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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 195
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 05:32 pm: | 
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Hello All,
I was just emailed this article on the decline of literary reading. I found it interesting and scary. Check it out.
Literary Reading Is Declining Faster Than Before, Arts Endowment's New Report Says
By SCOTT MCLEMEE
New York
The populace of the United States may be divided by race, age, gender, region, income, and educational level. But according to a report released on Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts, there is at least one thing that brings us all together: No group reads as much literature as it once did. If present trends continue, our aliteracy will only deepen over the next generation. After all, the steepest decline in reading has occurred among young adults, ages 18 to 24.
"The concerned citizen in search of good news about American literary culture will study the pages of this report in vain," writes Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA, in the preface to "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America."
The report -- an electronic copy of which is available on the endowment's Web site (requires Adobe Reader, available free) -- draws on interviews with more than 17,000 adults conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in August 2002 as part of its Survey on Public Participation in the Arts. Similar surveys were conducted at the request of the NEA in 1982 and 1992. Mr. Gioia calls the poll "as reliable and objective as any such survey can be" and "a comprehensive factual basis for any informed discussion of current American reading habits."
Some 300 people gathered on Thursday in an auditorium of the main branch of the New York Public Library to hear Mr. Gioia's presentation of the report's statistical data and a panel discussion of its implications.
Announcing the unhappy news at a public library would be a fitting and poignant gesture in any case. All the more so at the institution that served as a de facto university for the self-education of generations of immigrants and their children. It was in a reading room not far from the auditorium that, during the 1930s, Alfred Kazin wrote On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature, first published in 1942. As more than one person in the audience at Thursday's gathering said, the cultural situation revealed by the NEA survey called to mind a very different book -- Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985).
The findings in the report show a steady drop, over two decades, in the percentage of Americans who read books of any sort -- with a much steeper decline in the consumption of literature. (The report defines literature as fiction, poetry, and drama, without regard to genre or quality.) In 1992, for example, 60.9 percent of those surveyed indicated that they had read a book of some sort during the previous year. By 2002, that figure had shrunk to 56.6 percent, a decline of 7 percent.
When asked about literature in particular, the change was even more marked. In 1992, 54 percent of respondents indicated they had read a literary work of some kind. That proportion fell to 46.7 percent in 2002, a decrease of almost 14 percent. Besides declining twice as fast as book reading in general, literary reading appears to have taken an especially hard hit over the past decade. From 1982 to 1992, it decreased by a mere 5 percent -- a rate that has accelerated, the report suggests, with the "cumulative presence and availability" of "an enormous array of electronic media."
The figures in the new report show considerable variation in reading habits across demographic categories. Higher income and educational levels correspond to higher percentages of literature consumption, for example. Gender made a difference, too: 55.1 percent of women reported in 2002 that they had read literature over the previous year, while only 37.6 percent of men did. And among respondents identifying themselves as white, 51.4 percent reported reading literature -- nearly twice the rate among Hispanics, at 26.5 percent. The corresponding figure for African-Americans was 37.1 percent, while those tabulated as "other" came in at 43.7 percent.
A Vacuum Among the Young
More striking than any variation across demographic lines, however, is a remarkable consistency that has emerged over the past two decades. Each segment of the population is reading less than it once did.
"Due to higher overall levels of education in America over the past 20 years and the correlation between literature participation and education," the NEA report states, "one might think there would have been an increase in the popularity of literature since 1982." But analysis of the survey data shows that "literary reading rates decreased for men, women, all ethnic and racial groups, all education groups, and all age groups."
The steepest decline -- and the one that the report notes with most alarm -- has occurred among young adults. In 1982, respondents ages 18 to 34 were the group most likely to report the recreational reading of literature. Over the intervening decades, they have become the group least likely to do so (except for some segments of the population over 65).
The change has been particularly striking among those ages 18 to 24. The report says that, over the past two decades, the share of the adult population engaged in literary reading declined by 18 points, from 56.9 percent in 1982 to 43 percent in 2002. But for the 18-to-24 cohort, the drop has been faster, sinking from 59.8 percent to 42.8 percent, a decline of 28 percent.
"Reading at Risk" states that the trends among young readers (or, perhaps, nonreaders) suggest that "unless some effective solution is found, literary culture, and literacy in general, will continue to worsen."
"Indeed, at the current rate of loss," it says, "literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century."
Problems but No Solutions
Beyond noting that "arts agencies and policy makers may want to target Hispanics for programs to raise literary reading rates," the report contains no specific policy recommendations. When asked this week about that seeming oversight, Mr. Gioia responded, "That was a deliberate decision on my part. My sense is that the National Endowment for the Arts shouldn't try to tell the culture what to do, or not to do."
Mr. Gioia said that the report can have its best effect by provoking a national debate on the situation. He stressed the importance of the report's finding of high correlations between the reading of literature, on the one hand, and museum attendance, support for the performing arts, and volunteer work for charity organizations, on the other.
"We find that literary reading correlates -- not in a rough sense but almost in an identical sense -- with civic and cultural engagement, " said Mr. Gioia. "So the decline that we see in reading has not only cultural consequences, but social and civic consequences that are very frightening for a democracy."
Sven Birkerts, the author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994), cautioned against interpreting the decline in purely quantitative terms, "as in, time given to the screen is time away from books." He cited the pervasive cultural changes wrought by "the great momentum that underlies our turn to all things digital," as he put it in an e-mail message.
"If it's perceptibly harder for me, a dedicated humanist type, to decelerate into a thick book I'm interested in -- harder because I, too, want my results more quickly, in less linear form -- I try to imagine the average 17-year-old who has just been assigned some brick of a novel by her sadistic senior English teacher."
Mr. Gioia said that the NEA would be holding meetings around the country to discuss the report with groups such as the Modern Language Association, the American Booksellers Association, and professional organizations for librarians.
"If literary intellectuals -- writers, scholars, librarians, book people in general -- don't take charge of the situation, our culture will be impoverished," Mr. Gioia said, describing that situation as a crisis. "When you look at the figures for young readers, that says to me that we don't have a lot of time."
Seeking a Call to Arms
The gathering at the New York Public Library was an early taste of what such a national discussion might be like. "Each of us has anecdotes" about the current state of literary culture, said Mr. Gioia in his presentation. "But quantifying it shows that the trends are worse than you imagined."
Mr. Gioia, a poet and literary critic, mentioned that for 15 years of his literary career he had "kept body and soul together" as a business executive -- and that he knew his way around a statistical analysis of trends. Armed with a laser pointer, he went through the major graphs and tables from the report. Figures that seemed dismal enough on the printed page looked positively alarming when projected upon a giant screen.
In the audience, one could hear the occasional gasp -- especially at seeing the downward slope of literary readership among young adults from 1982 to 1992, followed by a much sharper dip from 1992 to 2002. "This," Mr. Gioia said, "is the visual trend of an activity that is going out of existence."
But not everyone listening to the presentation responded with alarm. During an intermission, Andrew Delbanco, a professor of humanities at Columbia University, called the event "a jeremiad," referring to a genre of sermon regularly practiced by the Puritans, in which the sins of the community were recited and lamented.
