Literacy programs focus on illiteracy, but lack of interest in reading is also a problem. Electronic media has reduced the influence of written literature, but alternatives like audiobooks and movies still provide information. Reading advocates suggest emphasizing enjoyment of reading and parents reading to their children.
Literacy is the lack of interest in reading among literate people. Literacy programs usually focus on the problems of illiteracy and functional illiteracy, where people have little or no reading skills. These problems are more significant in developing countries. Literacy, on the other hand, is more important in industrialized nations. The spread of electronic media is considered a driving factor in the waning influence of written literature.
For much of human history, illiteracy was rife; only wealthy people and those in specialized occupations, such as the clergy, regularly learned to read. The advent of printing in the 15th century made written material available to the general public for the first time. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were thousands of magazines, newspapers and book publishers throughout the industrialized world. Since written material was the primary means of communication, literacy was considered the foundation of a well-rounded education. In the 1915s, television began to supplant the written word as a place of information and entertainment, followed later by new electronic media such as the home computer.
In the early 1990s, computer use was spreading, a process that would only be accelerated by the advent of the Internet. It was around this time that researchers began to notice the growing trend towards literacy. People increasingly relied on visual media for news, education, and recreation that had previously been provided by written literature. This was true even among teachers, publishers, and others who relied on high literacy for their livelihoods. A 1999 survey found that less than half of the US population made reading a part of their daily routine.
In a world offering a wide variety of visual and electronic alternatives to reading, literacy continues to grow. Many of these alternatives provide the same information as their written counterparts, such as audiobooks or movies based on popular novels. Social networking websites emphasize short written messages, often dispensing with standard conventions of grammar in the process. The unstoppable popularity of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter book series has spurred an interest in recreational reading among young people at the dawn of the 21st century. But that wasn’t enough to save the Borders bookstore chain, which closed 2011 stores and filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
Reading advocates offer tips for fighting literacy. Educators should emphasize the enjoyment of reading rather than the dry acquisition of information encouraged by many schools. Technical aspects of reading, such as sentence diagrams, should be left to speech professionals; these only serve to make reading seem boring and complicated. Most importantly, parents should read to their children and be seen reading to please themselves. People who do not develop a love of reading in their early family environments are unlikely to have a strong interest in literature in later life.
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