Why do we read?

Reading:
What is reading?Reading is not just receiving meaning in alterable sense, it is more than that.


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Why Read?

The affliction of illiteracy is all but wiper out in the republic, but a ..ew disease is replacing it- “aliteracy”, in the jargon of reading specialists. “Aliterates” can read, but will not. They buy newspaper and magazines, even books on occasion, but only scan them. Their reading skills atrophy and their bellies grow bigger in front of TV sets.

Only 0.5% of the population over 14 now is classified illiterate. An estimated 20% to 40% over 14 can read and write a little, but not well enough, say, to read wants ads, fill out forms, understand a news story or follow safety instructions. They are called functional illiterates, and are lucky if they make out the comic pages.

Absolute illiterates and functional illiterates love network television. They turn it on in the morning and leave it on all day like a furnace or air-conditioning system. TV is a utility shining and blaring away for these poor souls.

Leave these folks be. I am concerned about an upper blob, those people who graduate from high school or college, and are regarded as literate. They account for the two-thirds of the population that should be running the country, making decisions, keeping business and schools going, tending to our health and safety, even voting on occasion.

These millions have allowed their reading interests, and therefore their reading skills, to slip. The less they read, the more their reading skills diminish – the old vicious circle.

Schools share the blame for this situation with the home. Many teachers are addicted to visual aids, and are incapable of instilling a love of reading in anyone. That is because they do not like to read themselves. They pray for more government money to install more movies projectors, slide shows and TV sets in the schools.

Then, there’s the generation, now in its 30s, reared in the TV age. They spent nearly as many hours in front of TV sets as they did in classrooms. They often become scanners of reading material. Naturally, they pass their habits on their children, now of school age. Their children will become even more TV and audio-visual minded, and so the cycle continues.

TV proliferates, it is watched in airports, college-student lounges, on patios and pleasure boats. Some limousines have TV sets, perhaps so their rich owners will not be bored looking out at slums. If TV sets were placed in libraries, I am sure many people would drop their books and watch.

I am not against TV, nor do I agree with the bluenoses that it must be banished from the republic.

But I am for reading because it is fundamental to thinking. Reading makes the mind work. TV usually does not. Minds that do not work become flabby. The result is a mediocre society.

THANKS SIS