Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
Who Needs to Read Anymore?

Who Needs to Read Anymore?

Last updated on: June 26, 2013 at 3:39 pm by Vic Sizemore

Who Needs to Read Anymore? 2013-06-26T15:39:46-07:00 Vic Sizemore

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

At the community college where I teach—actually in the state capitol two hours away—a massive overhaul of the English curriculum is underway. As I understand it right now, a diagnostic test will determine student placement, and three levels of developmental reading and writing are being added for those with low scores. Those students will be taking nine credit hours, almost two hours a day five days a week, of developmental reading and writing.

Faculty members are groaning—two retired the week the changes were announced—but what I haven’t heard is anyone saying there isn’t a problem. I remember the essay, “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” in The Atlantic in 2008, in which a professor claimed many of his students were close to being functionally illiterate.

The changes we are seeing at my school seem to indicate that it hasn’t gotten any better. Kids are coming out of high school without basic language skills.

In my experience, in an average class of twenty-two to twenty-four students, about a quarter will be placed in developmental classes, many only a small step beyond that. I would say five or six are adequately prepared for the rigors of college reading and writing.

I tell them it is important to know how to read and write. I say, “You need this to communicate effectively. To be successful. To have a rich, full life. To know who you are and what you believe about the world. To not be duped by charlatans and con artists.”

They listen quietly, looking at me as if I’m the one trying to sell them a bucket of bunkum, while trying to discreetly text under the table. Though they cannot read or write, they certainly don’t seem to be having any trouble communicating.

And they have this new language they use, one I’m only slightly familiar with. This makes me nervous. Am I really the one who’s being left behind? Are they the ones moving forward into the future of communication while I’m pounding the pulpit, trying to teach equestrian skills in the age of the automobile?

Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a story called “A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease” in which he starts substituting small shapes and pictures for words and phrases. By the end of the story, he and his father are having a non-conversation conversation using a string of these symbols and no words at all. If you’ve paid attention, you know exactly what’s being communicated. It’s a clever story that, among other things, shows how easy it is to substitute a symbol for an object or concept—which is what written language is, after all.

I’m wondering if there might be a new alphabet developing right under the teachers’ noses, a whole new language, one better suited for the world we are hurtling headlong into.

This does bring up deeper questions about what language is in the first place. Is it, like the Chomskyans say, innate, a part of our genetic makeup? Or is it, as Daniel Everett claims in his new book Language: The Cultural Tool, well, a tool?

I’m not equipped to enter that discussion. What I do wonder is if people really are not reading like they used to. I’ve seen plenty that seems to indicate they are not. But does it mean, as many claim, that we’re headed for a Fahrenheit 451 hell in which people don’t know who they are or what’s going on in the world or why any of it matters in the first place, and they are happy to be told what to believe by some unseen authority because no one can be bothered to read?

Remember, before reading became illegal in Bradbury’s dystopia, most everyone had already given it up; they were busy watching interactive reality TV on screens that filled whole walls of their houses, and didn’t give a damn when books started burning outside those walls.

Then again I don’t know. I took heart when I read Peggy Rosenthal’s Good Letters post about loving to read, and reading long novels at that. But doesn’t that just mean she’s a print-reading dinosaur like I am?

Wait, all my children read. Both of my boys have recently finished doorstop novels—one was Douglas Adams’ collected Hitchhiker’s Guide, and the other Stephen King’s It, but still—it isn’t just them. Their friends read too.

So maybe the fear is not as justified as I might think. Maybe the young people who are inclined to read are going to read. And it’s reading more than anything else, after all, that both teaches one how to write and plants the urge in the soul.

And it is stories that most often set that urge on fire.

I teach a world literature survey, and I go back to Gilgamesh in the fall and start moving forward. At the end of spring semester, I am again at contemporary literature. And again I am struck with how, though forms and mediums and languages change, one thing remains: from cave paintings to cuneiform to electric blips, we have always found ways to tell stories. Language might be innate, or it might be a tool, but I believe story is innate.

So everything will be fine no matter what our language looks like in fifty years, or a hundred years, or whenever we can finally see this swirling change in language start to take some shape. Story will be there intact; it is hard wired into us.

At least that’s how I console myself. And to get to this consolation, I did a lot of reading.

Vic Sizemore earned his MFA in fiction from Seattle Pacific University in 2009. His fiction and nonfiction are published or forthcoming in Story Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, PANK Magazine, Pembroke, Saint Katherine Review, Rock & Sling and elsewhere. An excerpt from his novel The Calling was a finalist for the Sherwood Anderson Award; other excerpts from The Calling are published in Portland Review and are forthcoming serially in Connecticut Review. His short story “Hush Little Baby” won the 28th New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction. Sizemore teaches at Central Virginia Community College.

Previous Post

June 27, 2012

Writing on Empty

Next Post

June 29, 2012 Baseball and the Law of God

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "My soul magnifies the Lord"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Deborah Elizabeth Hannah Mary