Tips and Insights

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people
to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

I can't believe that while I sat writing this blog at lunch a couple weeks ago, two of our illustrators were looking at an Amazon.com ad that asked them to pick their "favorite father" (in honor of Father's Day). One jokingly chose Darth Vader, the other, Tony Soprano. I looked over their shoulders at the choices and said, "What? You have to pick Atticus Finch."

That stumped both illustrators. Neither knew Atticus Finch. When I explained he was the father in To Kill a Mockingbird-an Academy Award-winning movie adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book-they both said, "Oh yeah, I think I've seen the movie, but I never read the book."

How can two people, growing up in our world today, not know Atticus Finch? Okay, I say that facetiously, but I was still disappointed. I like to think that the people I know appreciate books the same way I do, and that even though they're fifteen or twenty years younger, I'm still speaking a language they know.

A few people at work freely admit to not reading, not wanting to read. Even I don't read as much as I'd like. I blame it on a lack of time, though I could easily read twenty minutes a day and finish four or five books a year. Can we blame electronic media for the upsurge in aliteracy, then, as many people claim, or are we at fault?

And how does the way we conduct business add to it?

Because businesses and their marketing departments realize many people don't like to read, they're designing products that don't require reading. Look at the symbols and icons in our world. Look at the packaging of products-the number of those that incorporate colors and shapes as a way to convey meaning. Blogs like this are also culprits-short bursts of text, conversational, not too dense, often including pictures.

Though we'll always have our Ray Bradburys and Harper Lees creating stories that elicit some interaction with the reader, we have more and more text and trade books meeting the needs of aliterates. Instead of reading Cliffs Notes to get the gist of a book, many novels are being written like Cliffs Notes. Soon we'll only have to read a list and we'll have the book completed.

So, how do I reconcile what I've written in these last two blogs with what we do here at Explainers? After all, we are in the business of taking complicated, often textual documents, and making them easy to use. This usually requires graphics, symbols and simplified text-those "evil contributors" to aliteracy.

I'll address that incongruity in Part 3 of this series.

Labels: aliteracy

Last week, a team in our office discussed options for an exhibit we're doing at the Women's Business Enterprise National Council's conference in Los Angeles. A couple of the designers came up with the idea of playing a Pictionary-type game to attract seminar attendees to our booth. Participants would come to our booth and we'd have them choose a problem from a fishbowl and then illustrate the solution. Everyone in the room liked the idea and one co-worker noted that it would be impossible to attract attention like this with a game of Scrabble because "no one likes Scrabble anyway."

"Wait a minute," I said, "I love Scrabble. Testing my brain by creating words from letters . . . it just doesn't get any more fun!" Most of the people at the table looked at me with blank stares and two even shook their heads sympathetically.

I tell this story because I was reminded once again that I'm in the minority. Many people prefer not to read, and if they're in a high-pressure situation, can't read. It's that aliteracy thing again. It keeps sneaking into the workplace, from office to production floor, and savvy businesses are taking notice.

Though it has been on education's radar for a while, the topic of aliteracy-specifically workplace aliteracy-hasn't received much attention in the media. One of the more informative postings was Linton Weeks' article, published in The Washington Post back in May 2001. The National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA) report on literacy, Reading at Risk, published in June 2004 focused a bit more attention on literacy and the drop in adult recreational reading, but didn't address what that means for businesses.

Most people agree that television, Internet and other electronic media are the culprits for our growing illiteracy and aliteracy. They also agree that aliteracy can lead to illiteracy. One of the more troubling assertions comes from Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, a text for educators and parents. He believes that people who don't read "base their future decisions on what they used to know . . . [and] if you don't read much, you really don't know much. You're dangerous."

Because people are required to process more information every day, it is unlikely they'll gather all they need to know from television or the Internet. Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA, believes "print culture affords irreplaceable forms of focused attention and contemplation that make complex communications and insights possible." That's not going to happen flipping channels and only reading text written in bullet points.

So what does this mean for the business world, where reading for information-purposeful reading, as former University of Houston reading professor Kylene Beers puts it-takes place? What do we do when we want employees to read, yet the nature of work, the expectations of bosses, the pressures of bottom lines have affected not only their desire but also their ability to read?

And how can I get more people to enjoy Scrabble . . . ?

(Have you seen a decrease in reading and/or reading skills in your workplace? We'd enjoy hearing from you.)

Labels: aliteracy, illiteracy