In taking some time
this weekend to read this editorial, you are part of the shrinking
portion of the public that uses leisure time to read.
Pleasure reading is
at an all-time low, a new study shows, and the culprit is television.
More TV and less reading leaves people less imaginative, less
informed, and less fully alive. The trend needs to reverse.
Rekindling love of
reading starts with how children learn to read, at home with their
parents. As families spend less time together and schools focus more
on testing than teaching, children miss opportunities to learn the
pleasure of reading. They learn instead for external reward.
Television and the Internet have rendered reading an afterthought.
Even as Americans are more highly educated than before, and books are
more accessible than ever, reading for pleasure is steadily
declining.
Left-wing media
meltdown over Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement is absolutely
delicious
Donald Hall, the
poet laureate, wrote evocatively that marriage requires "third
things," the “objects or practices or habits or arts or
institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint
rapture or contentment.” Families too require these third things.
Some things, especially television, are static. Engagement is
optional, ads are plentiful, and imagination is not required.
Reading, especially
reading out loud, where the voice of one person transforms printed
words into stories that play out in the mind, is different. Reading
is a third thing that transfixes the reader and listener, bringing
the two together to share the same story but, perhaps, imagine it
differently.
By reading out loud,
parents teach their children to be creative. Often guided by the
voices of their parents, children first wandered through the wardrobe
into Narnia, first stepped foot outside the Shire, or first rode the
wagon out to the prairie.
Eventually, these
children realized that they did not need to wait for the next night
to learn the ending of the next chapter and, instead, picked up the
book and read it for themselves. Reading was something they learned
from their parents to do for fun, prompting these young people to
pick reading over other activities because it was enjoyable.
The demands of the
modern world, however, disrupt this cycle and the families at the
heart of it. Reading out loud is time consuming. It requires finding
a book that interests a child and sitting down and reading it
together, a process punctuated with questions and demands for “read
just a little more.” For families where both parents work, time is
at a premium and finding half an hour or an hour to read may be
impossible. For working parents, the work day rarely ends when the
office door closes. Instead, everyone is expected to be on their
phones, accessible by email, and available.
Then, there's the
growing number of children growing up in single-parent households,
where there's even less adult manpower to crack open a bedtime story.
Given this reality,
television, where another voice occupies the child, becomes an easy
replacement for the engaged task of reading. Children develop the
habit of finding their entertainment on the screen.
Most parents
recognize the importance of reading. They know that it helps children
develop mentally and relate better to others. It builds vocabulary
and communication skills and, importantly, it will be tested. The
last factor of reading looms large and, as a result, parents
sometimes turn reading into a chore, an exercise the kids must do to
attain another good.
Reading shouldn’t
be seen as simply a means to an end, but instead as a good in itself.
Reading needs to be encouraged for its own sake.
The best way to make
a child love reading is to do more of it yourself. Right now would be
a fine time to grab a book, and start.