Raise or Raze?

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ” Paulo Freire.

I have my own theories about why we lost the White House. The reason why we lost the House, the Senate, and the reason why Trump has said (according to yesterday’s article by Politico that “Trump has made it clear the Education department would play a reduced role…”

America has been in a downward spiral for over a decade and maybe even longer over reading. As a matter of fact, America is in the midst of an anti-intellectualism movement. Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life outlines this very clearly. The educated in America have a great responsibility, yet we are not seeing the big picture: we are not meeting that responsibility head on. The average American holds us in disdain and here we are fifty years later, and Hofstadter’s words are equally true – if not more so now. What has been done to change this? What platforms have been instituted? If anything, education budgets have been reduced even more so. On average, adults do not read literature – or read for pleasure.

            In 2013, The Commonwealth published an article written by Dana Gioia called, “On The Importance of Reading,” which also outlines the decline in reading in our nation: “Reading has declined among every group of adult Americans: every age group, educational group, income group, region and race.” For the first time in American history, less than half of the adults in our country read literature; this is unprecedented. This is a wake up call! Our nation is producing the first generation of (not illiterate mind you but) college graduates who are not lifelong readers of books. As we push screens, electronics, texts messaging and apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat at our youth, they are putting their books aside to plug in.  Studies show that elementary age children read a lot (although I disagree with short-term extrinsic-value rewarding of reading: book fair points, stickers, recognitions when instead parents and teachers should be tapping into more intrinsic-values of reading even more so) but by the time they reach high school, there is no more reading pleasure; it is solely done for those extrinsic rewards of grades and high-stakes test scores.

I’m talking about the average American. I’m not talking about educated, and beyond educated Bay Area folks. It’s the non-educated white males and females that I refer to. These are the Americans who went to the polls, the Americans that the Republican party reached out to. It might be worth considering that the Democratic party used to be the party that reached out to this population but this is no longer the case. I love Hillary but I hope that the blue party realized that we need a reorganization. She won the vote of the educated in America: Republicans and Democrats – we read and saw how many Republican leaders cast their votes for her. But as a party, we need a firm re-commitment to the labor class in America – the ones who don’t read; the ones who could care less about the educated elite in America. I’m only talking about readers here – I don’t wish to make this about anything else.  We have raised a generation of non-literature readers, cynics, supporters of non-intellectuals.

I’ve made my career and life’s passion to educate, to teach reading to those who do not see the value in it. I fully understand that these citizens have been left behind and deserve to be empowered by learning to read and value the written word. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed said, “… Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle…”

The most important point of a non-reading citizenship has to do with more than reading for extended periods of time.  It means that they are disconnected from a body of civic responsibility and political endearment. The vote proved that; voting was not about voting for a nation, but voting for oneself: what do I get of this? It’s more than how kids who read outperform nonreaders fifty times over.  We are in the midst of a nationwide social epidemic. Gioia says, “Literature awakens, enlarges, enhances and refines our humanity in a way that almost nothing else can.” Without such an awakening, what are we left with? We need to tap into that humanity. I’m doing my part to instill this in my students. I select texts that have meaning for them – texts that leave them with a sense of empowerment. Things that they have never been exposed to, things that show them how important their lives are, and things that enable them to become involved and to make themselves heard. How can we just sit by and pad our own wallets and live alongside our brothers and sisters who are struggling to find enough money to buy food to survive? Reading is key. It can open doors. I leave you with Paulo Freire: “Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of them.”