A recent post on the ridiculous response to a poll on torture had the title “Is reading comprehension in the U.S. REALLY that bad?“.  Now, according to this article, if it isn’t then it’s going to be very soon:

Americans are reading less and their reading proficiency is declining at troubling rates, according to a report that the National Endowment for the Arts will issue today. The trend is particularly strong among older teens and young adults, and if it is not reversed, the NEA report suggests, it will have a profound negative effect on the nation’s economic and civic future.

“This is really alarming data,” said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. “Luckily, we still have an opportunity to address it, but if we wait 10, 20 years, I think it may be too late.” […]

The story the numbers tell, Gioia said, can be summed up in about four sentences:

“We are doing a better job of teaching kids to read in elementary school. But once they enter adolescence, they fall victim to a general culture which does not encourage or reinforce reading. Because these people then read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they do more poorly in school, in the job market and in civic life.”

And people wonder why when it comes to casual culture I break out the philosophical blowtorch on 90% of it…