
The Country That Stopped Reading - uladzislau
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html
======
confluence
What an atrocious article. Anecdotal overload, complete non-understanding of
statistics, and great dollops of confirmation bias and the fundamental
attribution error.

It actually sickens me that this is what the NYTimes has become.

 _> Mexico is floundering socially, politically and economically because so
many of its citizens do not read_

Are you fucking kidding me? Does this guy understand that a narco fueled civil
war is currently being waged throughout Mexico with nearly 60K deaths in the
last 5 years (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War>).

I'd respond to the rest of his article - but it's just so, so bad that I
really can't be bothered.

~~~
corporalagumbo
I had completely the opposite reaction to you. I thought this was a lovely,
heartfelt, clearly-written article. I especially enjoyed the final paragraph -
"We know that books give people ambitions, expectations, a sense of dignity" -
he nailed the power of books for me.

As far as the lack of concrete statistics - well, I don't know about you, but
until I hear a more-convincing alternate take, I'm going to take his word for
it. He clearly knows more about Mexico than me. And his examples are pretty
powerful - walking through a giant camp filled with striking teachers,
examples of the behaviour of individual teachers, _the attitude of the State
Minister for Education._

And why can't a raging narco war be linked in a small manner to a population
lacking imagination, sensitivity and the ability to forge new economic
pathways, linked back to a lack of interest in reading? Is that an offensive
notion to entertain or something? It's not like you have to ignore other
factors like the adjacent drug market, is it? Alternately, why can't these two
problems - trafficking and bad education - both be afflicting Mexico
simultaneously, feeding off of and reinforcing each other?

I mean, seriously, why don't you just chill the fuck out and enjoy the article
on its own merits, rather than imposing completely ridiculous standards on it?
Do you have more experience of and personal involvement in Mexico than this
author?

~~~
rohern
These are not good forms of reasoning. You have here committed several
fallacies that are very common and very worrying, as they tend to lead to the
public adoption of poorly reasoned explanations and baseless facts. This is
not an attack on you personally.

> As far as the lack of concrete statistics - well, I don't know about you,
> but until I hear a more-convincing alternate take, I'm going to take his
> word for it.

It is still a mystery how life originated on Earth. I know you will enjoy my
theory about how the unicorns did it.

No. No you won't. I am sure you know that this is a ridiculous argument to
make. The fact that you have not heard a better explanation is a terrible
reason to accept another explanation. Cogency does not imply correctness.

> I mean, seriously, why don't you just chill the fuck out and enjoy the
> article on its own merits, rather than imposing completely ridiculous
> standards on it?

There is no such thing as "its own merits". That is doublespeak for "do not
judge it at all". Either it meets the standards of good reasoning, data
presentation, and research, or it doesn't You cannot say that it has it own
standards for these things that we the reader are forced to accept.

> Do you have more experience of and personal involvement in Mexico than this
> author?

