Jennifer Horgan: When we stop reading, we limit our understanding of others
As in America, Irish boys and men are not reading anymore – and that’s a worry. File photo
America has gone to the dogs – certainly if recent events at the Ryder Cup are anything to go by.
America has also stopped reading. I’m not arguing causation here, but I find it interesting that rates and standards of reading have dipped there – significantly so.
The reports this month that average reading scores for high school seniors in the US have fallen to their lowest level since 1992. Martin West, academic dean and a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, links the decline to teenagers no longer reading for pleasure.
“Among 13-year-olds, the share of students who report that they read for fun on their own time, almost every day, fell almost by half from 27% in 2012 to 14% in 2023,” he says.
I see this as a particularly dangerous slide. When we stop reading for pleasure, we lose the ability to understand nuance. When we stop having to imagine the world as someone else, it becomes harder to comprehend ‘someone else.’
Anger gets boiled down into rage, fear into hate. Our emotional antennae go blunt. The world (complex geopolitics included) becomes simple and binary.
Soon enough, it can become very easy to shout obscenities on a golf course.
Rootless, simple assumptions about other people roll so easily off the tongue. It’s the bliss of ignorance.
In certain ways, it feels like Ireland is thriving by comparison. I had the great pleasure of attending the Write by the Sea Festival in Wexford last weekend.
There I bumped into a pair of Americans outside the church, waiting for an hour with Donal Ryan and Wendy Erskine. They had travelled all the way from New York especially.
“We have nothing like this at home,” one told me, referring to literary festivals, her eyes magnified by statement glasses. “Where should we go next time?” Obviously, I started and ended with Cork’s various festivals but one could mention almost every county on the island of Ireland at this stage.
“It’s just about selling books where we come from,” the American sighed, as I detailed our various events and initiatives. “It’s the exact same as any other business.”
Books are certainly big business there. America has one of the largest publishing markets in the world but it is also heavily commercialized and market driven. There are libraries and bookshops, of course, but the reading network thins beyond the reach of universities, book clubs and celebrity endorsements.
Here, the network is as intricate as it is strong. Book Week is coming up on the 18th of this month with local and city bookshops hosting a range of exciting events. Author Patrick Holloway, with whom I shared a lift back from Wexford, is one of the ambassadors and is buzzing with enthusiasm for the various readings he’s organising.
The Children’s Book Festival is also running throughout the month across libraries. It’s non-stop. Here, our bardic, Celtic tradition is alive and well, with writers still playing a pivotal role in the spiritual and social life of the country.
Indeed, inside St Peter’s Church in Kilmore Quay, and sitting alongside my new American friends, I heard Donal Ryan and Wendy Erskine discussing their characters. One concern of theirs is the countering of stereotypes and both expressed a sense of social, civic and cultural duty.
It’s not all good news, however. Despite our wonderful ecosystem of writers, readers, librarians and booksellers, we have challenges.
There was something concerning about the demographic inside St Peter’s. Besides a handful of male writers dotting the pews, all in attendance were female. As in America, Irish boys and men are not reading anymore – and that’s a worry.
An OECD report on reading released in July found that 24% of Irish teenagers (13–18) and 19% of boys across all age categories are not reading for pleasure.
According to reports, Irish people have become less literate in the past decade, including graduates. But beyond literacy (a whole other article), people deciding not to read when they can read is a social and political red flag.
OECD analyst Marco Paccagnella, in considering this decline in Irish people reading, rightly says:
I see this gender divide in school when we read for pleasure. It’s mostly girls who come in with a book from home, a well-loved bookmark in the pages, their little nose getting tucked in straight away.
When we know that boys are being targeted by misanthropes online, it’s doubly worrying that they are not reading and building those robust defences against lazy bias and easy assumption.
Men are possibly writing less too. Patrick Cotter, who curates this month’s Cork Short Story Festival posted the following online: “I'm concerned at the dire gender imbalance in the line-up. Women outnumbering men 3-1. Have young men stopped reading and writing? Answers on a postcard.”
I’d need a massive postcard, Patrick, but from my vantage point as an English teacher I see young boys being consumed by gaming. If they read, and it is rare to find one who does, they read non-fiction.
One respondent to Cotter’s concern suggests that the government’s attitude to the arts sets a bad example. I see some truth in that. I’ve always hated the Supporting the Arts tagline, as if all artists and all art amount to one frail body, in need of oxygen administered by a more virile hand.
Whatever the reason, we should certainly watch out for signs of the rot festering across the Atlantic.
Incidentally, as I sat in my sun-streamed church in Wexford, the rest of my family were attending the NFL game in Dublin, having managed to get tickets through family friends. They might as well have been at the Ryder Cup.
My youngest, who is afraid of crowds anyway, burst into tears when a man screamed in her ear: “USA! USA! How many children did you kill today?” and “Fuck off Americans; you’re not wanted here.”
Other protesters validly made their point in support of Palestine, standing with flags and placards. Others protested by staying at home.
Not this guy. No, not this individual, who now sees all Americans, even those coming to watch a game, and everything to do with America, as bad – blanket bad.
My eldest, far more tuned into the world, was more annoyed than upset about it when I checked in with him late Sunday night. “The NFL isn’t Trump though, is it,” he said. “I know some NFL people are involved with Trump and Israel but others are not. It can’t be that all Americans are bad now, can it?”
I thought back to those two American women in the church in Wexford, craving our literature, our community of readers. I imagined the same man shouting at them to “fuck off”, for bringing their Americanness in with them.
“No,” I said with complete honesty. “Some Americans are the nicest people you could ever wish to meet.” Then I told him to read his book for a while.
- Irish Book Week takes place from 18-25 October. Jennifer Horgan will be in conversation with Patrick Holloway and Louise Hegarty at Carrigaline Bookshop on Saturday, 18 October, at 12 midday.
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