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Tampa Bay Super Lame

“A place for local art in all forms.”

09/03/2010 Decline In literacy

Perhaps in a decade we will see a new definition of what “literature” means.

A homework assignment turned blog post.

The National Endowment for the Arts’ article, “Reading at Risk,” compiles and explains a survey given to 17,000 Americans. The article’s data shows a steady decline in the literature reading habit of Americans. The statistics given could indicate that the American multi-media culture is killing our collective IQ. It would seem that media consumers, especially the younger generation, have little to no interest in literature. This in turn means a decline in spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and possibly in community outreach (as noted in “Reading at Risk”). The implications are that the use of new media is detrimental to our culture.

There are sound points to this argument, but I do not agree with the overall implications. I concede that, on average, emails, tweets, and status updates are littered with grammatical errors. There seems to be a sense of informality in digital communication. But this alone isn’t the cause for the decline in literacy. Books sales are failing because people are adopting new media.

This, in my opinion, does not spell impending doom for culture and society, but simply a paradigm shift. Perhaps in a decade we will see a new definition of what “literature” means. Certainly the distribution and consumption of the written word has changed (kindle, sony reader, ect.), so why not change the substance itself?

I see the internet not as an enemy of the written word, but as the biggest defender of information. If used correctly, this new media can broaden one’s artistic horizons in significant ways.

With the right RSS feed one can consume more information in one afternoon than with the best novel.

Not only that, but perhaps E-Books can do for literature what iTunes and digitization of music did for the auditory arts. In years to come we may have a rise in independent authorship and publication. Writers could distribute E-Books with the same ease that a recording artist can put an album on iTunes. Let the age of publisher-ruled literary arts come to an end! Viva la revolucion!

-Corin Shanti Francis La Pointe-Aitchison

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