With all the huffing and puffing going on in the Harry Potter thread about all the future illiterates being born and the decline of readers in the National Endowments report, apparently nobody has bothered to check the most recent National Endowments Report, which says reading is on the rise!
Link here.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
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yes, and as red herring, there is no reason to believe it is related to any specific work, however there is a good reason to believe "education" is the cause, since it seems like minority groups are becaming readers.
* Young adults show the most rapid increases in literary reading. Since 2002, 18-24 year olds have seen the biggest increase (nine percent) in literary reading, and the most rapid rate of increase (21 percent). This jump reversed a 20 percent rate of decline in the 2002 survey, the steepest rate of decline since the NEA survey began.
* Since 2002, reading has increased at the sharpest rate (+20 percent) among Hispanic Americans, Reading rates have increased among African Americans by 15 percent, and among Whites at an eight percent rate of increase.
* For the first time in the survey's history, literary reading has increased among both men and women. Literary reading rates have grown or held steady for adults of all education levels.
and yes still 50% of american adults did not read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play last year... something to be very proud of "ain't" it...
also this does not take into account what these American adults are reading.... which is one of the main points of the other threads.. the dumbing down of the american reader... what people are reading is increasingly mediocre... but whatever we won't get anywhere if we drop into that debate again.. congratulations america you are on the rise!
and looking at it more closely, well the biggest increase over the period was in the 18-24 group, a 9 percent increase in literary reading from 2002 - 2008... but let us consider that this is the Harry Potter generation, and the Twilight generation.. and that it is more than likely that the vast majority of this age group will have only read such books in the last year.. so we are just increasing the amount of people reading a couple books... just opinion but I wish there was a way to find out what people had had read... it would be much more interesting to see what the rate of reading was for classic literature, and contemporary non-genre literature...
It can not be something as HP (or anybook), it would generate a similar growth in the teenage group as well (considering they are reading HP and those between 18-25 are those who read it).
It is something that happens with the 18-25 group, which is usually University. Considering the taxes growth with two groups of "Minority", it probally shows the effect of inclusion. I wonder if the statistic would match.
It says very little to me - reading may be up 7%, but reading what? Poetry, as it has been stated, has been on the decrease, whereas novels have been on the increase - I wouldn't doubt that the bulk is not filled with Faulkner, but filled with Nora Roberts - meh. And even then - going from essentially nothing being read to a little less than essentially nothing being read means nothing.Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
Last edited by JBI; 07-21-2009 at 08:07 PM.
Yeah, I saw that too. It would support you and Stlukes, people are reading more romance and not specialized forms of language represented by drama and poetry... So, in the end, the Doom of American is really approaching ? Canada is too close to avoid sinking together, but I trully believe I am free here in Brazil. In my marble tower of course...
but it is only a study on adults.. the youngest group is the 18-24/25 group.. there is no teenage group in the study... and when I say Potter and Twilight, well those books were quite popular in that 18-25 age range in and around 2007-2008... of that I'm pretty certain
Well, I would have no doubt that the study on teenages would be here also if they had pro-harry potter results. But the difference stands still (twilight may be not in the period of research for long enough), it had to show a continual increase of the ages if was a effect reletated to a the building of a readers because a worker. I mean, however read the first potter would be up there, etc. And not like, Best-sellers are not written for the other ages as well...
agreed
I say that some reading is better than not reading at all. I have read one HP book and did not care for it, but I am glad that some people can find enjoyment in reading them. You can find stupid people anywhere on the planet, it is not just an American phenomenon. Our school system in America is well below what I would like to see as the standard. However, our universities are top notch. Have I met many extremely stupid people here? Yes, I have, but I have also met extremely intelligent and well versed people as well. My traveling experience has proven to me that there are stupid people everywhere. IMO intelligence does not depend on reading or enjoying poetry or classic literature, but it can’t hurt.
MSDGreen is here
Hmm, JCamillo still doesn't know what a red herring is.
Anyway, JBI. It's true you cannot tell what those Americans are reading. However, it would really be impossible to add that component to a survey like this since the questions need to be very basic as they are telephone surveys. I can think of ways one might try to measure how much Canonical literature Americans are reading, but it would be extremely difficult to execute and get accurate results. How would you propose to measure it?
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
I do not know? Are you sure? A red herring is an attempt to divert the topic of a debate to another subject. The topic if the worth of Harry Potter and voillá, you bring a subject that does not mention Harry Potter at all. Of course, now we debate this study, but you are unable to bring a single evidence about Harry Potter (which you cannot, since you already admitted that it is only enterteiment and it does not matter if it is HP, Goosebumps, comic books, etc). You are even careful to post this outside the thread. Seriously, when a 13 years old ask you for any book to read, do you suggest Harry Potter?
I brought it out of the thread because I didn't think it was related enough to the original topic and I wanted to focus on the study itself, not Harry Potter, hence why I started a new thread and why it's not a red herring genius. The mention of Harry Potter in the opening was only to reference where I got the ideas I wanted to focus on as the main topics, without reference to Harry Potter necessarily: "Future illiterates" and "Decline of Reading in America."
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Dude, seriously. Are you kidding? The thread starts commenting the HP thread and how we are not cheking this study, when we should. You opened a thread about something we, in your opinion, should have checked before arguing. If you did not wanted to related to HP you would just have said this or posted in the other thread originated by the HP thread dealing exactly with the theme of America. Your opening post was far from "Harry Potter thread got me thinking" and close to "Hahaha, you guys in HP are wrong because of this".
Forget philosophy 101, digressions do not kill good arguments.
Last edited by JCamilo; 07-21-2009 at 10:25 PM.
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