Misguided Mailer

Today’s Parade magazine, a weekly tabloid carried by many U.S. Sunday newspapers, ran an article by writer Norman Mailer. He suggests that eliminating TV ads will alleviate declining literacy rates in the U.S. His focus is the concentration it takes to read; his thesis, TV commercials not only make children fat, but also teach them “that concentration is not one’s friend but is treacherous.” His solution is to convert us all to fee TV so that the U.S. can “have the best of all possible worlds” and avert the danger that “the rest of the world is getting into position to do far better than us with future economic conditions.” His foundation for these charges and the solution is fraught with ifs and seems and a vague reference to research proving “too many hours are devoted each day to the tube.”

Last year, National Endowment for the Arts research project counterintuitively revealed that literature readers watch as much or even more TV than nonreaders. Granted, these were 17,000 adults, surveyed over a 20-year period, however some of them were raised with television viewing as part of family life. The quibbles over the NEA’s definition of “literature” still doesn’t explain an almost ten percent decrease in the amount of reading reported.

I question the logic of Mailer’s premises and certainly don’t support the chauvinistic cause. There is a simpler, less expensive solution to declining reading: turn off the TV, teach children to read, give them reading material they enjoy, and reward them for learning and reading until they learn that reading is its own reward.

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