"Traditionally," Mr. Delbanco said, "the form ends with a moral call to arms, rousing the congregation to put things right." He said that it sounded as if Mr. Gioia might have some notion of what would be required to correct the situation, and that he was curious to hear what this might entail. (Mr. Delbanco, who is writing a book about Herman Melville, did not deny that the statistics were depressing, but his sardonic manner implied that devotion to literature in the United States today requires an Ishmael-like acceptance that the ship has already sunk.)
After the intermission, a panel discussion that Mr. Gioia led suggested some of the directions that public discussion of the report might take. One consequence may be that people already enamored of literature will want to proclaim that fact all the more clearly, in defiance of the prevailing trend.
Paula Dietz, editor of The Hudson Review, recalled her own experience of reading as a child and quoted Henry David Thoreau as saying, "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!" Similarly, the novelist Andrew Solomon quoted Franz Kafka on how a book should serve as "an ax that breaks up the frozen sea inside us."
It was not clear from such remarks just how to persuade people not already wielding a literary ice-ax that the frozen sea required them to do so.
Other panelists offered remarks that were somewhat more practical, occasionally verging on the political. Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association, proposed finding ways to get writers on book tours to visit public schools. Young people, he said, need to grow up "seeing that books and literary authors are alive."
James McBride, author of the best-selling memoir The Color of Water, said that the public must "demand that government give librarians -- who are the last line of the defense of reason in this society -- more money and more freedom." That remark drew a warm response from the audience, which Mr. McBride acknowledged: "I see the librarians out there going, 'Yeah.'"
Richard Reyes-Gavilan, a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library, pointed out that the electronic media have become a basic part of the menu of information sources that libraries offer to the public -- which, in turn, can make them an attractive place for young people. He quoted an e-mail message from a colleague who said that a "teen center" at one library was attracting adolescents who "eventually get bored with the technology, so they take a look at the books."
It might be discouraging to think of literature as the distraction of last resort, Mr. Reyes-Gavilan said. "But if we have to trick people into reading, we're happy to do that."
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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 196
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 05:43 pm: |
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Hello All,
This is article is a lot longer than the one Chris posted a while ago. Both articles is enough for me to really dread and fear the future. If anything this is a clash among the publishing industry making as much money as they can and the lasting future of literature. What are we to do? |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 376
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 10:40 am: |
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Thumper:
What the academics, literary gatekeepers and establishment, MFA programs, and those writers who care (there will be many who still say so what and keep on doin' what they doin') have to do it is realize that it is partially their fault.
Oh, there is going to be some loss--the written word just cannot compare with movies and televsions and the internet and video games--where you have motion and sound and music and you can be a passive participant rather than literature--especially literature as they defined it--poems, plays, literary works, which require work and thought on the part of the participant. Tv and movies can also be a social event, and books are experienced quietly and alone.
It is analogous to the fall off in overall movie attendance after the advent of television--you could see programming--even movies--in the comforts of your own home.
But in a large part it is because, beginning with Pound and Stein and Eliot and becoming institutionalized after WWII, literature has become
1)Long dead, archaic, obscure writers(the more obscure the better) who write in a style and language that is alien to the way modern audiences talk and think and
2) With the rise of the "confessional" and "self expression" it has become irrelevant, colorless, rhythmless, self flagellating and self indulgent bulls***!
The writers and academics have themselves to blame for this. Trying to write for or please or--God help us, no--entertain an audience has become beneath them. Since they usually exist on grants and have jobs in academia, they don't have to care about how widely their work is received.
Movies, tv and the net have to rely on the bottom line, so they are superior in this fashion.
You know what Thumper? It has got so good to them and they have got so comfortable they ain't gonna do a thing about it. They are gonna go right on publishing books nobody reads, and giving awards to writers nobody knows, and teaching literature in a manner such that people avoid it like the plague after they leave school.
This is not the first time this has happenend in history. Usually, as Western Culture finds it self, when a culture is out of ideas, tired and confused it stops producing any literature of lasting value--though it keeps churning out books. There is nothing to do but watch it go. |
Jmho
Veteran Poster
Username: Jmho
Post Number: 63
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 01:15 pm: |
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Chrishayden wrote:
The writers and academics have themselves to blame for this. Trying to write for or please or--God help us, no--entertain an audience has become beneath them. Since they usually exist on grants and have jobs in academia, they don't have to care about how widely their work is received.
What about all these writers who are writing solely to entertain and make money? They quit their "day jobs" long ago to sit and peck away at their keyboards in the comforts of their abodes. Are they the only writers who are gaining readers?
Or are they also contributing to decline in readers because of the books they produce? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 758
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 03:06 pm: |
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Change is inevitable and time brings change. Yes, we are witnessing the gradual decline of the written word and the subliminal rise of the visual/audio form of engagment. But just because literate books fall out of use, doesn't mean that their content can't be available in another form, - that their ideas can't be illustrated in the media of sight and sound. Language will always be with us. Creativity cannot be suppressed. And as long as people can articulate their ideas, what is verbally expressed can be manifested in another media. It may very well be that we are witnesssing the dawn of a new age where one picture will, indeed, be worth a thousand words, but - not to worry. Trends go in cycles, and who is to say that books won't make a big comeback! Who is to say that the age of enlightment won't revisit us, and that, in the end, the more things change, the more they become the same. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 379
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 10:04 am: |
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Jmho:
According to the article and what I have seen over the last few years they mostly are. How would they be contributing to the decline in literature if their books are moving? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 469
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 01:05 pm: |
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Cynique,
Well said. And I agree that we are perhaps being compelled to accept that, to some degree, reading is being supplanted by newer forms of discourse.
Still, what concerns me is whether the new media will prove as effective, forthright, and venerable as reading. It is here where I have reservations.
Can the video, DVD, DAT, etc. provide for the unlearned that which time-honored reading has provided for mankind?
And, if what you say is true, that a picture is indeed worth a 1,000 words then imagine how so much easier it will be to mislead and manipulate us and our progeny with but delightfully clever blurbs of "color, lights and sounds". |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 382
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 10:04 am: |
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You know we all may be missing a big point here, the changing economy with moms working and with people holding two and three jobs.
I posted this on another list and a man from Mexico replied that in his country, reading levels is a frivolous question when you are trying to get enough to eat.
Perhaps this drop is due to the fact that people struggling home after working two and three jobs just don't have the energy or inclination to read. And people who don't have a job want to numb their minds, not excercise them. |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 236
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 10:41 am: |
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That's interesting, Hayden. I believe that to be true. I used to work three jobs. The only thing I wanted to do on my down time is sleep. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 567
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 10:47 am: |
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ChrisH: leisure time is a variable, but folk have always worked...reading, for the most part, is a middle class form of leisure, anyways...(for u naysayers *raising eyebrows* stating "i'm workin class and i read"...consider that i put "for the most part")
I always wonder...what is the extent of the research and researcher...what are the variables that are considered...what is considered reading? Reading the daily paper, what calibre of fiction or non-fiction are they talkin about? Do they include magazines, particularly these techy mags, etc...was it a national sampling, do they consider reading groups...the Oprah reading group phenom for middle class women(white and black,etc...)what accounts for the reading in certain ethnic groups(McMillian, Zane, EJD, ELH phenoms), for example the african american, african, caribbean, latin, and people of color...whose literature is greater than it has ever been....these are really academic questions(or maybe not)...but the basic question is, How was this research put together, who was included, etc....
