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Rosie's avatar

I was inspired by one of your other posts that was talking about the state of the humanities education in the US and am challenging myself (and others) to read one "hard book." I asked my *very few* readers to choose their white whale of a book and try to read it word by word, sentence by sentence. I chose Spenser's the Faerie Queene. So many of the authors and intellectuals I love (Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien) laud this work and while I have often read "around" the book, I've not actually sat down with it. I also think it's incredibly easy these days to read "around" the book -- finding summaries and character analysis, etc. online -- so that reading the work yourself doesn't matter as much if you want to just get the gist. I work as an academic librarian in scholarly publishing and there seems to be resistance across the all the disciplines to reading the primary sources. Get back to roots, I say!

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Tristen Putera's avatar

I feel like part of the focus on "knowing" the gist of a book and not really UNDERSTANDING it ties back to how we read things in modern times. I see so many people read headlines and never read the article. Even in school, the idea is to be able to recite information read and there seems to be less analyzing taught or encouraged.

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Rosie's avatar

Exactly! In an Atlantic article it mentions that there isn't a test to determine if you understand Tolstoy (or Dostoevsky, it was one of the Russians). The idea of analyzing fragmented paragraphs and pulling random facts does not lend itself well to general understanding or knowledge growth or how the patterns of human history are reflected in good literature, art, theology, and philosophy, etc.. People find it difficult to make those connections because they haven't been introduced to the good works. Charlotte Mason calls this "presenting the feast" (very loosely paraphrased) and that children, when presented with good works, will be better able to make those associations among genres and disciplines.

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Grim Thom's avatar

Aren’t those two different phenomena? Alliteracy is essentially new to print media, and has expanded enormously in the internet age. I’m not certain that the quantity of truly literate people is under siege, it’s just that in the internet age the alliterate have successfully strong-armed their way into controlling the educational system.

Separate issue from rote memorization, which is absolutely traditional in the realm of pedagogy.

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A.M. Scheuman's avatar

The most interesting aspect of this "getting back to the original source" business, as Lewis pointed out somewhere, is that often times the original might be easier to understand than the countless modern convoluted volumes written 'about' said original.

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Rosie's avatar

Precisely! And what you might find is that people have (perhaps even willfully) misunderstood and misrepresented what the original says.

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Dawn Duryea's avatar

I think mine would be Paradise Lost.

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Rosie's avatar

Ooo that is such a good one! My high schooler had to read it last year for an online class and so I read it for the first time along with her. I highly recommend!

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Tom White's avatar

It’s an intellectual epidemic. As I wrote: “[W]e just don’t learn. Otto von Bismarck said it best: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” By his definition, we’re a confederacy of dunces.

Ancestors distant and proximate knew so much that we’ve come to forget, that we can’t identify, If ignorance paid dividends, we’d all be filthy rich.

Why are we so consistently foolish (and not just on this first of April)?

I suspect it’s because nobody reads anything anymore.”

More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/nobody-reads-anymore

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Matt Vaughn's avatar

There is no way 1/2 the adult U.S. population reads 1 book year. It’s much lower

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Dawn Duryea's avatar

Ha ha!

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Connie's avatar

Functional literacy is a big deal. But I think more relevant to our interests here is the number of people "capable of reading Moby-Dick" (or substitute another worthy, but more approachable work) but would never consider it of interest to do so.

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Dawn Duryea's avatar

So true! I don't think they know what wealth lies within the pages of these great works. They are content with the derivative dribblings.

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A.M. Scheuman's avatar

Seriously good point, and a somewhat missed statistic in all this. The more terrible reality than just illiteracy itself is that even those who could just plain don't want to put the effort in. Where effort is required, action lessens, I suppose.

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Isaac's avatar

I like and live the life of the mind, but then I clearly don't think it's for EVERYONE. People just have their own problems to attend to, and we have no right to judge them. Often times, people who don't live the life of the mind have practical life experience of their own to bring to the table. I doubt guys like Jamie Dimon or Ken Griffin read Aristotle or Kant. Seeing things from their perspective could gain us wisdom that even the life of the mind can't bring.

