Reading Isn’t Over Yet
David Woodard Tampere, Finland While I appreciate Rose Horowitch’s deep dive into the decline of literacy, I take issue with conflating concern about reading in general with concern about the specific kinds of literature people are reading.
Key points
- The Age of Reading Is Over In the August issue, Rose Horowitch considered whether civilization can survive our postliterate era.
- Rose Horowitch’s “The Age of Reading Is Over” is a fascinating and disturbing account of the decline of sustained reading.
- Most important, they’re learning to follow their innate curiosity, laying the groundwork for a lifelong love of reading.
Raising them, I’ve learned to resist the urge to judge books as the “right kind” or “wrong kind.” Regardless of what they’re reading, my kids are using their imaginations, learning new concepts, exploring new perspectives, and strengthening their attention spans.
Additional details
- Rose Horowitch’s assessment of the decline of reading reminded me of a passage in “The Prelude,” by William Wordsworth.
- I started reading for pleasure again only when I gave myself permission to ignore what I thought I “should” read.
- Years ago, I absorbed such judgments subconsciously, and it caused me to take a decade-long break from reading.
- Horowitch rightly distinguishes reading words from the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis.
- Harvard’s assistant director for humanities and social-sciences support tells her about a student who “was struggling to read a book written in Old English”: Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange.
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