Still Reading

A Reaction to ‘Why Everyone Stopped Reading"

Jared Henderson essentially outlines three main points: how students used to be taught phonics, but then in the 1970s, educational systems (in the West) switched to Whole Language Learning…and it didn’t work.

Secondly, he points to schools not adequately preparing students to read, dissect, and digest reading materials. In other words, we have not prepared students for deep reading, so this is one of the possible reasons why Ivy League schools are seeing this bizarre “I can’t read a book” epidemic.

Lastly, Henderson mentions our phones, and I think that issue is self-explanatory.

My first reaction was to bristle, as in, why are the woes of the world on the shoulders of teachers and schools? But then, I started to think about my own experience as a reader. How was I taught?

I used to tell folks I couldn’t remember learning how to read, but then in recent years I discovered through my mom’s ex (who helped to raise my brother and I) that my mom sent me to an afterschool reading program.

She did this because she couldn’t teach me herself (her English reading skills are remedial). My early primary school years were also greatly effected by my father’s death. But the video made me wonder if I was taught phonics, or whole language learning, or both? Did it really make a difference?

Growing up, I wasn’t read to, nor did I grow up surrounded by children’s books, but reading was modeled. Mom read on the floor, her Thai newspapers fanned out on the carpet, along with her Thai celebrity gossip magazines. Mom’s much younger Army boyfriend, despite his impoverished upbringing, started reading avidly when his house burned down. His seven siblings were separated into different homes, and he ended up with some of his brothers at his grandma’s, who happen to have a wonderful library.

So he read thick paperbacks and when I was a teen, he’d pass the books to me. I also went through my father’s possessions after his passing, and took note of his collection of nonfiction books on engineering, humor, and even the Kama Sutra (no pictures).

But honestly? I started reading out of sheer boredom. Oh sure, I enjoyed school trips to the library. I wasn’t opposed to reading at all, but it wasn’t until I was stuck in a small town in the middle of the desert at the end of my sixth grade year that I entered my first Waldenbooks out of tumbleweed desperation.

And I’ve been an avid reader ever since.

I believe that the reason why “everyone stopped reading” is because no one gets bored anymore. Because if you think about it, endless, mindless entertainment is a bigger brain crusher than we Candy Crush realize. I’m watching this play out as an English teacher of teens in Cambodia. The phone addiction is visceral and heartbreaking.

“The hands are the visual part of the brain.” — Takao Taniguchi, abacus teacher

If the hands are the visual part of the brain, then what does all this scrolling do? Most languages are read from left to right, so, one could argue, the phone scroll is working at cross purposes, weakening the muscles that make deep comprehension possible. Throughout the years, we’ve heard a lot about attention spans, but have we considered it’s effects on narrative structure?

Reading builds empathy. It strengthens emotional intelligence. And that, my friend, is a very big deal.

Scrolling, by contrast, delivers fragmented, flashy bits of story. Beginnings, middles, and ends? Disrupted. Optional. We aren’t just scrolling through content, we’re scrolling past coherence.

Do you think everyone has stopped reading? Why or why not?