Paying Kids to Read

The mayor of Noblejas, Spain thinks he's found a way to keep high schools students studying and not dropping out of school: bribery. Agustin Jimenez, the socialist official, suggests that the town pay students a euro - about $1.50 - for each hour they spend reading in the library, according to an Associated Press story:

The sweetener is part of a series of measures to be voted on by the Noblejas council in March. Others include funds for apartments in university towns for students from Noblejas, teachers to give private lessons to struggling students, and expert advice to parents on the virtues of keeping their children at school.

Supposedly, 31 percent of Spanish students leave school early, and they have some of the worst reading levels in the EU. The dropout rate in Noblejas is reportedly about 80 percent when you factor in kids who leave school at 15 or 16 after their obligatory time in classrooms is over.

Now, really, do Spanish McDonalds pay so little that a euro an hour seems generous?

Jobs Dismisses Written Word?

Steve Jobs, when asked by the New York Times for his opinion of the Amazon Kindle, was apparently dismissive:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Media observer Simon Dumenco had a pretty funny and pointed take on this in Advertising Age (disclosure - I write on occassion for the magazine):

By all rights I shouldn't be writing this -- and for God's sake, you certainly shouldn't be reading it! Because reading is, officially, dead.

My own reaction is simpler: 40 percent of the country read one book or less a year? Simple arithmetic suggests that the remaining 60 percent must read at least one book a year, to say nothing of magazines, newspapers, and the occasional amusing product packaging. Sounds like a good sized market to me - maybe even more than the number of people who would buy a Mac.

Fifteen Seconds of Fame and Fleeting Audiences

I caught myself doing something that makes me nuts when it's done to me - the fifteen second reading indulgence. I had followed a link to a column that former litigator Glenn Greenwald writes for Salon.com. The topic, mentioned in an email news list, that caught my attention was a critique of a reporter's coverage of John McCain, but I accidentally stumbled onto an earlier post about the unintended consequential results of hate speech laws. The topic caught my attention - I think that there are probably enough laws to cover pretty much anything that one person might do to another, and that legislating intent and thought is both dangerous and more than a little useless.

I finished reading, nodded to myself, and then was ready to head off elsewhere and suddenly knew that even though I just read two pieces back-to-back from the same author that seemed solid, I had no intention of checking back in the future for further posts. There is something more than a little peculiar about how many of us approach the world as readers, these days. We see something of value, but it is as though these items appear out of nowhere, have no connection to any one person, and certainly could not be evidence that more of the same might be found there. It's as though much of humanity had become thoughtless intellectual cattle, roaming about, grazing here and there, but never drawing any conclusions as to the best places to munch based on experience.

I'm sure people do bookmark spots, I do at times, but perhaps there is just too much out there and trying to keep up with it all has become more burden than freedom. Or maybe there is just so much out there that some of us are sitting tightly in a pool of serendipity, figuring that the interesting things will show up eventually. But I'm wondering how much of value I miss because I don't follow up - even for the few sites where I have a paid subscription.

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.

Big Brother is Reading Over Your Shoulder

According to Wired Magazine, the Department of Homeland Security is keeping wide ranging information on international travelers entering the country:

Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore's choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he'd packed for the trip.

Undoubtedly they're looking hard for the people who carry Al Queada training manuals.