1
The Boston Globe recently finished a series [1] [2] [3] [4] on illiteracy in the city’s public schools. This is in part a response to state-commissioned study that details the failures: students being moved through primary and secondary education with poor or no ability to read. A number of policy remedies are suggested: earlier testing, individualized assessment, better beginner reading materials (especially for older students who deal with the shame of reading ‘baby books’), and most loudly suggested, a revision to curricula. Phonics must return to stop the disaster of “mass academic drowning.” This requires “rewiring the dyslexic brain.”
A moral rage animates the prose. The schools have failed. Neglect, incompetence, even corruption abound. And the indignation rides on the obviousness of a solution: scientific instructional technique and more instructional labor. First, science: earlier, more often, with evidence-based methods. Then, might: schools need “armies of highly skilled reading interventionists.”
I hope I wouldn’t need to say that I agree: it’s not good that children in school or adults out of school are unable to read. Illiteracy clearly harms many young people and adults. But I question the moral outrage that says This level of illiteracy is unacceptable. Is it? We seem to have accepted poor literacy at a population level for some time. 54% of American adults read below a sixth-grade level. I fully support the political goal (and it is political) to achieve a genuinely universal literacy. Many other nations have achieved this, and some in multiple languages. But note how that same sentiment might be used. The attempted militarization of literacy labor has a long history in the US. Prior to 9/11, Bush launched a “war on illiteracy.” Here was an unlikely response to the call from social and educational reformer Jonathan Kozol in his work, Illiterate America. Ted Kennedy proposed a National Literacy Corps in the 1980s. One can hear a disturbing echo of the moral outrage of literacy reformers in the words of Robert McNamara, who argued that the Marines he sent to Vietnam who had failed basic competency and literacy tests were “not brain-poor at birth, but only privilege-poor, advantage-poor, opportunity-poor.” This was his defense of his infamous Project 100,000. He hoped to rely upon video tapes to deliver education that literacy could not. The model of literacy is a functional one: what will it take for someone to “function in society?”
To function in this country does not require regular, complex, or deep reading. But a different, more democratic country might. If democratic politics does require all this reading, would we really want it?
2
The moralization of readership is a serious problem, but not only for those who find themselves demeaned and belittled by their status as “non-readers.” Here’s the dominant model: the good reader is one that fills leisure with reading. The more leisure time devoted to reading, the better the reader. This model is reflected in all of the social scientific (and less than scientific) measurements of “readership” that look to see total time spent on reading for “pleasure,” or occasionally some other slightly more general term, like “personal interest.” But honestly, why is reading Sports Illustrated better than watching ESPN? Why would reading propaganda make for a more informed populace than getting it from the nightly cable news? Why is reading Harry Potter more “nutritious” than seeing the films? This is only a moralized form of consumerism, not so different from the middle class satisfaction of buying more expensive goods that are organic, all-natural, fair trade, etc.
If we become better simply by taking pleasure in reading, why ever opt to read what is difficult, frustrating, confusing, or upsetting? Why read about potentially painful or upsetting realities, arguments that challenge your ideology or way of life, why read things that do not give you pleasure? This is a basically narcissistic transaction: if you choose the good pleasure, you are a better person. Just like those who enjoy exercise, interior organization, eight hours of sleep, the outdoors, etc., those who “take naturally” to reading are lucky with virtue. But unlike these other forms of social hygiene, one shouldn’t read too much. Bookishness should not interfere with function. Reading is best when it is “interesting,” “edifying,” and “inspiring.” And finishing a book is a moral achievement: what you really get to enjoy is that image of yourself, improving.
Praise for leisure reading is almost always praise for a form of civilizing discipline. It rarely asks about the quality of what is read, its value for life. It is contrasted with the spectacular pleasures of “screens.” Peter Sloterdijk’s essay “Rules for the Human Park” is, among other things, a critique of humanist models of literacy: “one could trace the communitarian phantasm at the base of all humanisms back to the model of a literary society in which those involved discover through canonical readings their shared love for inspiring messages. Understood in this way, we discover at the core of humanism a fantasy of the sect or club—the dream of the fated solidarity of those who have been chosen to be able to read.” Humanism always works against the enemy of spectacle—this releases and endorses the wild, animalistic side of human nature—through the taming technology of reading—books, letters, polite conversation on literary matters domesticates the human being and allows us to live together in civic harmony. Sloterdijk clearly feels scorn for this fantasy—as do I. Not least because it’s obvious that there are a lot of things more pleasurable than reading!
My model of a good reader is someone who can take up many different attitudes toward reading, including negative attitudes. This would also make it possible to justify reading “difficult texts”—those that pose obstacles to our pleasure. For it might turn out that this would also make us difficult readers, not so easily satisfied with pleasure, but instead pursuing a desire for which there is no readymade.
"If democratic politics does require all this reading, would we really want it?" Mulling over eternally, thanks!