NEA Study Says American Reading Is Doing Badly

The National Endowment for the Arts did a reading study, but unlike its previous one, this looks beyond literary reading (which didn't even include literary nonfiction) to all types. The answers are not the stuff of happy evenings. Here are some of the lowlights:

• Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.


• On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.


• Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.


• 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.


• Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.

A country whose youth are not reading is one whose future generations may not be equipped to adequately participate in a democracy. And given the poor job we're doing, going downhill from where we are now is a scary concept.