I think he's lying.
 

but there's a difference between being literate and being a reader. Plenty of people I know are perfectly literate--educated even, but they don't read for personal enrichment or pleasure.

That's the thing I can't get my head around. I have really good friends who just don't read except for their job. Others who, like sundae was saying, were put off reading by doing a degree. I can't imagine never reading for pleasure.

Sorry, I was making two confused but separate points.

The media here often get over-excited about literacy rates in this country. All part of the going to hell on a bandwagon thing. So I shoe-horned the fact that literacy rates have been far from perfect in previous generations into my response. It touches on the subject because both my parents love to read and taught me too as well. Read and love it I mean. Dad is dyslexic, finished school at 14 and missed plenty of time in between. He read The Lord of the Rings to my brother (I was 11, read it myself but was still horribly jealous).

My secondary point, and more to the OT was what Clod said and Dana reiterated. There are literate people worldwide who don't read for pleasure. But more confusingly, there are literate people who look down on reading for pleasure. As if it's something that should be left behind when you put down crayons.

To each his own and all that (I don't like boxing and wouldn't watch a fight live without an enormous bribe) but to dismiss all the various forms of reading as pointless. I have heard the "What's the point argument" and it is so alien to me.

And to anyone reading this I guess :)
IS this just a group pat on the back?!

I rarely read books anymore because I always feel like I don't have the time, except in the summer when I sit out at the pool a lot. I do read though - I just read about stuff I want to know about, not stories and such.

I ran into that attitude (looking down on reading) in Mexico with my first boyfriend. He was always dissing me for reading (and for other things, but that's another story.)

There seems to be a cultural bias against reading, or perhaps intellectual pursuits in general. Maybe not at all class levels, but in the lower classes. A by-product of a near-universal 6th grade level of education, perhaps. If it's good-enough-for-me and a not-honest-work kind of thing.

We need to be careful how we present reading to kids. All of ours love to read. They virtually begged to be taught to read and were already fluent readers when they started school. But they saw us read and enjoy it and get lost in books and heard us read to them and go past their bedtime in order to reach the end of the chapter, and use the internet or go to the encyclopedia to answer all their questions if we couldn't....all the time.

If you don't see your parents reading, if they tell you they're too busy to read or they don't like it, if you turn up at school way behind some of the other kids.... you're already off to a poor start. And if the school is not then careful about how they present learning to read -if they ram it down your throat, treat it like a chore and make it obvious that you are not as good as some other kids.... well you're not going to view it as a pleasure. So you scrape through school reading the bare minimum to keep the assholes happy. And college if you have to. And then you never ever pick up another book again. And you have no need -you have the TV where the nice people read the words for you and even go so far as to tell you what you should think about it. Lovely. Easy.


Grrr. Breaks my heart when I go into the school and there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders who "hate" reading and refuse to try. Someone has set them up for failure. They're scared of not ever being able to do it properly, so they just don't want to try. reading is huge, it is important. but kids don't need to know this. Like anything else, the more they know you want them to do it, the more they'll dig their heels in.

Oh dear, i'm ranting....

I'm a bit skeptical of the party line, "if you love to read, and your children see you love to read, they'll be readers for life." Reason? One of my kids is a reader--the other isn't. And, obviously, I've been a reader all my life, and encouraged both equally. The not-reader doesn't read for pleasure, though she will read non-fiction in order to learn more about something she wants to know about or to answer a question.

Oddly enough, the not-reader is the child of the not-reader mentioned above (and the other kid, the reader-has a different father.) Doubt it means anything, but it makes me wonder.

Party Line? Please. no-one said it was written in blood, but it's a damn site harder for it to happen if they don't see that and hear negative things about reading.

huh? The person you are describing is a reader. You may not get pleasure from reading to find answers/increase knowledge, but many do. Hell of an assumption there.

I just went to the book store Borders and just came back.
I was browsing books, on, ahem...meeting women and stuff..ahem.
There were these two really good books I was gonna purchase, something about "Beat the Shy" or something like that and one entitled "How to succeed with women." I was really excited to get these books!

Except...there was this girl I knew from high school working the register...I only knew her as an acquaintance, and for her to see me buying these books! :bolt:

Exactly the reason I need these books...

not sure what's irritating you there, Monster, but the "if your kids see you reading" thing seems to be a standard assumption of educators.

I don't think that daughter (No. 1) has read a single book all the way through since leaving school. That, to me, is a not-reader.

Maybe it's just by comparison, though. She will look at, and consult books on specific topics.

Amazon, dude.

Define Educator, please. I'm a parent. But so are you. I'm not a teacher.

Why don't you consider it reading if it isn't from cover to cover? non-fiction is set up to be read in sections, as needed. It IS reading. J'accuse of being a fiction snob.

um, you expect me to engage in some kind of pointless debate with you about semantics? Not my style.

Reading is good.