Viva la revolution!

In Lauren Barack’s article ‘Study: U.K. Kids Reading Less, But Digital Formats Pick Up’ on www.slj.com, she writes of the trend in kids that enjoy reading remaining approximately the same as they did in 2005, but that the multitude of other activities is reducing the time they spend on actually sitting down and reading a book. She also notes the decreasing trends in reading in schools and the apparently increasing trend that 16 year olds would be embarrassed if their friends saw them reading. However, Barack then goes on to state that reading outside of class time has grown in number on digital formats from e-Readers to social media. And just when readers who have gone into this blog looking for information on libraries are thinking “what does this marginally interesting article have to do with libraries and what drugs is google on to send me here?” Barack answers by stating that librarians can use the findings that she has presented in this blog (presumably from actual studies) to redefine reading to match the modern era, and to help eliminate the stigma of reading by helping kids recognize that they are readers everytime they read something on facebook, or on a text message, or on a video game, not just when they sit down with a newspaper or a book and actually set to reading.

And she has a point. I don’t have a problem with reading, I rather enjoy it and I don’t really care if people see me reading because most people think I’m a nerd anyway. But during my time at high school, particularly in years 7-10, I noticed a massive stigma against reading. Reading wasn’t considered “cool”. And in high school, with the puberty happening and everything, everyone thinks that being cool will make it easier, when all it does is turn you into a jackass. But these “popular” people played video games, they read their facebooks and their text messages, never realizing that they were actually reading, nothing particularly substantial, but reading nonetheless. And as a bitter, jaded, anti-popular people potentially hipster person, I rather like the idea that those morons have been massively trolled, and with technology so intrinsic in how people live their day-to-day lives, they won’t be able to escape reading. But I do hope that librarians, English teachers, parents, whoever can teach children that reading texts or facebook or anything with words, does in fact count as reading. I hope that that will help reduce the stigma towards reading, and that it will become more accepted, particularly in schools. And I hope that it will spark ideas in schools that dispel the notions of popularity, kind of like the Enlightenment sparking idea towards revolution, only without all the death and bloodshed.