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2010-09-01 issue:

The power of books

Mediaculture

by Gordon Houser

Print Article

In a time when the reading of books seems to be on the wane and being crowded out by use of the Internet, some research reveals that books retain a certain power.

In his July 9 column in The New York Times, David Brooks reports that in three successive years, researchers at the University of Tennessee "gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year," then looked at those students’ test scores.

Brooks writes: "They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the 'summer slide'—the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.'

Earlier research in 27 countries showed that kids who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer and do better. "This new study," Brooks writes, "suggests that introducing books into homes that may not have them also produces significant educational gains."

Contrast this news with a study by Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, which examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. "They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores," Brooks writes.

This study agrees with others that show that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And these studies were done before the popularity of Facebook and Twitter.

Brooks refers to Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, which argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. "[Carr] cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.'

Others disagree with Carr and point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person's ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.

Brooks mentions an observation made by a philanthropist who gives books to disadvantaged kids: "It's not the physical presence of the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It's the change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different group."

Brooks goes on to contrast the Internet culture, which is more egalitarian and oriented to gaining information, with the literary culture, which is more hierarchical (i.e., some know more than others) and oriented toward thinking critically.

Brooks writes: "The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students. It's better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant and making the important more prestigious."

But this way of contrasting cultures may be too simplistic. Certainly there are critical thinkers who use the Internet, and there are websites that encourage a literary culture.
Our culture, with its polarized conversations that are less arguments than shouting at each other, needs more critical thinking.

We Christians are people of a book, and that book has power to change us.

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Mediaculture: "The power of books"

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