Reply to My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There has been a catastrophic collapse in reading for pleasure. Real reading, not tik tok reading or whatever that is. And it's across the board, young and old. Just look at the new books published today, they're much shorter than the books of the 1980s and 1990s when a 100k word count was normal for even first time authors.

It's a combination of factors. The major one is certainly technology. When you spend all day on computers and phones, it's hard to pick up a book. Attention spans are warped by social media so the ability to sit down and get engaged in a book for a hour and really read it, not just the words but the meaning of what is being said, is dying out.

And it's also changes in publishing itself. There really hasn't been great books published for a while. The quality of the literary output, commercial fiction in general, has collapsed. I have friends who spent decades in and adjacent to the publishing world and they're frank about it, publishers are dominated by specific progressive viewpoints and won't publish anything different or critical. That's why there's no modern Dickens, even if our times cries for one. Tom Wolfe would never be published today. Donna Tartt probably wouldn't be published if she was a first time writer. The biggest reading audience are progressive women, but when you don't publish for other groups, they don't bother reading. So I can't blame people for losing interest in reading. And as they stop reading, the harder it is to develop the habits. [/quote]

I don’t buy this. If conservative men and women to read different novels, then why aren’t they writing them?!

This is also news to me that novels are highly political, and I reject your premise that good literature isn’t being published.

Finally, can you explain why MAGA can’t read thrillers or sci-fi published this year?! Reading increases empathy and any time spent reading is spent offline. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics