Introduction
Here is my conspiracy theory: the American political system is bankrupting public education in order to dumb down citizens so that they’ll experience knee-jerk responses to political messages, they’ll vote according to those responses, and they’ll keep in power people who make big money and help their friends make big money based on their political position. If I were going to take to the streets to protest any crackpot notion this would be it.
Every other problem I have with American politics is connected to it. The current American wars are just one example: we claim to be promoting democracy around the world and use violence to do it. This bait and switch ensures that there will always be terrorism so that America will always have an excuse to go to war, which puts big money into the pockets of people who make weapons and other war-related products and who make money off of that industry. War also allows politicians to whip Americans up into a frenzy of patriotism whenever they need votes in support of troops whose lives they are wasting to line their pockets.
This money-making machine falls apart when Americans have enough education and experience to think critically through the messages communicated to them, so it’s no wonder that politicians claim the public school system needs to be policed instead of properly funded. Increasing requirements and less money… hmm, I wonder what that will do? It will ensure that the American public loses faith in public-school teachers, that the politicians will take over and shut down “low-performing” schools (read: schools with a lot of poor kids), and that increasing sums of money will flow into the for-profit sector in support of high-cost “solutions” to the problem that poor families will not be able to afford. At the moment when America is poised to make real education accessible to all Americans (note the rhetoric of No Child Left Behind), we are actually chopping away at the public-school foundation that makes that access possible. Like everything else in American culture, we are talking one way and acting another. It’s called hypocrisy.
Inquiry question: What is the connection between reading and the “decline” of the American educational system?
Conclusion: Reading grounds academic success because it encourages imaginative, emotional, and intellectual connection with ideas. When educational and social structures encourage us away from reading, we lose the opportunity to advance ourselves and to support our culture. Currently, both educational and social structures are killing reading, which will increasingly undermine education in America and widen the gap between rich and poor. While this may not have been intended by those in power, these institutional structures benefit the privileged few who can survive the system and then capitalize on it.
Point #1: Reading and socio-economic class correlate. More affluent families have more money and leisure for reading, and they have generations before them who valued reading. So, we might reinterpret the following statistics: “fewer than 50 percent of high school graduates from families without college experience are regarded academically qualified for college [. . .], compared to more than 80 percent of graduates with college-educated parents” (Arum and Roska 42). These statistics assume that families’ lack of experience with college culture interferes with children’s ability to get to college. While this is likely true, another aspect of underpreparedness may have to do with low levels of reading in the home. If young people are not comfortable with reading and discussing reading, they may not choose reading-heavy courses or succeed in the rigorous coursework leading to college, and they may need lots of support to tackle the reading associated with college-level academics.
Moreover, reading is one way to unconsciously absorb all kinds of cultural knowledge. Many assessments of skills and knowledge rely partly on the skill or knowledge sought and partly on the greater cultural context surrounding the task. If a student’s critical thinking skills are being assessed by being asked “to generate a memo advising an employer about the desirability of purchasing a type of airplane that has recently crashed” (Arum and Roska 21), the student needs to know more than merely how to argue based on evidence. The student needs to know what a memo is, understand the relationship between an employee and employer in a professional situation, and have some familiarity with airplanes. Students who have never come into contact with the cultural aspects of this prompt may struggle to determine how to answer it. Students who have not themselves come into contact with the same cultural aspects but who are also readers may be able to better address the question through their imaginative journeys into the lives of others who have encountered these things. The problem is that cultural exposure and reading are both class defined; the more well-off students who more likely to have a broad cultural exposure to the professional world assumed to be the norm by people writing tests (rather than, for example, assuming most students understand gang activity) are the same students likely to have broad reading exposure to additional aspects of culture.
Point #2: Schools are committing “readicide.” Kelly Gallagher defines “readicide” as “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools” (2). Reading involves emotion and imagination. Reading occurs most effectively when students care about the subject matter and the mode of expression. Reading requires emotional and intellectual interaction with a text, not just processing of facts. Reading, even challenging reading, can be fun! For example, my eight-year-old daughter recently discovered the Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter. She’s not even done with the first book, and she loves the series. She imagines she is a cat, her stuffed animals become other cats, and even our real cat Ichabod gets dragged into the role-playing. Then, my daughter found the website for the series and discovered a related game. This game has a 54-page instruction manual. I told her that I didn’t have time to read it and help her, but because she is emotionally invested, this little kid is reading a 54-page instruction manual, understanding it, and not even thinking about it as work. My observations of her indicate that she moves easily from reading the manual to writing her own Warrior Cat stories, to acting out scenarios, to playing problem-solving Warrior Cat electronic games, and to discussions with other people about issues raised as part of this process. Her challenging reading is embedded in an entire intellectual, physical, imaginative, interpersonal, and emotional package that keeps her developing her thinking. Reading in school could be like this. In some schools, it is.
