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Dinty Don’t Read this Essay |
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1.
2.
I am keeping this essay brief on purpose. Feel free
to skim. 3.
One by one, the fresh-faced applicants in their post
modern eyewear enter the hotel room, take the chair, and explain the various
ways they teach what we once called “freshman English.” Each of these
applicants—they are bright, from good schools, with impressive depths of
knowledge—outlines one or more of the innovative new assignments they give
their students in first-year writing classes. One favors a service learning
project where students work in a poor 4.
Writing skills are always a problem in college, but
the truth is, many college students no longer know how to read, either. It is
true on my campus, and from what I can gather, on many other college campuses.
They understand words, sentences—they
are not illiterate—but they don’t get the point anymore. They don’t see the
reason for reading. 5.
For nearly as long as the book has existed,
pessimists have been predicting its death. This time they may be right. Over
the last five or so years, consumer spending on books rose 16%, but unit sales
dropped. In other words, despite healthy spending levels, fewer books are
being purchased. Moreover, the younger you are, the less likely you are to be
cracking a spine. In 1997, Americans between the ages of 25 and 39 accounted
for 26.5% of books bought, while in 2001 they accounted for only around 20%. 6.
So our future leaders apparently aren’t reading books.
Our future leaders aren’t doing much writing either, even in their writing
classes. Other than threatening my livelihood—actually, both of my
livelihoods—what of it? 7.
The din of construction from the 8.
Eventually, I ask one of the candidates—the one who
sends her students into the inner city to do service learning—the
64-thousand-dollar question. “So they do this work in the neighborhoods,
right? And then they write papers about their experiences?” 9.
There is a brief pause, and then a brief answer. A
very vague answer. This is a job interview, so the young woman understandably
hedges her bets. We all smile and let the moment pass. 10. I
want to blame high school teachers. I want to blame television. I want to
blame standardized testing. I want to blame rhetoric and composition
specialists. I want to blame literary theorists who make reading such a
complex, disconnected chore. I want to blame the internet. 11. I’m
looking for someone to blame. 12.
Notice how I’ve
numbered the sections here, kept them brief. I’m hoping I’ll help even the reluctant
reader digest the material. One could, for instance, read just one section a
day, and be done within the month. 13. As
the interviews progress, I begin to catch on. The applicants for our
composition position have been tutored by their graduate school mentors to
give their students only cursory reading assignments. Life is a text, right? Of
course, papers are still assigned in the contemporary composition classroom,
but not so many as there used to be. “We are living in a post-print world,”
one applicant explains, matter-of-factly. 14. I
meant it when I said you shouldn’t read this essay. Not because reading is
dead—the post-print thing—but because I am just as guilty as the next. So why trust me? 15. Confession
One, The Classroom: Getting current
students to read and understand serious, thoughtful essays (and poetry, and
fiction) is like pulling teeth. I don’t like pulling teeth. It becomes
painful on both ends. 16. Confession
Two, At Home: I read less and less myself, year by year. 17. As a boy, I would sit each summer morning
by the mail slot that entered into our front sun porch. My home didn’t
contain books—my parents didn’t read much—but I was so eager to digest
written words that I would pour over anything that came in the mail. I lived
with my mother and two sisters, so often it was women’s magazines. Odd as it
seems, I learned to read by digesting Ladies Home Journal, Redbook,
Seventeen, cover to cover. Ads and articles. Later, I graduated to
newsmagazines, Time and Life, and then young adult books. I was
onto Animal Farm and Dickens even before high school. 18. But now I
seldom read the classics anymore. I read shorter books. I read fewer books. I
read a lot at work. 19. John
Allemang laments in the 20. My
confession is nothing unique. I hear it over and over from adults like
me—college educated, once enamored by the classics—who have the ability to
read but less and less of an inclination. “I have so little time. My eyes are
tired at the end of the day. I pick up a book. I try to read. I put it down.”
21. The
admission is almost always tinged with sadness. 22. April
2003, 23. Has it come to this: students too lazy
to watch? 24. Back when people sat by the campfire,
and not too long ago when people sat around a radio, there was great
advantage to someone who could string a narrative out, make it last forever,
fill up the dark night air with words and words and words. The same was true of
the novel. The literate class had many long evening hours to fill, and little
to fill them with, so plots were protracted, and books lengthy. 25. Our world, like that hotel room in 26. The result, I sometimes think, is that
our brains have been refurbished. We
needed more room for storage: e-mail, voicemail, cable news, our investments,
our diets, our health warnings, pins and passwords. Something had to go. Turn
the library into a media room. Reassign that frontal lobe. We are living in a
post-print world. 27. Are you still reading? 28. You
can stop now. |
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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