When We Devalue Art (Books!) We Devalue the Future
After years of working in the publishing world, I’ve grown accustomed to claims that people barely read anymore and that the book industry is fading. For decades, each new technology—radio, cinema, television, video games, the internet—has been blamed for drawing readers away. Yet despite these distractions, books endure.
Recent reports note that reading for pleasure has dropped by about forty percent over the last twenty years. While this decline is part of a long cultural trend, there’s a new threat that feels more profound and systemic.
That realization struck me after reading an essay on Slate titled “The Case for Whole Books” by Dan Sinykin and Joanna Winant.
“Due to standardized testing requirements that favor close reads of excerpts over whole books, an entire generation of students now has little contextual framework for the literature they encounter in school.”
As someone outside the education system, I hadn’t realized how deeply fragmented students’ reading experiences have become. The practice of analyzing short excerpts in place of complete works risks diminishing appreciation for narrative structure and literary depth.
Last year I explored how the tech industry seeks to transform books into easily consumable digests, similar to Blinkist summaries. Now I understand that our youngest readers are already being offered a reduced, less nourishing version of learning itself.
Author’s Summary
The erosion of full-length reading—from classrooms to tech-driven summaries—signals a deeper cultural loss that threatens how future generations will engage with complex ideas.