t bother looking it up).  Not only can they access this information quickly, but they can do it in a variety of ways, from text to video and from audio form to any language they should like to see the information in.

They have access to escapism too.  While we escaped to beautiful realms like Middle Earth and Narnia by sinking into a comfortable chair with a cool pop, today’s generation can see the world first hand and experience visually beautiful fantasy worlds created by others.  That’s pretty powerful.  Does it stunt their creativity not having to use their imagination to picture these new realms – I’m not certain but I would suspect it does not.  Children are every bit as imaginative as they have ever been, they now have more powerful tools to express that creativity however.  Students can creatively express themselves in a myriad of new ways from computer graphics, to easy to use music synthesisers.  Even those who struggle with the written word have access to expressive tools they can access on-line.  Not only that, they still have the traditional forms of expression as well.

So what’s my point?  I get that a lot . . .  be careful with stats.  When I first saw the reading stats above, it made me a little down in the mouth, what type of generation are we living in when reading stats are dropping?  As I thought about the why, I felt enlightened and even envious of this generation.  They have so much potential at their fingertips, and you know what, I think they’ll do great things.

Keep on learning,

D

 

Interesting Reads

Mindsets - Carol Dweck
Teaching Boys who struggle in School - Kathleen Palmer Cleveland
Drive - Daniel Pink
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

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