(no subject)
Sep. 15th, 2006 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingA modest proposal from MSNBC:
There is no question that reading is a desirable and often enjoyable skill to possess. In 2025, tens of millions of Americans continue to enjoy books and magazines as recreational pursuits, and this happy habit will undoubtedly remain part of the landscape for generations to come. But just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. For the majority of students, reading and writing are difficult enterprises with limited payoffs in the modern world.
Some positions in society do require significant literacy skills: senior managers, screenwriters, scientists and others need a highly efficient way to absorb and communicate abstract thought. A broad written vocabulary and strong compositional skills are also powerful ways to organize and plan large enterprises, whether that means launching a new product, making a movie or creating legislation. But for the vast number of the workers who actually carry out those plans, the same skills are far less crucial. The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional.
We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training.
In 2025 it’s time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity!
There is no question that reading is a desirable and often enjoyable skill to possess. In 2025, tens of millions of Americans continue to enjoy books and magazines as recreational pursuits, and this happy habit will undoubtedly remain part of the landscape for generations to come. But just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. For the majority of students, reading and writing are difficult enterprises with limited payoffs in the modern world.
Some positions in society do require significant literacy skills: senior managers, screenwriters, scientists and others need a highly efficient way to absorb and communicate abstract thought. A broad written vocabulary and strong compositional skills are also powerful ways to organize and plan large enterprises, whether that means launching a new product, making a movie or creating legislation. But for the vast number of the workers who actually carry out those plans, the same skills are far less crucial. The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional.
We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training.
In 2025 it’s time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:15 pm (UTC)Nononono,reading is not to be reserved for only the top castes of people again.It sucked then,it'll suck in the future.WTF are they thinking?!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:21 pm (UTC)Other than the small fact that literacy changes the way you process information. It gives you an entire realm of symbolic logic you didn't have before. And even unskilled laborers need functional literacy - people who don't follow warning signs get into trouble, tickets, legal charges, or shot at. not to mention electrocuted, poisoned, hit by falling objects, etc.
If you aren't literate, you can't fight the beurocracy, either. Governments use the written word to confuse, bamboozle, and intimidate the illiterate.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:36 pm (UTC)It still demands to be addressed with a counter argument, if only to underline how important literacy really is.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:57 pm (UTC)But, yes, I believe that there must always be someone who brings up the explicitly stated counter-argument, for the benefit of the less-bright and the children.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:20 pm (UTC)...ah yes, here it is!
Sorry if I seemed rude. I just really love satire as an art form.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:10 pm (UTC)I am not entirely sure the article itself is. I mean, I've looked at it twice, and at the man's other entires for the column, and I'm *really* not sure. I want to believe it is, but I honestly can't find any indication thereof.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:20 pm (UTC)Our reality these days is its own satire. I don't fault even the lit'ary types for missing it now and again.
-- Steve's increasingly dismayed... there goes half his arsenal.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:47 pm (UTC)Satire really only works when the audience has a well-defined sense of what is required of them in society, and a potential sense of shame when they transgress same. Many people alive today have no idea what is basically required of them by their society, much less what they /ought/ to do, much less feel shame when they fail to do it - there's so much confusion as to what is really necessary for people to do, to carry on a civilised society, and a sense of freedom from repercussions for transgressions.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 08:08 pm (UTC)But yes. They also pointed out that by not being able to read, the unwashed masses were functionally locked out from being able to be anything but a cog in the machine.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:04 pm (UTC)Ten. And one of them was The DaVinci Code.
I was so utterly boggled when he told me that, and then he was just as boggled when he asked how many I had read, and I couldn't even tell him, but ballparked it in the thousands somewhere.
*sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 07:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 07:41 pm (UTC)Tangent Ahoy!
Date: 2006-09-15 09:00 pm (UTC)I have come to the conclusion that I just can't get past the abominable cover art (http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Born-Daw-Book-Collectors/dp/0756400430/sr=1-1/qid=1158353651/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4491991-9000154?ie=UTF8&s=books). I mean, seriously, the woman has CAMELTOE.
Re: Tangent Ahoy!
Date: 2006-09-15 09:59 pm (UTC)The book itself though is very interesting to me. Has a bit of intrigue, an interesting cultural study, basically a lot of shit that I like.
Re: Tangent Ahoy!
Date: 2006-09-16 01:05 am (UTC)I liked In Conquest Born though it definitely has some rough edges after reading some of Friedman's newer works. The difference is jarring in The Wilding because you can see the seams between her excellent writing and using this old world that doesn't quite fit together as well as you know it should. But then if she changed it, it wouldn't really be in the same world as ICB. If you can get past the cover it's certainly worth a read, especially if you've read the Wilding.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 10:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-16 12:59 am (UTC)As for reading, that's one of the reasons I love my commute. Short enough to not be a bother, but long enough to read. Of course it's not something that can help sell others on public transit if they're not reading in the first place... <laments humanity>
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 05:31 pm (UTC)Either this is satire (I hope!), or that guy is a Republican shill.
:-)
A.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 09:30 pm (UTC)Worked, too--32 comments ahead of me as I type this. The Web is mostly something that's read, so putting this on the Web draws in readers like flies.
D'you think he plays Shadowrun?
Date: 2006-09-15 10:27 pm (UTC)The scary thing is, there are people that are heading that way.