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The latest results from the Colorado Statewide Assessment Program came as no surprise when they were released last week. The 1999 literacy tests for fourth-graders, conducted this spring, produced about the same results as the 1997 and 1998 tests.
This year, only 59 percent of them were proficient or
advanced
at reading, compared to 57 percent in previous
years, and only 34 percent reached those levels in writing,
down from 36 percent last year but up from 31 percent two
years ago.
As a writer, I suppose I should welcome this development. Almost twice as many kids learn to read proficiently as learn to write, so that means about twice as many potential customers as potential competitors.
However, Gov. Bill Owens called this a crisis, and promised to seek some reforms in an upcoming budget message to the legislature.
We are in danger of losing a generation of children
to illiteracy,
he said. I fear that the failure
represented by these test scores is consigning these
children to lives of failure.
With all due respect to the governor, I think he's over-reacting. In days of yore, when young Abe Lincoln studied by the fireplace, illiteracy may have been a ticket to failure.
But modern America is pretty much a post-literate society, and it gets more that way all the time.
Consider these numbers from the 1998 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. They're the Census Bureau estimates of the number of hours and dollars that an average American will spend on various media activities this year:
Television, 1,548 hours, $178.23.
Radio, 1,076 hours.
Recorded music, 313 hours, $64.40.
Daily newspaper, 155 hours, $54.05.
Books, 97 hours, $92.38.
Magazines, 80 hours, $38.91.
Videos, 56 hours, $96.33.
Movies in theaters, 12 hours, $27.13.
Internet, 33 hours, $40.88.
You don't need to know how to read to watch television, listen to the radio or a compact disk, or to view a movie at home or in the theater. The total of these nonliterate activities comes to 3,029 hours and $366.09.
You do need literacy for newspapers, books and magazines. These total 332 hours and $185.44.
For every dollar that is spent on a literate pursuit, the typical American spends $1.97 on non-literate media. For every hour devoted to reading, the average citizen of this republic devotes 9 hours and 7 minutes to sounds and images contrived for public consumption.
And if you look at the statistics from 1990 and the projections through 2001, the trend is clear: the non-literate media are gaining. We are constructing a society where literacy is less and less a requirement for participation.
But what about the Internet and computers -- doesn't their growing use mean more need for literacy?
Of course not. Computer software promotes ease of
use
with a graphical user interface,
which means
pointing at a picture.
The Internet and e-mail, once much limited to text and
thus requiring literacy, now abound with multi-media
-- that is, sounds and pictures, many of them animated.
In other words, to make the computer a common household appliance, it had to made accessible to the non-literate. To make the World Wide Web suitable for mass consumption, it had to be enhanced for the non-literate.
Any half-bright fourth-grader might look at these
developments and wonder why bother learning to read and
write?
After all, billions of dollars are spent every
year to eliminate the need for reading and writing -- why
learn to describe something when you can capture it with a
digital camera and attach it to an e-mail or post it on the
Web?
Further, the Committee That Really Runs America has figured out that much and more: If you organize a society where most people learn just enough to hold down jobs that pay them just enough to buy whatever swill you want to shovel before them, then you can get stinking rich and exercise power to continue the process.
On an emotional level, I'm sentimental about certain things, and so I wish the governor well in his efforts to improve literacy in Colorado.
But on a practical level, he's trying to push back the great American tide. Our modern post-literate economy would collapse if Americans started spending as much time at the library as they do watching television.
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