But it's always the NEA putting out the death of reading reports (a
la: *Reading
at Risk*), but most recently, *Reading on the
Rise<http://www.nea.gov/research/ReadingonRise.pdf>
*, they were pointing to
upticks<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/11/AR2009011102337.html>
:
Best of all, the most significant growth has been among young adults, the group that had shown the largest declines in earlier surveys. The youngest group (ages 18-24) has undergone a particularly inspiring transformation from a 20 percent decline in 2002 to a 21 percent increase in 2008—a startling level of change. At the Arts Endowment we have paid particular attention to this crucial cohort. During their high school years, they were the target of the largest literary initiatives in the agency’s history, and we note their progress with particular satisfaction.
Of course, they are only talking about fiction, drama, and poetry. This doesn't count non-fiction reading at all, whether it's the latest book on poker or Michael Lewis' *Liar's Poker*.
On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:25 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I don't disagree that reading is good. And my anecdotal experience is with
>> students who resist reading. So all of that I am on board with. Where I am
>> struggling is in ascertaining to what extent "kids these days" *read less
>> * than "kids [say] twenty years ago."
>>
>
> As a side note, the DO seem to have worse vocabularies, but again this
> might be a matter of where I'm teaching now, as opposed to where I was
> teaching 15 years ago . . .
>
> Anyway, continuing my quest for data on reading rates, I found the
> following blog post on the topic from a Toronto academic:
>
> http://gamineexpedition.blogspot.com/2010/11/kids-teens-and-reading-for-fun.html
>
> She notes several items, including the KFF study I linked above, but she
> also points to a very interesting 2008 Newsweek article<http://www.newsweek.com/2008/05/13/generation-r-r-is-for-reader.html>which argues that teen/Young Adult reading is actually in the midst of a
> boom, brought on perhaps by Harry Potter, but not reducible to the little
> mug (not to say, muggle, don't'cha know). One could hope for harder data
> from them, but it at least starts to paint a picture along the lines of what
> I have been thinking, which is that there still are lots and lots of teens
> who read a fair bit, and they read fiction, not just their textbooks.
>
> Although, on that most dubious of topics, I note that in 2009 textbook
> growth was way up over basically everything else. What a frickin racket.
>
> j
>