The marketing department at Lesley University is no longer promoting the humanities, so the Massachusetts Medievalist has decided to post these reflections here:
Early this past summer, marketing/communications asked me to do an interview for a promotional video about the importance of the humanities. Since I love talking at any length about literature, language, and critical reading, I agreed, and spent an engaging hour or so with a videographer.
During the interview, I mentioned the difference between illiteracy and aliteracy, and in a follow-up, the media specialist asked me to write up an article about those two items to accompany the video on the Lesley website. In July, I sent this:
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Most Americans would agree that illiteracy is a problem to be eradicated – indeed, many Americans would probably be surprised to learn that 20 percent of United States adults are illiterate in English (although they may be literate in other languages). The term “aliteracy” is much less commonly used; Merriam-Webster defines it as "the quality or state of being able to read but uninterested in doing so."
Nobody is surprised that the rise of digital technology has reduced Americans' overall reading time — social media consumes many of the hours that in the past would have been spent on reading in hard copy. The number of children who read for pleasure regularly has decreased steadily in the past 30+ years, with only 14 percent of 13- year-olds now reading for fun on "most days," as noted in the most recent available data. And about a quarter of U.S. adults say they have not read even one book in the last year. Literate people read all the time — we read Instagram captions and ingredients lists and text messages and news alerts — but many Americans do not engage deeply with long, complicated texts on a regular basis.
That kind of engagement encourages the reader's ability to think deeply, kind of like training for a marathon by building up skills and strengths with shorter runs until the 26.2 miles becomes a realistic goal. The ability to deeply read a long, complicated text — while not easily listed on a resumé — is an essential part of understanding complex problems, seeing complex problems from multiple points of view, and crafting creative solutions to complex problems. In short, the United States needs deep readers at just the moment that we have fewer and fewer of them.
At Lesley, we're finding that many of our entering students do not have experience in high school with critical reading of long, complicated texts. We provide the scaffolding and instruction needed for our undergraduates to become engrossed in complicated ideas discussed in complicated arguments — not just in English literature, my own field, but in psychology and environmental studies and political science, and in the many interesting ways those fields intersect and inform each other.
Part of our job at Lesley right now is to combat this surging tide of aliteracy – to cultivate our students' extensive, deep critical reading as a regular part of their understanding of our world and the challenges we face.
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Last Thursday, along with 29 of my faculty colleagues, I was informed by the provost that my job was being eliminated. In an enormous irony, the marketing associate sent me a link to the promotional page on Friday morning: it included the text above as well as the 90-second video in which I advocate for humanities classes to meet the need for the critical thinking, reading, and writing skills to solve our culture’s complex problems.
Late Friday afternoon, the story disappeared from the Lesley website.
I was all set to "Like" this post and then came to the end to find such an unlikable coda. What a terrible, short-sighted decision by Lesley to let go such an articulate advocate for the engaged life.
So sorry to hear about your termination from Lesley! It’s really sad to see what they’re doing to the faculty at the school. My favorite classes were with you! I love reading these when they pop up in my email and I hope you’re able to find a better place and opportunity than Lesley!
PS I love reading your posts and I miss having you as a professor! I’ve been reading a lot more outside of school too!