I can’t say that I’d choose any of the three options – encourage, discourage, or ignore – but I can’t think of another option. I wouldn’t want to encourage, because that creates a feeling that it would be expected, and what of the people who don’t care to, it would just be something to make them feel inadequate. As to discouraging, well, I don’t think forcing it into the shadows would be good for those who suffer from exploitation. And ignoring it? Doesn’t seem like an appropriate option, either. Could we settle for not not-discussing it? Not making it taboo? This is probably why I’m not professor material…

There have been many studies done on reading motivation, and lo and behold, a major influence on student engagement in reading is whether or not they can connect the material as relevant to their lives. Sure, an intensely hard text is great to assign, but if the students can’t see how it relates to the course content (beyond the “because I assigned it you can assume it deals with course content” or “because it’s part of the course content, you’ll have to find the connection”) the student will never finish.

Also, as necessary as reading is, it also takes time. If one were only taking three credit hours, there would be absolutely no excuse to not have the readings done. That even goes for twelve credits, for that matter. But today’s students are facing tuition raises and a struggling economy. The typical student has to take at least 15 credits a semester to stay on top of things, and on top of that need to work to pay rent and loans. Factor in 4 classes with similar reading loads of respectable 50-75 pages per night, and it becomes a hefty amount, almost insurmountable.

So, I think we can take a page from Bronfenbrenner here: students aren’t reading because of a vast number of issues that are extra-curricular, and unfortunately maximizing the work load puts a strain on the cognitive processes, adds a lot of stress, leaving students who actually do the reading less likely to engage with the text, and less likely to recall what they have read, and thus unlikely (74% unlikely) to read professionally.

For some reason, it’s just not happening. Personally, and I might be admitting something I shouldn’t here, I do around 80% of my assigned readings. I perform “professional reading” on anywhere from 5-50% of a course’s readings depending on the content of the reading and the structure of the course. Readings that I have to write an essay on I reread many many times. Readings that I’m being quizzed on might only get a single pass, as quizzes are usually quite topical. Readings that require neither might be skimmed for basic comprehension and then read fully if they really catch my attention. Poems almost always get read several times, fiction less so.

I do most of my reading outside of assigned readings in the form of blogs, web-based news media and sometimes I even read a book or two for *fun*. I probably read on average, 10 or more hours a day. I could, should and perhaps shall take your advice and work on increasing the percentage of readings that get the “professional” treatment at the expense of my less productive blog reading. However, thus far, my strategy has been more than adequate to max out my grades

And I think that’s the crux of it. I know, without a doubt, that in some of my English courses I could do less than 20% of the readings and still get an A. I could selectively bombard any reading that requires an essay, write a sufficient paper and simply disregard every other assigned reading. This isn’t to say I couldn’t write a better paper if I invested more effort into the other readings, I could, but I’m not being held to that standard.

I spoke to a friend, Malcolm Harris, about Nancy’s article and he said something to the effect that he does his readings out of respect for his professor. Such as to say “I trust you to know what is good for me to read”. I think that is an admirable way to look at it. But for the non-Malcolms out there, perhaps some English courses could stand for more accountability. Perhaps courses could benefit from shorter reading lists but higher expectations for demonstrating that what is on the list, is actually being read professionally.

My fellow English students are probably warming up their torches and sharpening their pitchforks so I’m going to stop here .

The problem is most students don’t know how to read. Not in the literal sense of basic literacy, but rather they don’t know how to read seriously. Or call it professionally. In a sense, that’s what the English major is about: becoming a professional reader. For the faculty’s part, I suspect too many of us also neglect this basic point, and we assume our students already know how to read. Nothing doing. By and large they don’t.

So what do I mean by reading, or “professional reading”? Rereading, for one thing. Again and again. Got a sonnet assigned for tomorrow’s class? Fourteen lines, no problem. Well, sure, but the point is you should read those fourteen lines a dozen times before the class; read them aloud, read them first thing in the morning, read them before you go to bed at night. Read them on the bus, read them in a coffee shop. And while you’re reading, (yes, here it comes . . . ) keep a dictionary handy. Look words up. Look at etymologies. Keep an encyclopedia (or a Web browser) handy. Look stuff up there too. Follow links, follow connections.

Got a novel to read for class? No, you’re not going to read the whole thing through a dozen times. But you can still reread. Reread selectively, reread at random; books are random access devices, you can open them anywhere. Use that.

Also keep a pen handy. Make notes, underline stuff. Someone should be able to look at your text and know that it’s been read. Don’t fret about it, people have been writing in books for centuries. It’s what readers are supposed to do.