Could one argue that with all of this commercial fiction, what is reading going on is the democraticization of reading...and the old standards of measurement are incompatible with this phenomena(assuming, as I suggest, that reading is, for the most part, a middle class form of leisure).
anyways,...back to my cave...hello all and miss u all! |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 383
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 11:56 am: |
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Yukio:
Only you could get so balled up on this. The articles plainly state that the non readers did not read even one book. That's what this discussion is about. Book readership.
You must be hell when you are out with a bunch of friends at a restaurant and time comes to order. I can see you agonizing over the appetizers--your friends dying of hunger one by one--the waiter wondering if you want to take the menu home and study it about a week---
"Hamlet" is your favorite Shakespeare play, isn't it? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 781
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 12:06 pm: |
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Good points, Yukio. There is reading, and then there is reading. Nowadays, I seldom read more than one book a month, but I devour newspapers and magazines of all ilk on a daily basis.
I'm still inclined to believe that readers are a special breed. A natural-born reader no matter what the circumstances will find time to read, be it on their break at work or on the train going there and even sometimes while tied up in traffic. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 568
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 12:42 pm: |
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CH: U read too too much into the written word( perhaps that is a drawback of being a "poet")and much too quick to judge. Balled up, eh?...Is it not u who hastely mischaracterizes the tone, purpose, and points of my prose *eye brows raised*?
At any rate, the general sentiment and the point of the article states that the numbers are declining, not, my oft illiterate friend, "that non readers did not read even one book."
BTW, consider this a kick that i've dodged...Take my hand ol man and let me help u up...with so much anticipation, u have put too much momentum and swing in ya kick and have lost your balance and fallen on ya butt...gasping for air, youth, and wisdom, u wince...feeling your age and overburdened rocks and gravel, u wonder if it was really ya weight or if the concrete, on an otherwise well paved street, was cracked b4 u took aim...
Anyone interested:
"(The report defines literature as fiction, poetry, and drama, without regard to genre or quality.)"....
If this is true, then if african americans and latinos are only recently becoming "educated," ie reading more and this coutry is become more colored... then does this study really measure what is going on or just a transition to something different?
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 384
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 01:05 pm: |
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Yukio:
If you was a football I'd have sent you sailing right between the goalposts from 70 yards out with plenty of room to spare for that game winning score---
That african americans and latinos are becoming "educated" does not mean that they are reading more--that is the point of the study.
Again the study measures that a large proportion of the population does not read literature. I think it accurately measures that.
If there is a "transition to something different" the study does not mention it (aside from saying that perhaps it is due to the competition of electronic media).
What, in your opinion, is this "something different" that a transition is being made to? |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 239
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 01:22 pm: |
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I'm sorry, C-neek. I was talking about books (novels). I, too, have always had time for magazines, newspapers, and of course technical data that pertain to what I do. However, when I was working three jobs, I seldom had time for novels. Don't get me wrong, I too love to read, but working three jobs left little, if any time at all, for leisure period. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 570
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 01:34 pm: |
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oh...anotha idea...since blacks and latinos are being imprisoned at increasing rates...could this diminish the percentile among folk of color? Were those imprisoned included? While prison is often romanticized as a haven for developing readers, ususally radicals, are our people (or should i say blacks and latinos for those of u who don't include all people of african descent in your cultural groupings) really reading in prisons?
Questions: Are black people reading less? Who reads all of this commercial fiction, which wasn't available before? Isn't there more variety? hasn't black fic, for example, been democratized to the chagrin of the elitists and literari?
A thought: Has population growth outdistanced the possibly increased black readership, as dependent variables...Did the study even consider population growth as a variable?
Is society more educated, or are people receiving more degrees? Is there a difference? Are these degrees in the social sciences and liberal arts or are they in technology, sciences, etc...(this is not to suggest that scientist don't read, of course)? Are we schooled to work or to be knowledgeable?
So much to consider, so little time...
CH: Yes...IF! |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 386
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 01:43 pm: |
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Yukio:
You ain't dealt with the first questions yet |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 571
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 02:04 pm: |
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CH: what i said wasn't addressed to u specifically...but for anyone interested...in other words, there was no attempt to ans. your question.
Ans: shift to more readers among folk of color...as in different than what the study presently concludes...surveys are suppose to assess the moment and often suggest trends...in consideration of my faculty for query, I wonder what this really tells us...that simple, ol chap! No need to bellow...
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 470
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 04:20 pm: |
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I think as we ponder the quantity/quality of reading, we should do so within the context of our general view of the direction of our society, our country and our world. Simply, if the world is getting better or worse, you could probably argue that either direction is at least in part due to what we are (and are not) reading.
EVERYTHING is influenced by what we do and do not KNOW. And reading is of course among the primary methods of learning (especially involving highly complex, multifaceted tasks). So, if one can argue that our current reading apparatus is helping to engender a society that grants a broaden spectrum of people the opportunity to pursue their fondest hopes and aspirations, then I think you could argue that what we do (and don't) read is simply merry reflection of our march towards that wondrous future.
If, however, you see calamity on the horizon (e.g., burgeoning rates of HIV/AIDS and Black imprisonment; worldwide war and terrorism), you might conclude that what/how we read is woefully inadequate. Because, if the condition of our lives is worsening, isn't the caliber of what we are learning...which is due in part to our reading...is indeed in dire straits?
I question whether the newer media can adequately supplant a great book.
Periodicals, especially most of those that are printed today, can barely broach any meaningful topics, much less provide any substantive exposition. Newspapers and magazines (which seem more intend upon marketing perfumes/Jacuzzi’s than informing) articles cannot, within the space of 750 - 1,000 words, provide depth, substance, texture and context to anything (save subject matter as vapid as whether J Lo's next marriage will outlast her prior ones).
And I view the requirements of a brain to be similar to those of a muscle: It must be ‘exercised’ to build strength, stamina and agility.
Videos, DVD, books-on-tape, etc. are such passive forms of discourse they hardly require an adequate measure of mental exertion to impart upon their users much useful information.
And reading a book is more than just an educational endeavor. Reading is in many cases a sharing of consciousness. I think Stephen King referred to it as a form of "telepathy".
The torturously months, years - and in many cases, the lifetime - it may take an author to write can imbues a book with a girth and substance such that the reading experience can be a uniquely intimate, yet universally transformative experience.
Chris Says: "That african americans and latinos are becoming "educated" does not mean that they are reading more.."
ABM Says: What form manner of being "educated" is meant here that doesn't require more reading?
Prison is the worst possible place for one to become a reader. Sure some will use their incarceration to seek to become more conscious of how to better understand and prepare themselves to develop into more productive people. But MOST convicts are so physically/mentally/spiritually degraded by their imprisonment that they HARDLY have the basic energy/will, much less training/resources, to read and learn.
Yukio, what do you mean by "Are these degrees in the social sciences and liberal arts or are they in technology, sciences, etc." comments? (I personally would take a guy or gal with a Phd's in Physics over most those brandishing Liberal Arts degrees everyday of the week and 3 time that on Sundays.) |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 387
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 04:37 pm: |
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Abm:
I know of plenty of professional people who have no books or magazines in their homes. People are doing enough reading to get their degrees and are not reading after they graduate
Re: Prison as a place to become a reader--prison is a place where not only many become readers but become writers, too. Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, O'Henry. Donald Goines. Adolph Hitler. As Chester Himes (who also published first when he was behind bars) said, they have a lot of free time on their hands.
