The READ Act aims to ensure all students can read at grade level by the end of third grade. In 2019, the legislature made several changes to the READ Act to help educators support reading success among our state’s youngest learners...
— from a Colorado Department of Education press release, November 19, 2020.
On Friday, we posted an article written by Jeffrey Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (CFOIC), regarding some federal legislation being considered by Colorado’s US Senator Michael Bennet. Senator Bennet had invited Colorado journalists to join in on a ZOOM conference to discuss Bennet’s proposed legislation (which you can download here) which would create a 13-member federal commission, charged with exploring ways to save ‘local news’ organizations from extinction.
Mr. Robert quotes Senator Bennet in his article:
“The last thing any of us should want — certainly what you guys wouldn’t want and I wouldn’t want — is for the press to become beholden to government for support,” the Colorado Democrat said. “That’s a real challenge we’re going to have to think through, but it’s not an excuse to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do…”
Ensuring that local news organizations maintain their freedom and independence is critical to any proposal, Bennet said during Thursday’s meeting, which was arranged by the Colorado Media Project.
The CFOIC.org version of the story included a photo of Senator Bennet, presumably grabbed during the ZOOM meeting.
As a writer and editor, I enjoy analyzing text and images, so I couldn’t help notice that Senator Bennet had his computer placed so that, during his ZOOM meeting with two dozen (or more?) Colorado journalists, the screen background featured a bookshelf, filled with books.
I don’t know whether Senator Bennet purposefully arranged his computer to display a bookshelf in the background, but I have noticed — participating in numerous ZOOM meetings myself, and watching numerous YouTube videos — that experts and people in positions of responsibility often arrange their camera so that a bookshelf full of books is visible in the background.
As we’ve already noted in this editorial series, modern culture has tended to place the written word — as opposed to the spoken word — up on a pedestal, as having superior value and veracity. This veneration of the written word derives at least partly, I suspect, from the fact that for centuries — before the development of moveable type and the development of mass-produced books — writing and reading were practiced only by people of wealth and stature. Until the 1400s, copies of European texts were generally created by hand, by professional scribes, and even the most popular European book — the Bible — was available only to priests and noblemen.
I use the term “European” here, because it appears the Chinese were printing books, using hand-carved woodblocks, as early as 200 BC, and were using moveable type as early as 1040 AD.
The spoken word? Even peasants and beggars and outcasts have always had access to that communication tool. But when a certain product — written information — remains available only to people of wealth and power for 3,000 years, we can understand how printed materials, such as books, would accrue an overall aura of mystery and potency. And why people in ZOOM meetings, even in 2020, might want a bookshelf displayed in the background? Of the 24 reporters in the November 19 meeting with Senator Bennet, about eight had ‘books’ visible in the background. One reporter is sitting in what appears to be a public library.
But we also notice that three of the reporters have computer monitors or TV screens visible in the background.
All of them appear to be sitting in front of a computer monitor, and listening to the spoken words of others. A subtle hint that the written word is losing its magic?
I titled this editorial series, “Why Can’t Johnny Read?” in reference to a particular controversy surrounding Colorado’s READ Act, a piece of legislation that has been, since 2013, dumping millions of dollars into public schools, along with the requirement that the schools single out students suffering from ‘SRD’ — ‘Significant Reading Deficiencies’ — and to create ‘READ plans’ for those students. The legislation was designed to “dramatically improve reading for our youngest learners”. That is to say, K-3 students.
By all accounts, the READ program has been a failure. As the result of several years of planning and tracking effort, and perhaps $300 million spent so far on the program, Colorado’s third graders improved their reading scores on the annual CMAS (Colorado Measures of Academic Achievement) standardized test by a mere 2%. The number of students identified as ‘SRD’ declined by a mere 1%. As mentioned in a recent Colorado Department of Education press release, only four out of ten of Colorado third graders currently meet test benchmarks in English Language Arts.
We have a number of challenges facing us, here in the US in 2020. Our public schools continue to struggle with teaching reading skills. Our local news organizations struggle with a problem that might be closely related: a lack of readers, and a lack of interest from advertisers due to a lack of readers.
Could it be that America — a place never known for its universal literacy — is less interested in ‘reading’ than ever before?
According to a survey published by the Pew Research Center, as of early 2016, just 20% of American adults were getting their news from print newspapers. This number had fallen, from 27% in 2013. The decrease occurred across all age groups, though the age differences were stark: Only 5% of 18- to 29-year-olds were regularly reading print newspapers, whereas about half (48%) of those 65 and older did.
Compared with print, nearly twice as many adults (38%) often get news online, either from news websites (28%), on social media (18%) or both. (81% of adults ever get news on these online platforms.)
Still, TV continues to be the most widely used news platform; 57% of U.S. adults often get TV-based news, either from local TV (46%), cable (31%), network (30%) or some combination of the three.
But demographics speak to the fragility behind those TV numbers. While solid majorities of both those ages 50-64 (72%) and those 65+ (85%) often get news on TV, far smaller shares of younger adults do so (45% of those 30-49 and 27% of those 18-29)…
Obviously, these patterns indicate a significant shift going on in our culture. And book publishers, and newspapers, are not benefiting from that shift… if, for example, only 5% of our younger generation — ages 18 to 29 — are reading newspapers…