At my last place of employment, the employees in my department were broken up into teams and each team had a leader. One of the tasks of the team leader was to send out an email to her team in regards to goals, things that needed improvement and any new updates that we needed to know. Each time I read one of her emails, I saw that they were riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. So one day, I was sitting at my desk reading, as I always did when I was on my break or during down time, and she asked me about the book I was reading and so forth and she said "I have never been into reading that much".
Whenever I hear someone say that, which happens more often than I care to admit, it sounds foreign to me. But the thing that really clicked was the correlation between her lack of reading and her lack of writing skills. I always hear politicians and social commentators speaking about how we are not competitive in the world and they want to push math an science. But no one ever really pushes reading and the link between being a solid reader and a good communicator.
Crain's observations are really not that surprising. We are a culture of instant gratification and books simply do not meet that need most of the time. When you turn to your favorite TV show, you are instantly pleased. When you put on your favorite music, you are instantly overtaken with some sort of emotion whether it be romance, excitement or even the blues. Video games, sports, shopping, eating - all bring instant pleasure. But books are an investment in time and patience which we just don't seem to have anymore.
Hey Felicia!
ReplyDeleteIn my first two semesters I encountered many people who had a lot of trouble writing, and I mean they could not even imagine writing at a college level. I wondered why this was, I had a great high school English experience! Come to find out they would rather watch movies, tv, or sit on Facebook than pick up a book and read for simple pleasure. I find the fact that you describe the culture as one craving instant gratification very interesting. I never thought about it like that but it makes perfect sense. Why read a book when you can get the same idea through a two hour movie? It is very sad, and I would personally rather read the book than watch the movie!!
It's funny that you talk about seeing a lot of spelling and grammatical errors in one of your co-worker's emails. I'm trying to become an editor, so I can relate to reading something and seeing errors in it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that our culture has become one of instant gratification. Since reading doesn't really provide instant gratification, like you said, we instead watch television or do something else that does provide instant gratification. This is a good point you bring up that I didn’t really think about. In my blog, I talked about how our culture is doing less reading and is turning more towards doing things like playing video games, but you bring up a good possible reason why our culture is reading less.
I agree with you. I know exactly what you mean when you said you said the idea of not reading sounds foreign. Usually one of the first questions I ask people upon meeting them is if they read. Most of them do not, and it just makes me ponder how they function and think. I also agree with the instant gratification point. The culture has shifted and it seems like priorities have been lost. The act of reading and knowledge seem to be put to a back burner. I also think that the lack of a good education system is partially to blame. We need a new way to, most likely electronically, to get across the need for reading and it also needs to start at an early age.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, Felicia. It's like no one cares to sit down and read a book anymore. Everyone is too "busy" watching Jersey Shore and going to McDonald's these days to create some time for intellectual expansion. I personally cannot stand it when I see someone make simple grammatical mistakes and NOT EVEN CARE about it. Willful ignorance is quite possibly one of the most frustrating human phenomena to have to deal with, and the worst part is that it's all around us!
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