We live in an era of fake news, conspiracy theories, distortions and disinformation, simplifications and outright lies, assiduously spread by our rulers to compromise society’s capacity for informed democratic decision-making. We need all the more to be able to critically interrogate what’s around us, and that comes with experience in engaging with the content and language of texts we read. Those who read very little are the ones vulnerable to manipulation by false and motivated WhatsApp forwards.
The scholar-authors conclude that reading skills and practices are “the foundation for full participation in the economic, political, communal and cultural life of contemporary society”, including “social, cultural and political engagement” as much as “personal liberation, emancipation and empowerment”. A healthy democratic society that requires “the informed consensus of a multi-stakeholder and multi-cultural society” also needs resilient readers, they argue.
Ironically, I didn’t read this. But, I think the premise is dubious in that text is only a medium. Hell, text itself can range from tabloid articles to research papers.
How is “reading” any different from “watching”, or “listening”? It’s all about quality of the material, not how to consume the media.
What is the difference in reading a book vs reading a news article, blog, forum comments, etc? What makes a book superior to other forms of written text? You’re reading words put down by a human being (and not AI in either case, hopefully) for various reasons; to entertain, to inform, to shock, to inspire…
It really frustrates me that people, even very successful and capable people I know, take pride in finding every excuse they could to not read a book. Reading critically is how you learn about the world, but whenever I ask people to read a book so we can talk about it, it’s always “I’m too busy, give me a short summary instead”
First, if factory workers 100 years ago who worked 16 hour days can still find time to read, you can too; Second, if I know how to summarize an entire book into a paragraph and have it convey the full meaning of the book, I wouldn’t be telling you to read it.
Even audio books, the authors point out, are not the equivalent of reading but a poor substitute for it.
I’d love to see the data that they have to backup this claim. I remember reading a while back that listening to an audiobook gets all the same mental benefits of reading a book, as long as you are reading above a 5th grade level (basically sounding out words).
Was that for reading for enjoyment or for information. In my experience I find folks who prefer written documentation over video explanations tend to figure out and perform things better. I also find those who mostly get their information from videos have a hard time understanding and doing due diligence on sources and thus tend to get emotional over things that are not entirely true or presented in a very slanted light. While you can rewind to double check something said before in a video I find few people, including myself (and I likely do do it more than most) will bother to rewind and do the double check. When reading its much easier to page back and check that item. Its also way easier to assess data from multiple sources and you can chekc particular parts of writings within minutes easily wereas finding and checking areas of videos where they all talked about the same thing is not so easily. Even scrolling around a forum or search for things is easier. Heck searching to get text is much more likely to quickly find you something than search video for a specific thing.
It was in reference to reading for enjoyment. There’s definitely a huge benefit to having written documentation to search through for technical purposes for sure.
I used to read 2-3 books a week, but between work, kids, keeping my house in order, I have so few contiguous time blocks for leisure reading that I’m lucky if I finish a book in a month or two. I do read a TON of books with my kids while putting them to bed, I just don’t count those for myself.
I’m in much the same situation. I bought myself a pocket eBook, and I read so much more, because it’s so small and light I can always have it on me. I have a moaan inkpalm I got from aliexpress, but there are a couple more polished ones out now that would probably be worth the extra money.
It sounds to me, that the issue is less with people reading, the article mentions that people do read, and more to do with a lack of critical thought about what is being read.
Critical thinking skills are the most important skills to build during a child’s education, its surprising they arent focused on even more than they are now.
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