They said Harry Potter had started a revolution and had got kids across the world back to reading books. It doesn’t look like it if this chart for American kids can be relied on.
Is this disturbing? Surely it is. Is it not regression for us to be going back to infancy – before the time when we could read and think about what we read? Is it not a frightening thought to reflect on – that our society is slowly becoming illiterate?
This frightening trend is reported in an article in Vox.com on the general question of how Americans spend the 24 hours of their day. Sadly it looks like another battlefield in the culture wars where western civilisation is having the ground cut from under its feet.
Yep, and Harry Potter is not that high of a reading level either. The literacy problem is going to be a tough one to overcome; once the Word is taken from speaking, literature, and literacy, it’s hard to be motivated to hear, read and understand other less significant words. This illiteracy problem, in my opinion, has been creeping ever closer towards us ever since universities took the focus off of Christ. Christians have, in the past, contributed the most to widening literacy to all classes and peoples. If Christians do not take care of their educative mission, I fear that literacy will only be for a select few, once again, as it was before Christ. That said, I have great hopes that many Christians are hearing the call and are standing up against illiteracy, misunderstanding, and ignorance. Thank you for the post!
It really boils down to the reading culture parents set for their children. Raise readers to raise more readers.