The decline of reading is a democratic problem – Jonathan Ayling
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” This saying is often attributed to Mark Twain. Whether Twain actually said it matters less than the truth it expresses.
I am writing this column while waiting for a flight in Los Angeles. Around me, almost every traveller has a screen in hand. I imagine the tasks they are performing are common to all of us: replying to emails, scrolling social media, perhaps watching a video. We have become remarkably efficient at filling every idle moment with content.
Yet I find myself wondering how many are actually reading.
Almost all of them are, to some degree. But I am not just talking about headlines, emails or tweets. I mean reading in a deeper sense: following an argument, considering an idea, allowing the work of another’s mind to hold your attention for more than a few seconds.
The Atlantic magazine’s August cover article argues we are entering a “post-literate” age. Unlike an illiterate society, a post-literate society possesses the capacity to read but increasingly fails to exercise it. “Reading shaped the modern mind. Its disappearance will reshape it,” the article’s author, Rose Horowitch, warns.
The question is no longer simply whether people have been taught to read. In an age of reels and artificial intelligence (AI) summaries, it is whether we can still be bothered with the effort reading demands. This is critically important, because it is not clear that a post-literate people will remain capable of self-government.
Of course, there is still significant work to be done to strengthen literacy in New Zealand. The Government’s introduction of a compulsory hour each day of reading, writing and mathematics should be applauded. At a time when too many children are falling behind, returning those basics to the centre of schooling is an important step.
But even if we succeed in teaching every child to read, Twain’s warning remains. What advantage does the capacity to read provide if it is rarely exercised?
Increasingly, information is consumed in fragments rather than arguments. Opinions are absorbed, almost implicitly, rather than examined explicitly. We skim, scroll and summarise. These are poor substitutes for the deeper reflection and reasoning needed to develop well-considered answers to the challenges of our day.
If a free society depends upon citizens capable of governing themselves, that requires more than the ability to decode words on a page. It requires judgment; the ability to follow an argument to its conclusion, distinguish evidence from assertion, weigh competing claims and resist the temptation of immediate certainty.
Reading trains precisely those habits.
Every serious book asks something of us. It demands patience in an impatient age and requires us to suspend judgment until the author has finished making the case. It introduces us to people who lived in different times, held different convictions and saw the world through different eyes. In doing so, it enlarges our own.
Scrolling does almost the opposite. It rewards immediacy, fragmenting our attention into ever smaller pieces.
Citizens who cannot sustain attention are easier to manipulate. Propaganda rarely asks us to reason carefully. It relies on repetition, emotion and the pressure to respond before we have considered the whole argument. Reading creates a pause between receiving a claim and accepting it. In that space, judgment becomes possible.
This is not an argument against technology. New technologies have always changed the way we learn and communicate and, with discipline, they can enhance the skills we need. But they also force us to consider what should never be outsourced.
Reading also gives a society memory. It reminds us that our arguments are rarely as new as they appear, that earlier generations faced similar temptations and that ideas have consequences extending beyond the moment in which they become fashionable. A culture without memory is easily captured by the passions of the present.
The common content matters, too. For generations, New Zealanders shared many of the same stories and reference points. Whatever their personal beliefs, the Bible, for example, provided a common reservoir of language and moral imagination. People understood the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son or David and Goliath because those stories belonged to our common cultural inheritance.
Likewise, reading the same newspaper, preferably the Herald, of course, did not guarantee agreement, but it gave us a better chance of having a common set of facts, arguments and questions. That common conversation is harder to sustain when each of us inhabits an algorithmically curated world.
If reading were merely a way of acquiring information, summaries and short-form content, artificial intelligence could replace much of it. Yet reading has always been about something more. It forms the reader as much as it informs them.
Simply put, democracy requires more than citizens who hold opinions. It depends upon citizens capable of forming them wisely. It assumes people willing to undertake the slow disciplines of attention, reflection and reason before exercising the privileges of freedom. A democratic culture cannot survive without them.
Reading is not the only way these habits are formed, but it remains among the most important.
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing education today is not simply teaching children how to read. It is convincing them that great books, great ideas and difficult arguments are worth the effort.
Jonathan Ayling is a strategy consultant and professional director. He is the former chief executive of the Free Speech Union (NZ), an Act Party supporter and donor, and has worked as a ministerial staffer and senior Parliamentary adviser in both Government and Opposition.
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