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Dawn Duryea's avatar

Yes, please keep "banging on" for us book worms out here! I think most people don't read books because their attention span has gotten shorter and now they only read headlines and memes. Not that they can't read, but they choose not to.

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Chayse Brown's avatar

Agreed! Many of the people I know express an interest in reading great works, but most never actually prioritize it. It is instantly "rewarding" to doom scroll, whereas reading takes a lot more effort. As someone who grew up with social media, the pull is a daily struggle.

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Jessica Drew's avatar

Although I read more than a book a year, I accept this is an issue for me, lol

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Alyssa Batchelor-Causey's avatar

It’s even worse - 54% can’t even read at or above a 6th grade level. I feel like we’re in the information dark ages. 😭

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Ben Worrall's avatar

I think the fact that only half of adults don't read one book seems to be a problem of excess entertainment options. If there was nothing to do but read, people would read.

I also just don't think the majority understand the very real and amazing personal benefits that come with reading, and also how enjoyable it can be.

If it was sold better maybe more people would be picking up books?

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Discovering Truth's avatar

"Don’t fail in advance." Great advice!

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K_L_Elsayed's avatar

I have found that people are basically lazy ( not an insult... I have tendencies towards laziness at times) They'd rather be told the story of a great book than physically read it. That's why audiobooks are best sellers. I've had to listen to audiobooks because they were the only copy of a series i was reading. The readers play the parts of the characters and the book becomes something like a audio show. It's truly sad that a person chooses this option ( mostly because they're multitasking while listening) and deprives themselves of an actual reading experience. When you read a book you use entirely different portions of your brain than if you listen to a story. It sparks your emotions, you get endorphins and serotonin uptake, your imagination ( another lost thing) is activated. The desire for the path of least resistance is diminishing the growth of a mind.

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Litcuzzwords's avatar

Interesting. Other sources say American adults read an average of 12 books per year.

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Cristina GT's avatar

Well, this certainly makes me feel better about my measly 14 books read so far this year. However, I do struggle with hard books and have never finished a philosophy book. I tried, and failed, to read the Nicomachean Ethics with you earlier this year and I do hope to give it another go next year. I really appreciate this space and I am looking forward to hearing more about your upcoming book!

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Stuart F Jones's avatar

My wife teaches math to grades 7-9. She keeps coming up against her students' inability to read the questions. They cannot do the math because they cannot read.

FWIW, I have finished 17 books so far this year.

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Ian Miller's avatar

I honestly am pleased it's as high as half! I was thinking it was down to 20% or less!

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James Adams's avatar

And the lack of numeracy is in some ways a greater problem. Advanced mathematics skills are required for most of the engineering and science fields. It takes many hours beyond the standard school day to do all the problems. You have to "purchase" the additional schooling, and you have to start early in order to compete. Thus the advantage of private schools, and thus the dominance of the Northeast over most other areas of the country in filling the ranks of top firms and top universities.

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Jared Henderson's avatar

I wonder how well these two phenomena correlate. We like to act like they are discrete skills, but I imagine some amount of verbal skill is required for mathematics, just like mathematics trains your analytical abilities.

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James Adams's avatar

My guess is that they are positively correlated but with a correlation less than 0.5. I am reading a biography of Henry Kissinger and it is clear that he was never destined to be a scientist based on his mathematics test scores in Germany and later the U.S. Ditto for the biographer, (Sir) Niall Ferguson, who is verbally quite advanced. By the way, this is why tech schools need non-tech majors, so kids have a place to go if engineering does not work out.

Jared, I wonder if we don't need a tutoring revival in the U.S. A couple of hours at the library after school would work wonders for kids' reading and math skills. I actually observed this at the Bunker Hill Branch of the Boston Public Library. In fact the kids thought that I was a tutor.

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Matt Vaughn's avatar

The response bias on surveys like these are huge.

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