The Country That Stopped Reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html

by uladzislau • 13 years ago

111 67 13 years ago

jurassic3• 13 years ago

After several months of intensely self-studying Spanish, I decided to try to find some native language books or magazines to use for reading practice. I thought that in Los Angeles, a city with latino population measured in the several millions, I'd be able to find some kind of book shop catering to Spanish speakers. But I never did. The most promising place -- Libreria Mexico de Echo Park -- appeared to be out of business when I went by one afternoon. I asked a few native speakers near the shuttered bookshop where else I might be able to find books and nobody had any suggestions. But maybe they just didn't want to talk to a crazy gringo.

If anybody knows a good place to browse and buy spanish language books in the LA area, I'd love to know about it.

tzs• 13 years ago

Have you tried Barnes & Noble? In my small town in Washington, not exactly a hot bed of Spanish speaking, B&N has a pretty big Spanish section, so I'd expect similar elsewhere.

jurassic3• 13 years ago

I've looked in big book chains before, and while they always have some stuff the selection is pretty small: often best sellers and religious books only. I'd like to find a shop specializing in spanish language because I think they'd have a broader selection of topics, hopefully including some interesting nonfiction.

I know these books exist because I see them in online shops based out of Europe, but I'd like to avoid paying the high exchange rate + shipping to get books all the way from overseas.

SiVal• 13 years ago

Same experience for me here in San Francisco. Easy to find good bookstores for Chinese, for Japanese, and for Korean, but almost nada for Spanish, and asking local Spanish speakers about it elicited shrugs. Ask about telenovelas, and you've got plenty of opinions, but plain old novelas, nope, so the crazy gringo part doesn't seem to matter.

I had my best luck at Barnes & Noble, believe it or not. They had a pretty good Spanish language fiction selection--bigger than any other I found on the SF Peninsula. It's not what I was looking for (I was more interested in nonfiction), but it's all I found.

maw• 13 years ago

There's a yearly book fair, LéaLA (http://www.lea-la.com/). If you're willing to cross the border, Gandhi (http://gandhi.com.mx/index.cfm/id/f:corporativo-sucursales; click where it says Tijuana) is the best bookstore chain in Mexico; although it is apparently prospering, I couldn't say with a straight face that it is actually good.

Don't believe anything you read on either of those pages without double checking.

austenallred2• 13 years ago

Amazon. Not trying to be sarcastic; I order Russian books from Amazon all the time.

guard-of-terra2• 13 years ago

It is very strange to me that people can be illiterate (as in, unable to read anything) in Mexico considering how easy the written Spanish language is (compared to e. g. English) and how prevalent is it around the globe.

They should be seeing written phrases everywhere and these should be trivial to read once they know the alphabet.

dannyp32• 13 years ago

Well that's not what the author means by illiterate. He uses it as a way of saying that they virtually never read books.

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

corporalagumbo10• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the word/s the author used in Spanish for illiteracy indicated this distinction, which has then been lost in translation. Maybe.

austenallred2• 13 years ago

Agreed. I learned the Russian alphabet in a day - you learn the sounds for each symbol and you're done. It took a long time to speed up, of course, and i had the background of already reading in English, but Spanish isn't Chinese or Japanese (or English for that matter).

Evbn4• 13 years ago

A couple dozen letters, but lots and lots of words.

guard-of-terra2• 13 years ago

They already know all the words (they speak them) and they don't need to spell (especially when reading).

jessriedel2• 13 years ago

I am more worried that, in the most famous newspaper in the most powerful country in the world, opinion pieces are overwhelmingly dominated by emotionally charged anecdotes while actual data plays only a cursory role.

saraid216• 13 years ago

You say that like it's a new thing.

ars• 13 years ago

The best is when they mix them - opinion pieces with emotion for interest, mixed in with data (even if only in sidebars).