So read, reread, look stuff up, mark the text up. Make it your own. Have a paper due and don’t know what to write about? Spend a couple of hours rereading and underlining. I guarantee it’ll be time well spent. Texts should be hard for the right reasons–because ideas are hard, because language is infinite but imperfect, and because good writers tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Erin Mckean – Editor of the OED on the future of dictionaries.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html

I think it’s great, and (as Erin mentions in the video) the next frontier for the OED is to arm regular people with the power to define our language, amateur lexicography.

Since I was already acquainted with a large portion of the discourse I went straight to the last link and laughed when I read that the NEA Chairman is Dana Gioia. I’ve been wrestling with an essay he wrote in the early 1990′s called “Can Poetry Matter?” for most of the week. In it he claims that poetry has lost its public audience and… no one (except the academic subculture) reads poetry anymore… This is directly relevant to the paper I’m presenting for Text and Techne.

I apply a liberal amount of hind-sight to Gioia’s claim that poetry has lost it’s public audience and point out that while he was writing that essay San Fransisco hosted the first ever national poetry slam which has turned into an event that hosts hundreds of poets and thousands of spectators annually. This movement has also spawned over 500 poetry venues across the nation. But for many academics performance poetry doesn’t seem to qualify as poetry.

Over a decade later you wrestle with him over the same issue except regarding literature in general instead of just poetry and both arguments point towards the same problems. One the very definition of reading and literature, and the other the definition of poetry and poetic audience.

Some of you may remember the National Endowment for the Arts’ controversial 2004 Reading at Risk report:

http://www.nea.gov/news/news04/ReadingAtRisk.html

In response to that report, in conjunction with MITH, I organized a panel discussion (November 2004) that featured our own Michael Collier and Shirley Logan, as well as the NEA’s Mark Bauerlein, Lisa Gitelman (Catholic U.), Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information), and Nick Montfort (Penn, MIT). Video of that panel is still available here:

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/archive/rar/videos/

In November 2007, the NEA released a major follow up report, To Read or Not to Read:

http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html

The new study attempts to build upon Reading at Risk by synthesizing data from a number of different sources, as well as expanding the scope of its purview beyond the focus on “literary” reading which marked the previous report.

Along with several others, I then found myself engaged in an increasingly public debate about the NEA report.

On December 7, I published a piece call “How Reading is Being Reimagined” in the Chronicle Review section of the Chronicle of Higher Education (it appeared online about 10 days earlier):

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=fgprwfnh32l7d3thj18vh3jz79k9f6fw

Nancy Kaplan (University of Baltimore) published a critique of aspects of the NEA’s methodology and data presentation on the blog site for the Institute for the Future of the Book:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/11/reading_responsibly_nancy_kaplan.html

Harvard’s Leah Price published “You Are What You Read” on December 23 in the New York Times Book Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/books/review/Price-t.html?ex=1355979600&en=4b500b4617261223&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Mark Bauerlein, formerly Director of Research at the NEA and Professor of English at Emory, wrote a letter to the editor in response to my Chronicle piece (published January 11):

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:G3–y5wkctwJ:chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i18/18b02501.htm

I offered a response to Bauerlein at the Institute for the Future of the Book (see also the comments thread, which includes new remarks from Leah Price, among others):

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/01/reading_between_the_lines.html

Nancy Kaplan, meanwhile, received a reply from Sunil Iyengar, current Director of Research at the NEA; Iyengar’s reply, Kaplan’s response to his reply, and Iyengar’s reply to her response are all also at the Institute for the Future of the Book:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/01/nea_reading_debate_round_2_an.html

Dan Cohen, of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason, offered a thoughtful critique on his own blog:

http://www.dancohen.org/2008/01/10/the-digital-critique-of-to-read-or-not-to-read/

Steve Johnson (Everyhing Bad is Good for You and other books) has a February 7 piece in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/07/internet.literacy

Which draws a reply from Iyengar and Bauerlein:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/20/digitalmedia.internet

Meanwhile, I wrote a response in the letters section of the Chronicle Reivew, which was published on February 15.

Most recently, the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar and I appeared together on the February 13 Digital Campus podcast produced at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media. We discuss the report and the surrounding issues for about half an hour. Our segment starts about 17 minutes in. You can download the podcast here:

http://digitalcampus.tv/2008/02/13/episode-21-to-read-or-not-to-read/

The Wall Street Journal’s The Numbers Guy does some math:

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/are-americans-really-reading-less-303/

Finally, I’ve been asked to appear on an upcoming episode of the MLA’s What’s the Word radio show to discuss the future of reading. And the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar will present a MITH Digital Dialogue on April 1.