Surely there are people who are destroyed by the process. I don't think I could hack it. But there are inmates who gain weight, get degrees, etc, behind bars. After all, they know everybody. For some, it is another "credit" on their resume--if you are going to be a career criminal you almost have to do some time someplace. For others it is a better place than what they have to live through out here. Still others become institutionalized--prefer the certain routine and familiarity of prison life to the chaotic system out here. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 472
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 04:58 pm: |
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Chris,
I understand and witness what you refer to. And perhaps I quibble over definitions. But I would not call such people "educated".
The listing of prison readers you recount is indeed eclectively impressive (especially Hitler...HAHA!). But it PALES in comparison to +95% of brothers who do hard time without ever learning ANYTHING, much less earn a degree and score gainful employment.
The only thing that is most taught in prison is how to become more of a criminal than you were before you were incarcerated. |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 17
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 05:19 pm: |
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ABM-You said: Prison is the worst possible place for one to become a reader. Sure some will use their incarceration to seek to become more conscious of how to better understand and prepare themselves to develop into more productive people. But MOST convicts are so physically/mentally/spiritually degraded by their imprisonment that they HARDLY have the basic energy/will, much less training/resources, to read and learn and then wrote.
First, I ask, is there really such a place? "a worst possible place" for one to become a reader?
Picking up reading is a positive in and of itself isn't it?
MOST convicts are so physically/mentally/spiritually degraded by their imprisonment that they HARDLY have the basic energy/will, much less training/resources, to read and learn.
For some reason, when I read these words, I thought of slave authors and slave narratives. And then, I thought, surely that imprisonment suffered by the slave is/was one far worse than any prison the prisoner suffers unto today, but, they read and...learned.
And what of the authors who write their autobio's and introduce us to the chaos that was their life, their own persoanal imprisonment that physically, mentally and spiritually degraded them. What of their ability to read and learn and then write?
"Prison" does indeed degrade folk physically, mentally and spiritually. I do agree. But, I do not believe that because a person has been degraded, no matter what the level of degradation, that they lack the "...basic energy/will,much less training/resources, to read and learn."
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 787
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 06:14 pm: |
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Prisons have, in a way, become like colleges because many incarcerated black men take up the reading habit and educate themselves, often earning associate and bachelor degress while in jail. Nevertheless, this is a sad commentary on our society. Somewhere along the way, maybe reading books will become a status symbol, and folks will start taking it up because it's the "in" thing to do.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 473
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 08:24 pm: |
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Okay. Can't we get real for a moment. Name ONE society in human history where the predominance of it most schooled, learned and productive people have been engendered in its prisons. Now I appreciate that a few of our many troubled brothers have salvaged their lives while being incarcerated.
Of course reading is almost always a good allocation of one's time irrespective of where it is done. But prison is HARDLY the place to inspire such. We can use guys like Malcolm X to romanticize and wax rapsodically about such. But the truth is for most brothers in prison, reading is amongs the very last things one their woebegone minds. |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 243
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 09:56 pm: |
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This is an education. I've never served any real hard time personally, but two of my brothers have and they say that most people in prison spend a great deal of their time reading. I guess it depends on the prison. Maybe in some prisons, educating one's self or reading to kill time is the 'in' thing to do. For whatever reason. Maybe in some spots it is promoted better by the system or the prisoners themselves. I was 'raised' by a group of excons when I was a young man. 'Raised' meaning caught up and lifted out of the life I was living through a systematic education. The men were from the MSTA and the thing that impressed me the most about them was that they were strong, intelligent, and were always, always reading. They picked up this system of self education in the prison system where the MSTA is very powerful. I'm not saying that reading is promoted like this in every prison, but I know that it is in some. Very few of the Moors return to prison. Most become entrepreneurs and spend a great deal of their spare time uplifting other young blacks by giving them books and turning them on to other, more productive lifestyles. |
Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 205
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 09:59 pm: |
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Hello All,
I don't know why it takes going to prison before some people pick up a book. It's an interesting question. I know we have debated it before, and we keep coming back to it. I haven't been to prison, so I can't speak on the question one way or the other. Wouldn't we do better asking the folks in prison or those who have been incarcerated this question? That is if we really want to know.
I am not sure that other media outlets: movies, DVDs, video games are the real culprit of the decrease in reading. Many of us can juggle and enjoy all of these things and still find time to read. So, I'm not necessarily buying that. I think its the quality of the education that our young people are receiving.
Chris I do have to agree with you on your points concerning academia. Their standards and what they claim is literature is small and rigid. Frankly, academia likes keeping something to themselves that the average Joe don't have any access too. It's academia feels makes them special. So they will cling to those old books that reads as if it was written in a foreign language, because only 3 people out of 300,000 has the patience or care enough about being one of the few that is capable of reading that "dead" book. Literature, like language, should be pliable. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 476
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 01:21 am: |
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Foks, the majority of our great entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists/engineers and philosophers will smartly (or fortuitously) avoid ever visiting a prison.
How screwed up are our communities when we must accept - perhaps even desire - incarceration as a prefer method of inspiring reading among Black men? Again, WHERE else on Earth does such an educational/literary paradigm succeeds?
And if there are so many Brothers doing serious/worthwhile study while incarcerated, why do so few of them earn High School diplomas (or equivalency), trade certification and/or College degrees either will incarcerated or after their released. What does it matters that someone - mostly to pass away the incessant boredom of imprisonment - visit a prison library and affects interests in reading doesn't really mean anything if reading efforts bear no substantive fruit.
No, the truth is many, if not most, brothahs who do-time once, do it again, and again...and again. So whether or not they read in or out of the clink is irrelevant.
On balance the only truly great event that can occur at a prison is for it to be smited by a wrecking ball because the state/federal government has rightly concluded it no longer has a reason to exist.
Moreover, it concerns me that many of us have begun to 'accept' imprisonment as a part of the 'natural' journey of Black men. I think that, for many, this subliminal, subconscious concession of the alleged inevitability of our incarcerations becomes a relentless self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thumper, I our toys are the primary distraction from reading. But if a kid spends 3 hours/day playing X-Box, that is bound to cut into some serious study time. And our teachers might argue the reason why the "quality of the education" has eroded is because the minds of their students are being ground to mush via their consuming inane amounts of "Madden 2004". |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 388
Registered: 03-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 10:15 am: |
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Abm:
You avoid addressing the "educated" and "professional" ADULTS who do not pick up a book. People with money, time, disposable income are not doing it.
We have a record number of high school graduates. High school gives you the basic skills (contrary to popular belief, nobody is coming out illiterate--maybe below what we would consider high school level but not illiterate)
These people are not going to public libraries or spending any money on books either.
Abm--you don't understand that there is little else for them to do in prison. So they do read. And, like it or not, at least one out of every one hundred Americans is locked up in there.
I think you are being carried away. You post here that it concerns you that we have begunto 'accept' imprisonment. What are we supposed to do about it?
Fact is, society's attitude is that if a guy ain't working, ain't got money, ain't hooked up or going to school, then he belongs in prison. You can't remain in school the rest of your life.
Everybody would like a solution. Looking at the O.J., Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown, it seems to me that the most a person can hope for in this system is to try to keep himself out.
Nobody is promoting going to prison as a way of promoting literacy. But the way it looks to me, with here in Missouri the budget for prisons being larger than the education budget, and them building more, they got big plans for somebody.
