National Endowment for the Arts Study Finds Plummeting US Reading Scores

The prestigious National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) recently released a study entitled To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence. The study's findings were ominous:

'Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.¹

On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.' (NEA)

Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.³

2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.⁴

Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.^{5' NEA}

Are we less intelligent now? Are we poorer readers? The answer to both questions may not be 'yes' yet, but given these statistics, it certainly will be soon. The leading cause cited by the study for poor reading habits, surprisingly is not television, Internet use or video gaming. To be sure those are contributing factors. The leading cause of reading score drops is the increased amount of text book reading and the drop in actual book reading.

And that makes so much sense. First of all how many people do you know who actually read any or all of assigned text reading? Next, how many people read textbooks for pleasure? Textbooks condense, abridge, analyze and opine stories until much of the meat is gone. Would you rather eat a fresh orange or a dehydrated orange powder? That is what so often happens in textbooks; the real core, the themes, the realities of literature are dried, pressed, chopped, minced and preformed into baby-sized bites. We treat kids and students as though they are incapable of digesting a whole novel; we suggest that their intellect cannot handle the unabridged version.

As a home-schooler, my children were bathed in literature. Our oldest read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in 7th grade. Our younger son at 11, read the entire anthology of childrens' literature, uncut and unadulterated, all 1000 pages of tiny print when he was ill during the summer. Our older son asked for Abby Hoffman's Steal this Book for Christmas. And this is the key to salvaging our nation's reading: Choice and Voice. First, students need to make choices about their reading. We can't put blinders on our kids and guide them to our pre-set little shelf of select books that we deem 'safe'. We also need to create opportunities for students to 'Voice' thoughts and opinions; to verbalize concepts and ideas. We can't spoon feed what students are 'supposed to learn' from literature.

Fortunately, there are some initiatives to bring books back into the classroom (what an idea!). NEA has implemented Big Read into many classrooms across the United States. This program introduces students to novels, many heretofore forgotten in education. I encourage all public, parochial and home-school educators to explore the Big Read program. We need a country that reads.