Maybe newspapers should do more collaborations where one author writes the emotion, and the other does research and gets the data. Then an editor blends the two into a uniform article. (It would be nice for one person to do it all, but they are different enough that different people would be good at them.)

Evbn4• 13 years ago

You are exactly describing Freakonomics, with its two authors.

aaronbrethorst• 13 years ago

That fits the definition of the word perfectly. Also, the author cites a study from Unesco that confirms his emotionally charged anecdotes. Data alone will rarely spur people to action.

jessriedel2• 13 years ago

1. Citing two data point among paragraphs of anecdote is cursory.

2. Opinion pieces (should) mean they have a declared persuasive goal, not that all forms of rhetoric are acceptable. The word "opinion" is not a license to argue from astrology.

deadairspace• 13 years ago

Yeah well, that's just like, your opinion piece, man.

OGinparadise• 13 years ago

This can be and it is said for many countries: "back when were in school...now teachers....all day on facebook...we were afraid of our parents...kids these days"

Maybe it's a generational thing.

corporalagumbo10• 13 years ago

Maybe it's true.

kansface• 13 years ago

Could be, but Plato said the same thing more or less.

stephengillie• 13 years ago

Even if baseline literacy, the ability to read a street sign or news bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not.

This means literacy is on the rise. The author is one of many people who are concerned because our society is moving away from the novel as a form of expression.

I would argue that videogames are filling that niche -- instead of sitting and reading a book for 40-60 hours, we sit and guide a character and live their story for 40-60 hours.

The question here becomes: Are Mexican children playing enough videogames?

chimpinee• 13 years ago

Yes! I have enjoyed many novels. But people (including me) are learning English from communicating on the web. And children are learning English from playing videogames i.e. as a byproduct of something they actually enjoy (I witness it happening!)

John Holt: “I suspect that many children would learn arithmetic, and learn it better, if it were illegal.”

PakG1• 13 years ago

The brain has very high plasticity. It is able to rewire itself for tasks that are done frequently so that it is able to perform those tasks better. The ability to read, understand, consider, and analyze long-form text is a skill that will be slowly lost in such a scenario. And I'd argue that the ability to read and understand documentation about complex ideas goes hand-in-hand with various important things, including complex scientific research, the details of an M&A deal, economic agreements between nations, or application source code. Maybe the average person doesn't need to do these things, but if more and more drop reading, the gross numbers of people able to grow into those roles would probably also decline.

I think the general consensus in the scientific community is that reading enables more long-term brainpower than does television or video games. Staving off Alzheimer's is one area that is frequently cited as a benefit for example.

edit: wording

vellum• 13 years ago

>complex scientific research, the details of an M&A deal, economic agreements between nations, or application source code.

Most of those activities you listed are what a ’93 DOE survey called “level 5” tasks[1]. Only 3-4% of American adults are at level 5.[2] There was a followup survey was in 2003, but they combined level 4 and 5 [3]. There weren’t any significant changes to the other 3 levels, so I doubt level 5 increased either.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf, page 10 [2] - http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf, page 17 [3] - http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

Evbn4• 13 years ago

Video games are mostly grinding. Internet forums are a better example.

panacea• 13 years ago

Internet forums are mostly grinding ;]

corporalagumbo10• 13 years ago

I read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr a while ago. I thought it was perhaps a bit alarmist.

Comments like yours make me think that, if people are really capable of so blithely discounting the value of focussed, solitary long-form reading, maybe it wasn't.

confluence• 13 years ago

What an atrocious article. Anecdotal overload, complete non-understanding of statistics, and great dollops of confirmation bias and the fundamental attribution error.

It actually sickens me that this is what the NYTimes has become.

> Mexico is floundering socially, politically and economically because so many of its citizens do not read

Are you fucking kidding me? Does this guy understand that a narco fueled civil war is currently being waged throughout Mexico with nearly 60K deaths in the last 5 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War).

I'd respond to the rest of his article - but it's just so, so bad that I really can't be bothered.