What is your solution? Subscriptions to Marvel Comics? |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 244
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 10:19 am: |
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Abm, all of what you say is true. I really don't think anyone is debating it. However, you say, "How screwed up are our communities when we must accept - perhaps even desire - incarceration as a prefer method of inspiring reading among Black men?"
I have no idea where this came from. I don't think anyone here said that they accept or desire incarceration as a preferred method of inspiring reading among Black men or anyone else. I think what was meant is that there are some black men that take up reading as a leisure activity or as a form of gaining knowledge while in the joint. And how many of the incarcerated men that have taken up this activity become productive? Has a study been done on this subject? We know many have returned to prison. We know many have not gotten a degree or certificate of higher education
or even learned a trade. But how many of the men that have tried to better themselves through reading or furthering their educations actually became productive? I think that is the important question here. I would argue for the positive side of the effect that reading would have on any group, incarcerated or otherwise. If a study like this showed that a highter percentage of incarcerated black men that spent a reasonable amount of time reading became socially productive upon release wouldn't that be beneficial to society? Wouldn't that be a reason to be an advocate for reading while incarcerated? Or should we just give up on our brothers that are imprisoned? Whether or not we accept the fact that a portion of our people are being locked up doesn't change the fact that they are there and one day they will be coming out. When they do, we will have to deal with them. Would you rather they spent all of their time in that cage getting worse before they came out? Or would you like for them to expand their horizons and realize that there is something else? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 572
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 12:19 pm: |
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So black folk are reading in jail, though we can all agree that it is unfortunate that it takes jail for them to pick up a book. Of course, there are other factors, but thats another thread..so if black professionals and tree jobs folks aren't readin....who is buying this hip hop, u go girl, and general commercial black fiction? Are these publshers and writers selling to a dwindling market?
Is this being balanced out...some folk read less and others read more, but the more is insuffient to account for the overall drop? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 477
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 12:34 pm: |
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Chris,
I am not sure of what you attempt to assert. I think I said (and feel) that I do not consider people who don’t read regularly to (necessarily) be "educated". I think sheepskin indicates only that one has, probably at some point in their lives, been within the proximity of books, not that they have actually read and been enlighten (or "educated") by such.
How else do you expect me to respond to your comments about the being "educated" comment?
And I’m not sure whether one buys the books they read or borrow them is particularly relevant. Because SOMEONE, their friends/libraries etc., must buy the books. And frequent readers, those who genuinely enjoys reading, be it for utility or leisure, will do what they can to purchase for themselves some of what they need and enjoy. So the economic component of this issue will eventually take care of itself.
Well, of course there are MANY things that result in one "doing time". And no one individual can provide all of the solutions. But I think we all would agree that acquiring basic reading skills is a key component in preventing criminality and incarceration. Reliable sociological statistics indicate that foks who can competently read/write at/above a sixth grade level rarely if ever are convicted of felonies.
Because, it ain’t ‘rocket science’: Foks who can read don’t have to deal drugs, mug, steal and kill to earn a living.
So, to go back to what this original subject matter presented here: Perhaps we all, especially Black foks, should be deftly alarmed that the rate/degree of reading is diminishing.
And snap back to reality here: Most of the guys that are incarcerated are high school dropouts, some didn’t even make it through middle school. So let’s ‘can’ the "they are 'reading' " spiel, already. Because what the @#$% can a guy with a second grade reading level read anyway?
"Funny with Dick & Jane"? (though I guess in the ‘clink’, it would be "Funny with Dick in @$$")
And I’ll say again, if they are being so well read, why aren’t the prisons teeming with guys with +1,200 SAT scores, High School diplomas and college degrees?
I’m not sure whether using the unusually circumstance of "O.J., Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown" is productive; although I do think that if those guys read more than just their press clippings, PR scripts and music lead sheets; they might not be in the trouble that they are in today.
Lastly, I know at least 7 - 10 guys who read Spiderman, the Hulk and X-Men comics during their youth. All of them are well-educated, married, responsible fathers and are proud and profitable home and business owners. You can do with ‘that’ what you will.
Lambd,
I admit I overstated my point a bit. I think I may have, in part, been indirectly rebutting Chris’ citing Malcolm X et al. as example of redemptive powers incarceration.
However, I wasn’t referring only to what is said here, but rather what is occurring throughout our country.
It’s just that it seems presently there is sort of a dangerously twisted acceptance, if not romanticizing, of imprisonment that is occurring within many segments of our Black communities. (I even witnessed much of the sort during my youth.) In many Black communities, imprisonment is considered to be almost a prerequisite to manhood.
And although I vehemently rebuke the manner in which Bill Cosby criticized Black people, I agree with at least some of what he says. We must stop trying to redeem certain aspects within our communities that are utterly deleterious.
You can lock a guy up but you can’t MAKE him learn to read/write. And believe me, most won’t, do much of anything to improve their situation. Why? Because convicts view almost everything prison officials do with some degree of revulsion. So prisoners will reject and rebut even the most efforts to compel learning.
And gangs run many of the prisons populations. Do you honestly think that gang leaders want their minions to learn about something that might dissuade them from doing anything other than what is in the best interest of the gangs?
And do you think the prison officials are REALLY interested in how enlightened their convicts become? I don’t think so. Yes, were I a warden, I would give lipservice to attempting to inspire education amongst my inmate population. But in truth, I probably be deftly concerned that some of them might become so expert in chemistry that they learn to use the contents of cleaning solutions to mix explosives, gunpowder, poisons, etc.
Lastly, I am not in anyway suggesting we give up on our previously/currently convicted Brothers (& Sisters). I just don’t want to delude myself into projecting upon prisons some curative capacity that they rarely if ever really possess.
Simply, your local school system is BY FAR the better place to prepare to become a productive citizen than your state/county penal system. |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 247
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 01:08 pm: |
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Abm, you have successfully killed my joy. I was merely trying to give another, somewhat positive outlook to an otherwise bleek prison situation. |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 248
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 01:12 pm: |
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For all you brainiacs and spell checkers, I meant "bleak prison situation". Sorry. |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 19
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 01:17 pm: |
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ABM YOU SAID:
Most of the guys that are incarcerated are high school dropouts, some didn’t even make it through middle school.
Foks who can read don’t have to deal drugs, mug, steal and kill to earn a living.
most won’t, do much of anything to improve their situation.
Abm where do you get your statistics? I am interested, because I was actually aghast at some of the statements you made. I really didn't realize some of the things you've mentioned.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 790
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 01:34 pm: |
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Abm, you cannot apply the old logical standards when assessing the relationship between black men and prisons. There is no precedent for it. African American culture is unique. We have prisons full of well-read men, and corporate offices full of non readers. Folks do what they gotta do. Would that it was different. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 478
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 02:25 pm: |
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Lambd,
Dude, I certainly am not trying to kill your joy. I’m am just causing you to question why you should have such to begin with. 
Look. This is a society that in many places of the country, will balk at giving a $5,000/year for a college grant to educate one industrious/law-abiding 18 years old yet gladly spend $30,000/year to incarcerate his lazy/law-breaking twin brother.
So what are we trying to produce here? Collegians or Criminals?
And what kind of society would permit such a calamitous situation to occur? I am not sure. But perhaps it is one that (as originally inferred by Thumper)...DOES NOT READ!
