Where Have All The Readers Gone?

The publishing industry is thriving—at least in the number of books issued each year. When you combine all the self-published titles with all the traditionally published titles, that number easily reaches the four million mark. You would think there would be a large market for all of these books, but you would be wrong. 

According to a 2016 Pew Research article:

“Americans read an average (mean) of 12 books per year, while the typical (median) American has read 4 books in the last 12 months.”

There are plenty of Americans who aren’t typical—who, year in and year out, never darken the cover of a book. Even people with a college degree, who may pick up seventeen books a year, read fewer than half that number.

I know. I teach many of these young Americans, who, if they haven’t developed the habit of reading when younger, may never do so. It is the rare student who enters college already a reader.  

Now, were I teaching a subject other than the one I do—writing—I might be able to shrug my shoulders and soldier on, rarely requiring that my students check out Gutenberg’s progeny, but I cannot. For writing and reading are interdependent, and until someone becomes a reader, they will never become a writer. 

I have yet to figure out why my classes are full—often overenrolled—with students who say they want to become (better) writers and yet admit that they never read anything longer than a text message. In fact, they unabashedly admit that they hate to read. Let me explain why this shocks me.

I ask students to read books—a lot of books. On average, in a single semester, that number ranges from twelve to fourteen books. In other words, I ask students to read as many as, if not more than, the number of books a typical American reads in a year, and I don’t care if the class is a group of first semester first years or a class of seniors heading out the door. I have a reputation for requiring a great deal of reading. So why are they in my classes?

Take a first year student registered in my First Year Seminar (FSEM) “First Person Singular,” an international study of memoir. We move from Africa to the Mideast, to Asia and South America, before finally settling in this country. It is not a leisurely journey, for we also read two books on the genre itself with tips as to what makes a great memoir. More than one student has complained, at first to their parents or anyone else around, when buying their books from the college store. “Why,” students will wail, “Do I have to buy fourteen books when you, in a class on yoga, don’t have any? Why did I end up in this FSEM?” I neglect to include in my write-up the number of books students will be reading.

Our FEMS, though, are supposed to introduce students to college-level writing and reading. I take my charge seriously. Besides, how many people won’t or don’t enjoy reading about other people, if our celebrity culture is any indication? Fortunately for me, most students become converts to memoir.

So what about writing? Students have a standing 750-word journal due with every reading assignment, which, practically speaking, is every class period or three times a week for a MWF schedule. At first, this requirement, much like the heavy reading requirement, results in many groans and complaints; writing 750 words may take a novice writer an hour or more. By the end of the semester, though? An easy twenty minutes—and most of my classes also require analytical reading journals. Does this guarantee that students read what I assign? Not always, but the journals make it more likely than not that they will read. When you add in the number and length of the essays I assign them to write—at least two drafts of each—my students routinely write between fifty and seventy-five pages a semester.

Students need plenty of practice, both in reading and in writing—which, as I said, are interdependent activities—in order to make progress. My job is to give them the opportunity to do so. Of course, this opportunity means that I read many, many pages a week, given my teaching three classes a semester. However, I cannot imagine more rewarding work than watching non-readers become readers, non-writers turn into writers: learning to think of themselves as literate citizens.

I may choose the books—for example, Aayan Hirsi Ali’s “Infidel” or Andrew Klavan’s “The Uncanny” or “The Great, Good Thing”—but I do not decide what students write about these books. Students choose their own subjects, within the constraints of the subject matter of a particular course, whether it be travel writing, sports, rape, or the memoir, to name a few from my courses. Students not only have the freedom to choose a

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