Patient0• 13 years ago

I am also genuinely puzzled how such an article made it to the front page of HN. Who upvoted this?

endgame• 13 years ago

Probably people who like to think they like reading, but didn't read the article.

Mvandenbergh• 13 years ago

>Are you fucking kidding me? Does this guy understand that a narco fueled civil war is currently being waged throughout Mexico with nearly 60K deaths in the last 5 years

The author, David Toscana, is a Mexican novelist living in Monterrey. So yeah, I think he probably has some inkling of that. It's hardly surprising that a novelist would be concerned about the lack of interest in literature in his home country and that he might attribute rather more importance to that than is strictly speaking justifiable.

Also, this is an op-ed, it's not an article and it doesn't represent either the opinion of the newspaper or the facts as reported by their journalists.

corporalagumbo10• 13 years ago

I had completely the opposite reaction to you. I thought this was a lovely, heartfelt, clearly-written article. I especially enjoyed the final paragraph - "We know that books give people ambitions, expectations, a sense of dignity" - he nailed the power of books for me.

As far as the lack of concrete statistics - well, I don't know about you, but until I hear a more-convincing alternate take, I'm going to take his word for it. He clearly knows more about Mexico than me. And his examples are pretty powerful - walking through a giant camp filled with striking teachers, examples of the behaviour of individual teachers, the attitude of the State Minister for Education.

And why can't a raging narco war be linked in a small manner to a population lacking imagination, sensitivity and the ability to forge new economic pathways, linked back to a lack of interest in reading? Is that an offensive notion to entertain or something? It's not like you have to ignore other factors like the adjacent drug market, is it? Alternately, why can't these two problems - trafficking and bad education - both be afflicting Mexico simultaneously, feeding off of and reinforcing each other?

I mean, seriously, why don't you just chill the fuck out and enjoy the article on its own merits, rather than imposing completely ridiculous standards on it? Do you have more experience of and personal involvement in Mexico than this author?

rohern3• 13 years ago

These are not good forms of reasoning. You have here committed several fallacies that are very common and very worrying, as they tend to lead to the public adoption of poorly reasoned explanations and baseless facts. This is not an attack on you personally.

> As far as the lack of concrete statistics - well, I don't know about you, but until I hear a more-convincing alternate take, I'm going to take his word for it.

It is still a mystery how life originated on Earth. I know you will enjoy my theory about how the unicorns did it.

No. No you won't. I am sure you know that this is a ridiculous argument to make. The fact that you have not heard a better explanation is a terrible reason to accept another explanation. Cogency does not imply correctness.

> I mean, seriously, why don't you just chill the fuck out and enjoy the article on its own merits, rather than imposing completely ridiculous standards on it?

There is no such thing as "its own merits". That is doublespeak for "do not judge it at all". Either it meets the standards of good reasoning, data presentation, and research, or it doesn't You cannot say that it has it own standards for these things that we the reader are forced to accept.

> Do you have more experience of and personal involvement in Mexico than this author?

Again, this is not a sensible argument. It does not matter to me that my doctor has had cancer before he treats me for cancer. Engineers at NASA did not personally need to visit the moon before they were able to engineer the moon lander. You do not need personal experience with phenomena to understand them. In fact, personal experience with a thing can lead to horrible mistakes in understanding and judgment backed up by the fallacy that because they come from personal experience, they are especially valid.

cafard4• 13 years ago

This is an op ed piece, which ordinarily is not expected to be rigorously argued. I can't imagine that a Mexican writer would not know about the violence.

NoPiece• 13 years ago

The whole point of an opinion piece is to rigorously argue a position. How else can you convince people of something. And note how the author of this piece failed in that task. This is what the NY Times says in their writing guide for high school students.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/specials/weblines/48...