Bleekindigo,
Here are some sites that might be helpful:
http://www.literacynet.org/ll/issue8/columnist2.html
http://www.hometownsource.com/columns_opinion/heinzman/stories/December15truancy .html.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2001809665_graduationrates07m0.h tml.
http://www.il.ngb.army.mil/lc/anna97.html
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/300/bc_teachers_federation/who_completes_hi gh/pdf/2002-sd-01-report.pdf
Actually, I am "aghast" that you did not know "some of the things [I’ve] mentioned". Perhaps there in, in part, lies the problem.
Cynique,
I don’t know about where YOU come from. But I know PLENTY brothers who have/are doing time. And they didn’t/ain’t doing much, if any, productive reading. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 791
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 02:28 pm: |
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Considering how many black men are incarcerated, even only half of them are reading, that is still a considerable number. |
Jmho
Veteran Poster
Username: Jmho
Post Number: 64
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 02:38 pm: |
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Bleekindgo asked:
Abm where do you get your statistics?
Probably the same place where those who disagree with him got there.
I am siding with ABM on this one. I would think that if those who do time come out so well-read then why are they returning at such a high rate. Or as ABM opines, what in the world are they doing in there in the first place.
I am certain that some inmates who do read with all that "free" time but then I think that many more are not reading. And, then this leads to, how many continue their reading once released?
I suspose ... time to go search for some stats on education and reading level of those who are serving or have served time. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 793
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 02:52 pm: |
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One reason inmates return to prison is because they can't find jobs, so they resort to their old ways of making money. Here in Illinois, concerned black lawmakers are trying to get legislation passed to remedy this situation and make it illegal for ex-offenders to be discriminated against in the job market. |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 20
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 03:02 pm: |
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ABM-There are things that I do know. There are others I do not.
You say the problem may in part be due to my ignorance. And of course, you are in part correct in that statement.
I am aware of the devastation to be left in the wake of ignorance. This is why i've requested your sources so that I might further enlighten myself. And I do so thank you kindly sir.
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Jmho
Veteran Poster
Username: Jmho
Post Number: 65
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 03:30 pm: |
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Did realize that ABM was posting sources while I was reading and responding. But I did find:
http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/correctional.html
National Institute for Literary - Correctional Education Facts
The Correctional Population
Education
In 1997, state prison inmates' educational levels were:
14.2% had an 8th grade education or less;
28.9% had some high school education;
25.1% had a GED;
18.5% were high school graduates;
10.7% had some college education; and
2.7% were college graduates or had advanced degrees.
Literacy
In 1992, about one in three prison inmates performed at Level 1 on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) prose scale, compared with one in five of the household population.
37% were at Level 2, compared to 27% of the household population;
26% were at Level 3, compared to 32% of the household population;
6% were at Level 4, compared to 17% of the household population; and
less than 0.5% were at Level 5, compared to 3% of the household population
Correctional Education
Most prisoners do not participate in prison education programs, and the rate of participation has dropped over the last decade. About one-third of soon-to-be-released inmates reported that they participated in vocational programs (27%) or educational programs (35%) in 1997, down from 31% and 43%, respectively, in 1991.
In 1992, almost two-thirds of the prison population surveyed for the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) engaged in either education and/or vocational training programs since incarceration for their current offense. Fewer prisoners participated only in vocational classes (13%) than in either education (30%) or both types of classes (20%). On the prose scale, the average proficiency of those involved only in vocational training was significantly higher than the proficiency of those who participated in both vocational and education programs (265 and 239, respectively). The vocational-only group also performed significantly higher (265) on the prose scale than those who participated in no classes at all (246) and those involved only in education classes (242).
In 1999, jail jurisdictions, which often include more than one jail facility, offered the following types of programs:
55% had a secondary education program;
25% had a basic adult education program;
11% a special education program;
9% a study release program;
6% a vocational program; and
3% a college program.
In 1995, 5.2% of probationers had participated in a basic education/GED program since entering their probation; 2.5% participated in vocational/job training.
In 1995, 15.0% of adult probationers had education/training as a condition of their sentence.
A 1992 survey of the types of educational programs offered at correctional institutions found that:
an average of 91% of correctional institutions within 41 states (out of 42) offered ABE instruction;
92% of institutions within 40 states offered GED instruction;
62% of institutions within 26 states offered high school coursework; and
57% of institutions within 27 states offered ESL instruction.
Outcomes of Correctional Education
The Three State Recidivism Study found that re-arrest, reconviction, and re-incarceration rates were lower for the prison population who had participated in correctional education than for non-participants. The differences were significant in every category. The study found:
the re-arrest rate of correctional education participants was 48%, compared to 57% for the non-participants;
re-conviction rate was 27% for correctional educational participants, compared to 35% for non-participants; and
re-incarceration rate was 21%, compared to 31% for non-participants.
Every year for the three years that the study participants were followed, the wages reported to the state labor departments were higher for the education participants compared to non-participants; however, the difference was statistically significant in only one year for that one year, the difference can be attributed to participation.)
A study of recidivism rates conducted by the Virginia Department of Correctional Education found that:
of those who had no educational programming (1,037 persons) while incarcerated, 49.1% were reincarcerated in the Virginia Department of Corrections;
of those who enrolled in an academic program (469 persons) but did not complete it, 38.2% were reincarcerated; and
of those who completed an academic program (451), 19.1% were reincarcerated.
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 573
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 03:30 pm: |
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Whatever the case is, i'm sure those who do begin to read, continue to read...in or out of prison...I'm doubt that once a person picks up a book and reads they're going to change the rest of their lives, beliefs, individual baggage, etc...illiteracy does equal imprisonment...there are so many other variables to consider...
It is clear that today's education does not produce literary readers...it produces workaholics, and people trained in their particular discipline to make a living, to enjoy visual media(as CH stated, many of our professionals have read enough in grad. school, law, and med. school), and to return to work, class, etc...to start the day again, but nothing else...as abm's initial post suggests/states the brain must be exercised....it is a muscle. As cynique suggested, readers are a rare breed...this is why i brought up folk in liberal arts, also...I don't recall if the survey included non-fiction. As our politicians become less heroic folk are beginnning to read about their past and present politicians....jus thoughts here, no controversy...
The reason i initially brought this up was to question whether the prison reading population was included in the study...even if ten percent of the black pop. in prison reads...that is still alot of black folk! I was just thinking about ways to pick apart the study...to question it's premises, etc....we too often accept these stats as the word of GOD...it is only a sampling...I didn't fill out that survey, did u? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 574
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 03:36 pm: |
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oops, i meant illiteracy does NOT equal imprisonment... |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 481
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 04:21 pm: |
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Cynique,
You are right. Recidivism is very much a function of how difficult it is for an ex-con to score employment. I doubt, however, this problem can be resolved via legislation.
To Whites, a brother having a record grants them an easy excuse for rejecting foks they detest to begin with. It is what they want to begin with. And they won’t easily surrender such device, especially when they assume that few, if any, of them will be made vulnerable to onerous problems that ensue from such.
The only people who will forgive a Brother who has done time is another Brother or Sister. So this problem only be adequately addressed when enough of us build/run businesses so that we can give breaks to our brethren that others won’t.
Bleekindigo,
Here’s another chestnut that you can toss into your fire.
