A new study released by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year. While there is some good news (9-year-olds had high reading comprehension scores) there is significant bad news (the number of 17-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for pleasure has doubled to 19% in the past 10 years and their comprehension scores have also fallen).

Those of us who work in Los Angeles public schools as KOREH L.A. volunteers are probably not surprised by the results of this study. However, what may be surprising is the conclusion of NEA Chairman Dana Gioia: The decline in reading is “perhaps the most important socioeconomic issue in the United States”. The report emphasizes the social benefits of reading: “Literary readers are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work”. Gioia goes on to say, “This should explode the notion that reading is somehow a passive activity. Reading creates people who are more active by any measure…People who don’t read, who spend more of their time watching TV or on the Internet playing video games, seem to be significantly more passive”.

As Caleb Crain wrote in the Dec. 24, 2007 issue of The New Yorker: “Perhaps readers venture so readily outside because what they experience in solitude gives them confidence. Perhaps reading is a prototype of independence. No matter how much one worships an author, Proust wrote, ‘all he can do is give us desires.’ Reading somehow gives us the boldness to act on them. Such a habit might be quite dangerous for a democracy to lose.”

KOREH L.A. volunteers know that the work they do is important – helping their students become better readers and more enthusiastic participants in their own education. What we perhaps didn’t realize is that, in fact, we are actually helping to ensure the continuance of our very precious democracy.