-- It is a common mistake to believe that columns and editorials, unlike news articles, do not need to be thoughtful and measured. In truth, writing a column or editorial takes more reporting, not less. While the reporting for a news article needs to continue until all reasonable sides can be adequately represented, the reporting for an opinion piece needs to continue until the writer can judge reasonably which side has the strongest case. That takes more work, not less.

simonw2• 13 years ago

"It actually sickens me that this is what the NYTimes has become."

I find this response puzzling. Do you understand the concept of opinion pieces and op-eds?

pigou2• 13 years ago

> Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much less. They learn almost nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago.

So...literacy rates are going up? That doesn't sound so bad.

Evbn4• 13 years ago

Sadly, innumeracy is increasing among NYT writers and editors.

pigou2• 13 years ago

To be fair, The proportion of NYT writers and editors that is numerate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more innumerate people at the NYT now than there were 12 years ago.

gadders• 13 years ago

I'm an atheist, but if there is a hell, people like the leader of the teachers’ union, Elba Esther Gordillo, need to be in it.

The amount of lives that have been ruined by her union and the teachers they control must be in the millions.

corporalagumbo10• 13 years ago

This article reinforces my belief that there is just something very, very important and special about books. I'm going to have to think about exactly what this is, but it seems like books are the difference ultimately between people with dignity and values, things they are willing to make a stand and fight for, and people without. Why is that I wonder?

aptwebapps2• 13 years ago

I suggest you try substantiating that idea before trying to decipher why it is ...

aptwebapps2• 13 years ago

Sorry for the above, it sounded way less snarky to me when I wrote it. I'd delete it if I could.

auggierose• 13 years ago

I am really shocked by many of the answers I am reading here. Do you really think that reading books is an optional thing? I would even go as far as saying: if you are not a regular reader of books, you cannot be a world class programmer. Because you just lack the necessary imagination for it.

mnarayan01• 13 years ago

Seriously? As an avid reader, I have more than enough imagination to imagine people who are different than me being able to do the things that I do.

king_jester• 13 years ago

> Do you really think that reading books is an optional thing?

Yes, reading books is optional. Note that many people who do not read books do read other formats: essay, magazine, news, short form stories, poetry, and so on.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Or in the case of many here, technical journal articles and blogs and the like.

magoghm• 13 years ago

I'm Mexican and live in Mexico City. Although there are people in Mexico who like to read books, I'd say they represent less than 5% of the population.

When I'm invited to somebody's home, one of the first things I tend to look at is the books they have. Often there doesn't seem to be any books there, and when I ask them about it they do confirm that nobody in that house owns any books. It turns out that the only books they have ever had were their school textbooks and they usually quite puzzled about why I think anybody might be interested in owning any books.

cafard4• 13 years ago

Here is an exercise you can try next time you are in a US city on a weekend. Take the Sunday real estate ads, and visit as many houses as you can conveniently fit into the afternoon--1 to 4 pm is the usual open time. See what you see in the way of books. I don't think that you will find that things are radically different here. I've seen houses with very interesting bookshelves; I've seen plenty with pretty scan holdings.

logjam• 13 years ago

"The Country That Stopped Reading" vs "The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago."

In other words literacy is increasing.

And that's where I stopped reading Toscano's vapid screed.

simonw2• 13 years ago

There's a good chance the author if the opinion piece didn't compose (or even approve of) the headline. Generally it's good idea not to get too hung up on headlines for this kind of article.

cafard4• 13 years ago

Is history not one of the humanities?

prof_hobart• 13 years ago

As both a parent and the husband of a teacher, this kind of comment annoys me

“How is it possible that I hand over a child for six hours every day, five days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?

I know it's a hypothetical parent asking this question, but it is quite a common attitude.

Yes, schools clearly have a responsibility to teach childen to read, write, do maths etc.

But parents should take some responsibility for bringing up their children as well. And things like a an actual love of reading (as opposed to the basic mechanisms of understanding words) are far more likely to come from home life than from school.

The Country That Stopped Reading

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