Part of the problem with creating a fair, effective and human penal system is that laws, politicians and public policy essentially pits communities against each other where the people with the slightest political influence suffer most.
For instance, all over the country, small towns eagerly solicit prison complexes to provide them with needed monies. So their local/state politicians will promote/lobby for stricter/harsher laws because those laws will increase the prison population, which, of course, will boost the prison rolls, and thus provide their towns with increase public/private funding.
Of course those prisons rolls are culled from the state’s minority segments, often in their most populous cities (e.g., NYC, Philly, LA, Chi-Town, etc), people who have little to any significant power at the country/statewide level.
And companies all over the country are using this system to score billions in virtually free labor (a form of Modern American Slavery?).
This is, I suppose, what you call the Industrial-Political-Prison complex (or a facsimile there-of) that some of you have heard some (liberals) deride.
So, to include all facets of the issue being discussed here :
If it is incumbent upon those politicians to continue supply the hapless (Black) human resources to power this complex that enriches (White) mercenary capitalists and dying (White) po-dunk towns, do you REALLY think the political establish is interested in engendering and promoting EDUCATION(i.e., READING), CRIMINAL JUSTICE, LEGAL and PENAL systems that may rob it of said (Black) human resources?
Jhmo,
WOW! Assent from you, Oh most Contrarian One! Uh Oh! I knew something was wrong with me. I must be dying. Right?
What conclusions, if any do you draw from your "National Institute for Literary - Correctional Education Facts"?
Yukio,
I suspect there were indeed significant parts of the Black population that were excluded from the study about reading. Although, alas, I'm sure you know similar complains are often logged about a much more important study...the US Census. |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 21
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 04:23 pm: |
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Being well read is truely a marvelous way of living.
But, being well read does not obtain degrees or feed the family or pay the rent in the 4 room roach infested housing project or protect little Jason from the thugs that hang in the middle of his block whom he has to pass on his way to the lil' bodega on the corner to get dinner on credit so that he and his 7 siblings can eat that night. Is this the night that he'll allow himself to be lurred into the promise of fast money and a new pair of Jordan kicks? Will his eagerness to finish the last 10 pages of Plum Bun: A Novel Without A Moral steer him clear this night or will he relent, join the crew, pack the white and catch his first indictment in a year?
Being well read does not pay for an education. Being well read does not translate into being well educated. Being well read does not translate into high self esteem, being well read does not translate into self confidence.
Raheem is well read, but he still runs with the boys who sell drugs in the park after school. After all, they are the only family he knows outside of the family he finds in Baldwin and Fauset and Hughes and Locke and Ellison and Emerson and Freud and Whitman and Walden and Walker and Frost and Mcmillian and Zane and Goines and Iceberg Slim.
Being well read does not mean being well informed.
Little Tanya is on her way to being well read. She spends all of her free time at the local library, but when she comes home, her drunken father still beats her mother. Her brother still fights her father to keep him from killing her mother. Her father still comes to her bedroom when her mother leaves for her overnight job at the factory.
Being well read is going to save her? Her family?
Being well read in and of itself--on it's own--punks out. It stands up not--to socioeconomic, issues, poverty, desolation, hunger, abuse and neglect.
There are things.
Michael wasn't always the alcoholic who shot his friend during a dice game and ended up in prison. Where'd he get the gun.
Charlene wasn't always the 18 year old who in an attempt to keep the so called man in her life threw lye in the face of Linda whom she grew up with. Her mom did what she had to do to keep her man and so, Charlene in between her good grades and library visits, trips to Paris and back with Baldwin, learned to go to extremes to keep her man. Unfortunately, the extreme was the beginning of her multiple jail stays. Where did well read go?
Reading is one thing. A miraculously grand thing.
The world that happens around and outside of the reading is another.
The unification of reading and the world that happens outside of the reading --meshed together--who knows what it spawns: well read turned drug dealer, murderer, pedaphyle,prisoner? Well read turned asset to self and society?
Oh what a tangled web- |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 22
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 04:34 pm: |
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Jmho thank you for the sources.
Abm: Thank you for the chestnut-my fire is ablaze and so, i'll save this one for--The Fire Next Time!
Thank You- |
Marechera
Newbie Poster
Username: Marechera
Post Number: 2
Registered: 07-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 05:00 pm: |
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bleekindigo...how bleekwillugo? |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 392
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 05:09 pm: |
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Bleek:
Damn I'm gettin's sleepy--shouldn'ta ate them porkchops and chicken--
Excuse me. You hit it. I love to read. I get great enjoyment from reading. But it is only important to people in academia or the intellectual pursuits to be well read. Outside those fields nobody is going to pay you if you have read Homer in the Greek or can recite Joyce's Ulysees--in fact on many jobs exhibiting your erudition will get you in trouble with the boss.
America has always had a tradition of anti-intellectualism--in part because Americans have been a very practical people but now more and more because Americans are crass, closeminded and ignorant--
Look at it. We got a President of the United States who boasts that he doesn't read books. How can you tell any kids that it is important when it becomes obvious the only thing that matters is hookup? |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 23
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 05:18 pm: |
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Marechera:
The truth is bleak sometimes.
I like the "bleekwillugo". Cute. |
Lambd
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Lambd
Post Number: 252
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 07:29 pm: |
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JMHO: thanks for the stats. I think the last two answered my main question. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 482
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 01:14 pm: |
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Bleekindigo,
Then what would you have a "little Jason" do? Avoid becoming "well-read"? If he will struggle even while being able to read what possible chance does he have if he's illiterate?
Certainly being "well-read" is not a panacea for all of life's ills. But being such can reveal even to those in the most dire circumstances possible avenues to survive and even prosper.
And History, and, of course, especially African American History, is replete with stories of people of all sorts - famous/unknown, great/small - who have beaten the most enormous odds to survive and prevail. And a great preponderance of them managed to do so via what they read.
Checkit...
@ I know a guy who was at one point jobless/homeless. To pass the time, he would daily visit a local library. Since he always harbored an interest in science, he would spend most of his visits in the science/math sections. After a few years of doing this, he happened upon an idea about how to convert common household trash into certain forms of gas/electrical energy. He eventually sold his concept to an energy company for millions.
@ I know another guy who as a child was so poor that he often had to eat rats and maggots to survive. He now is a millionaire MANY times over.
@ Elizabeth Murray went from being homeless/parentless to attending Harvard University.
@ Dr. Ben Carson, arguably the world's preeminent surgeon, was raised in the 'Projects'.
@ Famed Billionaress Oprah Winfrey was raped/molested (I think by a relative(s)) as a youth.
@ During her youth, the lovely and talented actress Gabrielle Union was once viciously raped, sodomized and beaten to a hair's width of her life while working at a fast-food restaurant.
@ Great-late rapper/actor/author Tupac Shakur was apparently so remarkably literate that his estate continues to release his unpublished songs, recordings, video, poems and interviews...even almost a DECADE after his tragic murder.
@ (Let's add some literary flavor to the mix.) Twelve years ago, "Harry Potter" creator JK Rowling was an impoverished single mother living on Britain's welfare system. Now she's reputed to be wealthier than THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND!
@ And of course we have the inspiring and recently cinematized Antwone Fisher Story, which makes me weep with sadness (when his only friend is killed) and joy (when he meets a gathering of his father's family).
I could go on...and on...AND ON...!
