> Well, yeah, I'm all for that, but my question was why don't kids today
> want to read?
(1) Yes, the average time spent reading paper text has deceased somewhat in all industrialized countries (the Netherlands has good data on this), but the time spent reading electronic texts has increased. The videogame culture is full of these paradoxes -- Final Fantasy 12, a magnificent videogame, has well over 200,000 words of text in its storyline, lore and and quests.
(2) The industrializing world is still going through its literacy revolution. Today, India is still only 65% literate (versus 10% literacy in 1947), so the overall reading public is still increasing, and reading levels are going up across the world, in lockstep with educational levels.
(3) Literacy today means multimedia literacy -- textual literacy plus cinema, television, music, theater, videogame and digital literacies.
-- DRR