However, because of the culture of high-stakes assessments, many schools are forgetting how reading happens and focusing on reading as a simple transaction based in comprehension rather than engagement. In emphasizing reading in the service of test-taking, schools are making reading a chore completely disconnected from students as individuals and thereby ironically undermining their students’ ability to succeed on tests. Gallagher says, “In an effort to ‘help’ prepare [students] for reading tests, we starve readers” (32-33). Young readers hungry for interesting ideas and stories increasingly denied the opportunity to feast in sustained, authentic, pleasurable, intellectually stimulating reading moments will stop seeking them. Through readicide, schools are killing the potential for students to enjoy reading in more advanced school work and in later life. This situation particularly disenfranchises children of less affluent families who may not have opportunities and encouragement in the home to consider reading as fun.
Point #3: Popular culture substitutes quick superficiality for deep thought. In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” smart characters like George have buzzers implanted in their heads to interrupt their thinking and make them more “equal” with less smart characters. During the story, George watches his son Harrison get killed on TV for defying the equality rules and showing off his strengths. Moments later, George can’t even remember this personal tragedy because “a handicap signal shook him up.” Instead, he says to his wife Hazel, “’Forget sad things’” (185). This is a tragic ending because parents are not even allowed to feel the loss of their child due to the politics keeping the powerful in power. One of the messages conveyed by “Harrison Bergeron” is that equality is not sameness but everyone having the support to use their talents. Another message is that structures of power protect themselves. In the story, these structures protect themselves through handicapping people into sameness and gunning down anyone who bucks the system. Thankfully, American structures of power don’t frequently turn guns against citizens, or at least not in white middle-class reality.
Yet, American culture includes structures that encourage distraction equally as devastating as George’s handicap buzzer. As an example, commercial news sources operate for pay based on advertising. This means they need to attract viewers who will stay and read the ads. This need to retain viewers’ attention means that news sources will highlight news stories most likely to do so. Often these stories, such as what’s going on with Lindsay Lohan’s rehab, are visually highlighted on the screen, while Middle East peace talks fall into a list of other world events. In our fast-paced world where we don’t have time to read every news story, we may find ourselves reading about Lindsay Lohan instead of Benjamin Netanyahu (who?). When it comes time to use our hard-won political right to vote, will we be ready based on our superficial understanding of current events? Maybe. Maybe we won’t vote because we don’t know enough. Maybe we’ll vote in alignment with our political affiliation because we haven’t had time to examine the facts. Maybe we’ll vote for the person who comes across most favorably in Yahoo! News photos rather than understanding anything about his or her politics.
While such media involve reading, the structures of such media do not encourage the habits of reading: first of all, commercial news sources don’t foreground important facts. They tend instead to cater to the lowest common denominator of public opinion, gossip. Secondly, such media don’t encourage spending time with information, pursuing ideas in-depth, living in characters’ experiences for days and years, and connecting those ideas to one’s ongoing thought processes. Instead, media like commercial news sources repeat the same kinds of stories over and over again, encouraging only momentary uproars and feeding our sense that nothing is happening worth worrying about. Real reading, reading that invokes our emotions and challenges our thinking, helps us to think outside the confines of our lived experience, to understand other people and cultures, to value individual and ordinary experiences, to imagine better futures and long for justice (Pontusco and Thornton 65), and to better understand ourselves (Felski 7).
Conclusion
OK, so maybe there’s not a conspiracy to dumb down American citizens, but there are structures in our culture that encourage us to invest our time and money in not thinking. In a democracy where successful government hypothetically relies on educated voters, the failure of our school system and culture to value reading and its connection to deep thinking subverts democracy and keeps a privileged few in power.
Questions for discussion:
1) I’m probably totally biased. I love reading. I don’t remember learning to read. Reading has always come easily for me. What are other structures in our culture that actively encourage deep thinking that could similarly assist in supporting democracy?
2) If reading is so all-fired important, what are strategies that could encourage kids and adults to read more?
Works Cited
Arum, Richard and Josipa Roska. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. U Chicago P, 2011. Print.
Felski, Rita. “Remember the Reader.” Chronicle Review 55.7 (19 Dec. 2008): 7.
Gallagher, Kelly. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2009. Print.
Pontuso, James F. and Saranna R. Thornton. “Is Outcomes Assessment Hurting Higher Education?” Thought & Action (Fall 2008): 61-69.
Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 6th compact ed. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Longman, 2010. 181-85. Print.
THE AMAZING BLADEZO
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