All of the above save Murray and Rowling refer to Black foks. They are all from very different/diverse backgrounds, though NONE were born with "Silver Spoons" in their mouths.
But what do ALL of them (and countless other people like them) have in common? They all are "WELL-READ". And reading helped provide for them the mental, intellectual and spiritual capital necessary to broaden the scope and expanse of their world FAR BEYOND the limitations and tumult the world had originally imposed upon them.
I too pity our hapless children (and their parents, grand parents, etc.) who are being born and bred into squalid, dangerous circumstances.
But I believe it was Shakespeare who penned the great axiom "The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves."
Life, however difficult, is almost always generous. And it can be thusly even to the most hapless sorts, especially when they allow it to be.
I wager "Charlene" has an aunt, cousin, neighbor or preacher who will provide this industrious young lady with a safe/quiet place to read.
I'll bet "Raheem" has an older brother or uncle who, though himself a gangbanger, will support and defend his younger relative's ardent desire to attend Hampton Institute (Virginia HBC) or Tougaloo College (Mississippi HBC).
And surely "Tanya" has at least one courageous teacher who is so inspired by her student's veracious thirst for and fluency in Baldwin, Whitman and Walker that she would herself brave the drug dealers to help escort her young charge to literary festivals and collegiate recruitment fairs.
The greatest disability a kid like "Michael" suffers is NOT the enormity of the circumstances to which they are born and raised. Rather, they are burden most by denying themselves an opportunity to believe in and mete out their own view of where they come from, what they should do and the promise of who they can become.
And the degree to which they recognize and realize those have A LOT to do what they can and do read and ZERO to do with what brand of gym shoe they wear.
So rather than predict and rationalize our children’s failure, we all should expect and help them to find within themselves, achievable in part via reading, the faith, power and resources to succeed.
PS: When I was a kid, I always wore the ugliest, cheapest gym shoes. They were of the (only) Black/White variety with a horribly thick, wholly inflexible sole. Honestly, they might have cost less than 2 bucks brand new.
So, as you can guess, the other kids riotously laughed at me. Then I would summarily whip ALL of their @$$e$ in every form of racing (be they sprints or cross-country) and jumping (broad jumps, high jumps, etc.).
They soon stopped laughing...and started congratulating.
So foks, I wish we would start telling our kids, "Child! (to quote Michael Jordan versus Spike Lee's "Mars Blackmon") 'Mars! It ain't the shoes!' " |
Bleekindigo
Newbie Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 25
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 12:02 pm: |
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Point well taken Abm. Definitely food to my infamously famished mind. Definitely appreciated.
I was not in point impyling that there are no Oprah winfrey's or Ben Carson's or Tupac Shukurs or Gabrielle Union's or Antwoine Fishers. That was by far not my intention.
It was my intention to bring forth some of the well-reads that grew up in my neighborhood. That were not as fortunate as Gabrielle or Oprah or Antwoine or Shakur--they do exist.
I am all for being well read-I truely am. I just know--first hand--that being well read, hungry and lost doesn't always produce Oprah's.
What I KNOW- is not so much a matter of prediction as it is a matter of fact. No Oprah's came out of my neightborhood while I was there. No Antwoine Fisher's. And if they did, they were more like what Oprah might have been had she not triumphed over the evils of her experience. They are more like Antwone fisher with no Jerome Davenport in their futures.
I wager "Charlene" has an aunt, cousin, neighbor or preacher who will provide this industrious young lady with a safe/quiet place to read.
You'd lose your wager. If she did, none of them ever came forward to present her with that place.
I'll bet "Raheem" has an older brother or uncle who, though himself a gangbanger, will support and defend his younger relative's ardent desire to attend Hampton Institute (Virginia HBC) or Tougaloo College (Mississippi HBC).
You'd lose the bet. And if he did, neither did they ever come forward to "defend" his "ardent desire".
And surely "Tanya" has at least one courageous teacher who is so inspired by her student's veracious thirst for and fluency in Baldwin, Whitman and Walker that she would herself brave the drug dealers to help escort her young charge to literary festivals and collegiate recruitment fairs.
Teachers venturing into neighborhoods for well-read students only happened on the television for us. Not teacher ventured that far for Tanya.
About Michael--The circumstance is the greatest disability--for it is the reason for his self denial of opportunity in the first place.
Michael, Tanya, Raheim and Charlene are not hypotheticals. They were real kids who grew into real adults who grew into prisoners. I do not think that they are coincidences.
Nonetheless, I hear you on those who "make it out". My worry is for those who do not and are to many times held up against those who did.
What does that mean?
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 401
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 12:23 pm: |
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Abm:
You need to read the Internet bylaws which state:
"There shall be only one Yukio on any discussion board at any one time."
Stick to the sex and the jokes. That's your racket. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 485
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 04:52 pm: |
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Bleekindigo,
Of course there are no guarantees that earnest effort will always yield a desired result. Yes, sadly, not all of our children will learn to read. And many who do may, through little fault of their own, never reap the harvest of what they sown. But, again, I ask: What will young "Raheem", "Charlene", "Tanya" and "Jason" (BTW, I know people who share ALL of those names. ) do or what will their life’s chances be if they DO NOT become "well-read"?
I know/accept that everyone’s pain is real and deep to them and we all should be respectful of that. But, again, life always seems to offer a way for us to succeed...if we ourselves can somehow management to believe.
And the truth is most people find a way to survive and get on with their lives no matter what happens to them. Most of the women who are molested as young girls manage to survive their troubled past and try enjoy to healthy/satisfying intimate relationships with other men. And not all of those who are abused become abusers. In fact, some of the most attentive and loving parents you’ll find are survivors of abuse.
So rather than squander time pitying these young people, perhaps you and I should focus on how ALL OF US can do our part to help them to improve their lot in life.
I don’t think citing instances where some have succeeded are an indictment of those who have yet to. Rather, I hope the hapless youth you cite can use anecdotes such as these as a perhaps faint but true glimmer of hope. Because any clear examination of human history/culture will reveal COUNTLESS examples of people enduring and prevailing over the most enormous odds/circumstance. So, I suggest that you acquaint your young friends with such that they too might find a will and a way to prevail.
And in parting, I ask that you and they consider the proud, true worlds below:
INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
The Henley was a tubercular cripple. |
Bleekindigo
Regular Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 27
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 06:11 pm: |
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Powerful poem. I believe that I have read it before??
ABM- Thank you for your enlightening responses. I am grateful.
And you are right: ... rather than squander time pitying these young people, perhaps you and I should focus on how ALL OF US can do our part to help them to improve their lot in life.
YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday--
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow.
YET DO I MARVEL
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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Bleekindigo
Regular Poster
Username: Bleekindigo
Post Number: 29
Registered: 06-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 06:11 pm: |
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Powerful poem. I believe that I have read it before??
ABM- Thank you for your enlightening responses. I am grateful.
And you are right: ... rather than squander time pitying these young people, perhaps you and I should focus on how ALL OF US can do our part to help them to improve their lot in life.
YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday--
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow.
YET DO I MARVEL
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
|
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 810
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 06:33 pm: |
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"Invictus," which mean "unconquered" in Latin, is not only a powerful poem but a popular one, regularly recited at graduation ceremonies. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 409
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 11:25 am: |
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Bleek:
Thanks for posting some BLACK poems! |
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