[CALIBK12] The Big Read (Los Angeles Times): 3 reactions

[Stephen Krashen]

Big Read: Right or wrong?
Letters in the Los Angeles Times, March 2,2008

Re "Big Read, big waste," Opinion, Feb. 25

Jim Henley is right about the National Endowment of
the Arts' Big Read plan to encourage reading: Its
elitist approach is like trying to deal with hunger
with wine-tasting parties. Also, it is not clear that
we are reading less. Studies show that in 1945, only
21% said they read something yesterday. In 1991, it
was 31%, and in 2006, 38%, suggesting an increase in
reading. Test scores show that reading ability has not
declined. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have
not decreased since 1984. Twelfth-grade scores have
dropped only four points since 1984 and are the same
as they were in 1971.

The real problem is that children of poverty have
little to read at home, in school or in their
communities. As a result, they don't read very much or
very well.

The Big Read is a bad solution that addresses the
wrong problem.

Stephen Krashen

Los Angeles

The writer is professor emeritus at USC's Rossier
School of Education.



Last week, a woman in St. Helens, Ore., thanked a
nationwide program called the Big Read for getting her
teenage son to dive into Dashiell Hammett's "The
Maltese Falcon" -- thanks I keep hearing, in different
words, all across the country. But this Op-Ed article
called the one-city, one-book initiative from the
National Endowment for the Arts silly and sentimental,
and asked incredulously, "Who could be inspired?"

Don't take my word for its effectiveness. Ask any of
the roughly 500 people who jammed a Big Read event
last April in Santa Clarita to cheer for Ray Bradbury;
or see for yourself, by attending any of dozens of
Eastside events this spring celebrating Rudolfo
Anaya's novel, "Bless Me, Ultima."

Who could be inspired by such "unobjectionable"
writers as Hammett, Bradbury, Anaya and Cynthia Ozick?
Everybody from poor kids in East St. Louis to a Los
Angeles now reeling from the impending closure of
Dutton's Books, to a cynical Angeleno ex-book critic
like me. The NEA encourages all people to help arrest
and, ideally, reverse the American reading decline in
any way they choose, but the Big Read is working.

David Kipen

Literature Director

National Reading

Initiatives, Washington



Reading Henley's indictment of the Big Read program, I
felt as if I were watching a schoolyard bully
tormenting a mild-mannered classmate out of spite. In
a world of countless more worthy objects of scorn, why
attack an unassuming program, its modest goal and its
comparatively tiny price tag? OK, so the Big Read may
not single-handedly turn us into a nation of readers.
But for all we know, its low-impact, grass-roots
approach may be generating handsome returns for its
paltry cost.

In my book, you should light a candle even if it won't
dispel a universe of darkness; you should fight a
battle even if it doesn't alone decide a war; and you
should offer a program to inspire people to read even
if it may not single-handedly revive the fiction
industry.

Steven Stathatos

La Cañada Flintridge