Too Dumb for Complex Texts? Reading and the Web 2.0 Generation

Interesting article on the decline of the ability of American teenagers to read "complex" texts.
The writer Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University.

Link: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/Too-Dumb-for-Complex-Texts%C2%A2.aspx

The main idea is that American high school and college students are developing a habit of only doing "fast reading" of simple texts because their teachers are not requiring them to deal with complex texts that require slow, contemplative readings. As a result, their ability to comprehend and appreciate complex texts is declining.

The main evidence cited is:

1) A year 2000 survey by the US Dept of education that showed 43% of two year public college students and 29% of 4 year public college students have to take a remedial course in "math, reaading or writing". They are not college ready. (Me: But wasn't 2000 just before Web 2.0?)

2) A 2006 ACT Test organization study that shows "The clearest differentiator in reading between students who are college ready and students who are not is the ability to comprehend complex texts" (p. 2). (Me: How can a one shot test measure comprehension of complex vs. non-complex texts. I'd be interested to see.)

So, is it true that fewer and fewer American students are able to deal with complex texts? I'm not sure if this evidence actually supports that, let's assume it is true for a moment.

The next question is, Is that decline due to an increase of digital media use by the students in their high school and college classes? The author seems to believe that the use of more digital tools in high school (multimedia projects etc.) and fewer heavy paper-based readings is leading to an inability to read "complex texts" that need a patient, slow reading. The Twitter/Facebook generation has too many disruptions and wants to go over ideas too quickly to slowly contemplate a subtle, complex idea.

Hmm...is this really true?

By a complex text, he says he means "a US Supreme Court decision, an epic poem, or an ethical treatise--works characterized by dense meanings, elaborate structure, sophisticated vocabulary, and subtle authorial intentions...." He gives examples of Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil and Emerson's Self-Reliance. He believes that young people recently are so used to quickly expressing their immediate reactions to the world by Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube that they are becoming incapable of slowly digesting a difficult text without passing a personal judgment of what they think right away.

He concludes: "Complex texts aren't so easily judged. Often they force adolescents to confront the inferiority of their learning, the narrowness of their experience, and they recoil when they should succumb. Modesty is a precondition of education, but the Web teaches them something else: the validity of their outlook and the sufficiency of their selves, a confidence ruinous to the growth of a mind."

My feeling on this is:

1) Our students probably need to become capable of two types of reading, impatient and patient: the impatient one is the fast information filtering/gathering type of reading that maximizes network tools to increase minimum necessary understanding of an issue at a rapid pace, including the expression of quick reactions or summaries or questions that lead to answers from online friends or experts; another is a slower, patient contemplative reading that is done in order to allow the ideas to ferment in an unbroken concentration.

2) I agree with the author that we want to avoid nurturing readers who are unable to deal with a complex text, but I also feel that the new generation is going to deal with complex texts in new ways with new tools, and there is nothing wrong with that. The digital media generation may have a tendency (I know I do, to some extent) to demand easy-to-understand, organized transparent, even visually represented presentations of ideas. If a Supreme Court judge writes in a "subtle, opaque" style that does not clearly say what it wants to say, it is easy to blame the writer for a lack of clarity. It may also be a natural tendency to stop reading and try to go online to find a digested version or somebody else's summary/paraphrase of the key points.
For the slower, patient reading of complex ideas, an offline, paper-based environment seems valuable, but I want to stay open-minded because I am not totally sure that is the only way to go. This new generation of readers may actually develop a better understanding of issues by Tweeting their personal reactions to classmates as they read, getting reactions, and going to Wikipedia or Yahoo Q&A to skim through background on a concept they are not familiar with.

In the end, as long as they get to an accurate understanding and appreciation of the main ideas of the text (hopefully first hand rather than second hand) and are able to connect that text to their own lives and our world, the way that they get there does not matter.