Is the Book at Death's Door?

People keep trying to tell me that the book, as a way to deliver information, edification, and entertainment, is doomed to extinction. Radio, then television, and now the internet were all going to supplant books. Not only were these more technologically advance media going to replace the kind of deep, committed reading demanded of books, but they were training us to have shorter and shorter attention spans creating a sort of self-perpetuating spiral.

TV programs run for 30-60 minutes. The commercials are 30 seconds. Pop music songs tend to top out at around two and a half minutes. Social media scrolling is a process of attending for fractions of seconds before moving on. The groundbreaking children's educational program Seasame Street was the first to give up on the long form, introducing us to a habit of quick cuts that, in part, formed us into what we at one time called "the MTV generation." No one had the time or attention span for books anymore. At least that's what they said. Marshall McLuhan created an entire critique of media and culture that saw this as not just inevitable, but natural and good.

Book stores, both large chains and mom-and-pop operations, have struggled in recent decades, although that seems to have more to do with the impact of Amazon because, despite the warnings, book sales have remained strong since the dawn of the 2000's, enjoying a significant resurgence during the pandemic. In fact, 2022 saw us buying a record number of books -- over 800 million -- and while 2023 saw a small dip, overall book sales remain higher than 2020.

If you've been a reader here for any length of time, you're likely aware that I'm an ardent book person. My wife shares my affinity for books, although she has largely shifted her book consumption to her Kindle. And that's part of how book publishing continues to thrive, finding alternative ways to deliver their product. I remember when paperbacks began changing the publishing game by offering books in a more portable and less expensive format. E-readers and audio books have done the same, making it possible for more and more of us to access books in more and more times and places. Instead of hurting book readership, these "rival" technologies have made it increasingly easy for book lovers to find books they love and one another, as book clubs (celebrity and otherwise), websites, and social media groups seem to be everywhere.

I'm a bit of a holdover in that I continue to prefer reading old-fashioned hardbacks. For my purposes, hardbacks are a mature technology, one upon which improvement is impossible, but you won't find me begrudging anything that makes reading books fit people's lives. Books, for me, are a pure good, like love or play, that need not be defended.

I'm writing about books because I recently read an article in The Atlantic (yes, I also read paper magazines!) written by Rose Horowitch entitled The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books (here's a link to the online version). She interviewed 33 literature and humanities professors who say that over the past decade students are landing in their classes who have never been expected to read an entire book. I've heard of this phenomenon before from another article in The Atlantic entitled Why Kids Aren't Falling in Love With Reading. 

Back then I wrote, "Today, children are being introduced to books and stories one paragraph at a time. They might be reading something as wonderful as Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia, but when you have to stop and answer questions, in detail, often word-for-word, about random paragraphs, there's no way you can learn to care about the characters or the stories. (Katherine) Marsh writes about a class in which the kids were reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, but they were told by the teacher that they would be doing it over the course of months, and probably wouldn't have time to finish it. What the hell? How can you read any book, and that book in particular, without reading it to the end? . . . No wonder children aren't growing up to love reading."

In this more recent article, Horowitch lays that blame squarely at the door of such governmental education policies as Bush's No Child Left Behind, Obama's Race to the Top, and Bill Gate's Common Core, all of which emphasize "informational texts and standardized tests. This has caused too many teachers to shift away from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author's main idea -- mimicking the format of standardized reading comprehension tests." As Antero Garcia, a Stanford education professor told her, "in doing so, we've sacrificed young people's ability to grapple with long-form texts in general. She quotes one teacher who has spent his career in New York and Boston public schools as saying, "There's no testing skill that can be related to . . . Can you sit down and read Tolstoy."

The word "sacrifice" is spot on here. I've long referred the academic regime that has taken over our schools in recent decades to "test score coal mines" in which corporations make money, and school districts receive money, and teachers get rewarded, off the backs of children's alienating labor. It doesn't matter how efficiently a child can analyze a paragraph if they have never been exposed to it in the much larger context in which it exists. I mean, Horowitch interviewed professors at the so-called "elite" universities which tend to attract the best test takers, and these students are increasingly unwilling and unable to read anything that requires the kind of persistence, focus, and, yes, ambition, required by whole books. We have specifically taught them that reading books is unimportant because it won't show up on the test. It is not the kids' fault: it is the fault of our schools.

Of course, schools have never been very good at encouraging book reading. The only books I've ever left unfinished were the boring ones assigned by a teacher. To truly "read" a book, I've found, my curiosity must be engaged. 

For my entire life, people have been warning about the death of the book, only to see it not just survive, but thrive, adapting itself to changing technologies and habits, bringing people into entire, fully-connected and satisfying worlds of both fiction and non-fiction. The book has taken on and survived every technological challenger -- radio and TV and the internet. Who would have guessed that it would be our schools that finally killed books?

Of course, they aren't dead yet. We are, after all, only two years beyond the book publishing industry's most profitable year on record and sales have continued to be strong, but I worry that the experiences of these university professors is a kind of canary-in-the-coal-mine phenomenon. After all, concerns about the demise of books has always proven to be unfounded. As Columbia professor Nicholas Dames says, "Part of me is always tempted to be very skeptical about the idea that this is something new . . . (And) yet I think there is a phenomenon that we're noticing that I'm also hesitant to ignore." So let's not ignore it.

I love reading books. Just holding one in my hand gives me a satisfying feeling of knowledge and wisdom. Maybe it's just me. Maybe they're right, the book is ultimately doomed, it's just taking its sweet time in finally succumbing.

If you're like me, however, and see value in books, whole books, all kinds of books, even and especially books that contain ideas and people with which and whom we disagree, then there is something we can do. It is as simple as continuing to read picture books with young children, cover-to-cover. Read the same one over and over. Read dozens of different books in a single setting. Let the children in your life catch you reading. Talk about the books you've loved, the stories that have shaped your life, changed your mind, or left you inspired. Talk about the books that made you sad, made you angry, and kept you awake at night. Leave books, all kinds of books, lying around to thumb through, to get curious about. 

I know that some of what I've written here might be alarming or depressing, and like I said, let's not ignore it, but the truth is that I have great confidence in books. Even the "science of reading" killjoys and charlatans won't be able to destroy books no matter how hard they try. In a cultural battle between books and schooling, I'll place my money on books every time. 

I've just started reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring which was published in 1962, the year of my birth. I was inspired to finally read it by Jenn Shapland's new book of essays entitled Thin Skin. I've also just begun to read Usula LeGuin's Earthsea series. When I look across the room at my bookshelf (part of which is pictured above) I see worlds I've experienced, author's and character's heads in which I've been a privileged visitor. I see a vast, deep, and connected world in which I'm free to roam. So let's not ignore the concerning things, but let's also know that books are mighty. They are a perfected technology and plaything. And they are here to stay.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," writes George RR Martin, "and one who doesn't read, lives just one." 

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!