Book news: Cause not so lost after all
By Dave
January 12th, 2009 | Leave a comment
The title says it all.
Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy is the just-released report by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it says that for the first time in 25 years, literary reading is up among American adults.
One the NEA’s flagship programs, the Big Read, is earning some credit for the success of the last few years. Other programs include Shakespeare in American Communities and Poetry Out Loud. All of these programs did not exist in 2002.
In his preface to the report, Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, wrote: “Cultural decline is not inevitable. For those of us who have studied the impact of active and engaged literacy on the lives of individuals and communities, Reading on the Rise provides inspiring news. I can think of no happier way to end my tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts than by sharing such felicitous data and congratulating the legions of teachers,
librarians, writers, parents, public officials, and philanthropists who helped achieve the renascence. While we cannot be complacent, we can surely pause to celebrate our common success.”
While improvements have been tracked across most demographic groups, the report took the greatest gain to be among young adults. “The youngest group (ages 18-24) has undergone a
particularly inspiring transformation from a 20 percent decline in 2002 to a 21 percent increase
in 2008—a startling level of change.”
The report is based on data from “The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts” conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2008.
To view report (PDF) CLICK HERE.
The New York Times reports: “Among its chief findings is that for the first time since 1982, when the bureau began collecting such data, the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen.”
To read the NYT story, CLICK HERE.
