Reading Not So Common

Think about the things you do everyday.  We continue to watch t.v., listen to our Ipods and play video games but how often do you sit down to read a book.

In a recent artice in the Boston Globe By David Mehegan many startling statistics were noted.

Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.

The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

In 2005, almost 40 percent of college freshmen (and 35 percent of seniors) read nothing at all for pleasure, and 26 percent (28 percent of seniors) read less than one hour per week. Even among college graduates, prose-reading proficiency declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

"Lack of reading greatly decreses literary competance.  It also reading efficiency and deficiency in writing.  Being low in literacy is self-isolating, tends to push you out of culture altogether."as quoted by Timothy Shanahan, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

NEA chairman Dana Gioia says there are three reasons in the decline of youth reading, "First, something is not happening in our educational system. Second, we are surrounded by nonstop media, but for the most part it does not acknowledge reading. When the media made a celebrity of J.K. Rowling, 10 million people bought her book. Oprah Winfrey put 'Anna Karenina' on the best-seller list. Third, our lives are completely cluttered with a million gadgets."

Next time you go to sit in front of the t.v. why don't you try picking up a book and reading a little first.