Again, this is not a sensible argument. It does not matter to me that my
doctor has had cancer before he treats me for cancer. Engineers at NASA did
not personally need to visit the moon before they were able to engineer the
moon lander. You do not need personal experience with phenomena to understand
them. In fact, personal experience with a thing can lead to horrible mistakes
in understanding and judgment backed up by the fallacy that because they come
from personal experience, they are especially valid.

~~~
corporalagumbo
P2/2

Okay. 4 is readily verifiable. 2* and 3 are the kind of claims that generally
are best met by counter-argument from experience - i.e., a Mexican reader, or
just a reader with relevant knowledge, reads this, and either sighs and nods
their head, or they say "hang on a minute, I know lots of Mexicans who love to
read!" I.e. if you are in a position to have an experience-based response to
this sentiment, it will either strike you as true or not. Don't forget: this
article was originally written in Spanish, for a Mexican newspaper. So the
author was safe to assume his readers would be able to independently assess
and respond to this claim - and hence, in submitting what confluence is
arguing is inadequate substantiation, is not breaking the honesty criteria -
because you and the other critics here were never the intended audience.

1, 6, 7, 8, and 9 form the bulk of the author's critique, which is cultural:
i.e., that people in Mexico do not read for pleasure, are ignorant of the
value of reading for pleasure, that the education system is run by and staffed
with people who are ignorant of this value too, and produces graduates who are
the same. Extended: people who are thus ignorant lack dignity, ambition,
expectations, and imagination, and this malaise of ignorance is undermining
any and all efforts to achieve true societal progress in Mexico.

Now, cultural critiques such as this are tricky things to justify. Most people
have these sorts of feelings - intuitions, senses about the way society is,
etc. These feelings are formed from disparate are substantiated through his
depictions of schools, students and teachers in Mexico. Toscana, in this
instance, offers these illustrations:

1) Perennial attempts to reform education (indicating that education is an
acknowledged problem area for the country, but one which thus far has not been
satisfactorily addressed.)

2) He witnessed thousands of striking teachers and found them bored and
amusing themselves without exception with insipid distractions. 3) He talked
to an audience of ~350 young people and only one would admit to liking
reading.

4) A teacher whose attitude he found simple-minded expressed a focus on
sticking to the script (which he also patently found unimaginative) and told a
story which he found overly simplistic to that same audience.

5) A grand plan to encourage reading failed due to a lack of teacher training,
and millions of books produced went unused.

6) The education secretary in his home state failed, in a manner he found
simple-minded, to understand the distinction between basic literacy and
engagement with books, and to understand the value of reading for pleasure.

7) His daughter's literacy teacher dismissed, again in a manner he found
simple-minded, the value of fiction books.

So, to sum up, here are the observations he draws upon: his knowledge of the
history of government attempts to reform education, his experience of the
behaviour of striking teachers, his experience of an audience of
schoolchildren, his experience of the behaviour of a teacher at the school
where he addressed this audience, his experience interacting with a senior
government education official, his observation of his daughter's school
experience.

Are these experiences valid grounds for this sort of cultural critique? I
would argue that they are - I myself am satisfied. I think, at the very least,
the attitude of the Education Secretary is extremely worrying. I would be very
concerned if an equivalent official in my government expressed such an
attitude, and for my country I would surprised if there were not a spontaneous
effort to have such an official removed from office. Anyway, even if you think
this evidence is a little weak, they form a perfectly adequate basis for an
initial argument. As I noted above, opinion pieces like this are intended to
serve as a springboard for further discussion. So they do not need to be
completely fleshed out, because they will naturally meet objections and
generate further refinements and clarification of the social issue, hopefully
generating some action and change, which is the real aim of this article.

A second issue here is this: can we accept the author's experiences as
representative, or symbolic, of wider processes at play in Mexico? I am not
sure what my response is to this issue - it's something I've thought about
quite often in one guise or another, and I'm still clarifying my position on
it. But my gut feeling is that we should listen to people's gut feelings. My
gut feeling is that yes, the attitude of one audience of schoolchildren in
Mexico can speak to a general attitude prevalent across the entire population.
Yes, it does matter if an education secretary completely misses the point of
literature. And I do think that culture is in some ways remarkably uniform
within national boundaries. But all this is perhaps another issue. The worst
possiibility I could see here is that Toscana is a bit of an idealist and a
dreamer, and the education secretary was really being pragmatic, not foolish.
That is possible.

Anyway, just to wrap this up: the real issue here is not whether the author
provided enough evidence to justify his claims - I think the real issue is
that confluence is acting in an incredibly presumptuous, arrogant manner in
dictating that Toscana's opinions are not valid. I think this is a case of
cultural imperialism.

Here's why. Confluence is, I assume, not Mexican. I would guess he is
American. What he has essentially done is refuse to entertain the notion that
the issue Toscana has identified as critical to Mexico is valid. Instead,
confluence, an outsider, has imposed on Toscana the issue he knows the most
about, and which he thinks is the most important - the narco-war. Toscana sees
Mexico as a country in and of itself, and an issue like the imagination,
courage, dignity and ambitions of the people of Mexico as of critical
importance. Confluence wants to rubbish the notion that any of that could
really be important - and instead force the focus back onto Mexico as a
tributary of the United States. Perhaps confluence is upset, subconsciously,
that Toscana neglects to even mention the United States?

Whatever. I find it insulting that confluence would try and take away a man's
right to argue passionately for something he believes so dearly in. And I feel
confluence and you both are displaying a lack of sensitivity on this issue.
Perhaps you too would benefit from spending some more time reading for
pleasure. You might benefit from developing a better understanding of the
passions that drive people, and a little more flexibility and softness in
reacting to your fellow human being.

*here assuming, I would argue reasonably, that the author is using the word illiteracy to refer not to technical illiteracy but to not caring to read, having no taste for reading, and no understanding of the value of, novels and books.

~~~
rohern
I do not think it is a good use of time for either of us to continue this, but
to give you some recompense for the time you put into your response, I will
write a few things.

1) I have no opinion on Mexico and I have no basis for concurring with what
confluence wrote. Nothing I wrote in response to you suggested otherwise.

2) Where you have responded to what I wrote, you have written self-
contradictory statements that are not strong rebuttals to the points I made. I
was pointing out your use of fallacious reasoning. In your rebuttal you
recommitted several of these same fallacies and added some new ones in form
the self-contradiction, non sequiturs, and erecting straw men.

3) You spend a great deal of time building up this straw man of Imperialism. I
have no response to this as it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

4) You end this with an ad-hominem suggesting that I and confluence read more.
I point out that this is both ridiculous on its face as you know nothing about
my reading habits and furthermore it is not a useful form of argument.

~~~
corporalagumbo
>I have no opinion on Mexico and I have no basis for concurring with what
confluence wrote.

>you have written self-contradictory statements that are not strong rebuttals
to the points I made.

Maybe if you did indeed have some opinion on and knowledge of the subject
matter at hand you would see the sense in what I am trying to say, and be
willing to cut me a little slack. Work with me not against me as they say. Oh
well.

>you know nothing about my reading habits

But I do know a bit about your analytical and argumentative style, which
seems, based on what I have observed, to be rigid. Reading is one of the best
ways I know to soften such a trait, hence the suggestion.

Anyway, you're right that it's time to wrap this up. Sorry, really didn't set
out to attack you here, but I think both you and confluence are being a bit...
well, for lack of a better word, silly. However it is interesting, as I've
suggested already, in the normal world an article like this wouldn't raise an
eyebrow, so it's fun to try and defend something perfectly normal from an
extraordinary critique. I enjoyed the exercise, even if you think my logic is
rubbish :)

~~~
rohern
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt because this is the internet
and it is very difficult to judge one's own written tone, but I hope you'll
reread what you have written to see why it makes you come off as a deeply
arrogant person. You seem not to have read at all what I have written; you
appear to think that I was engaged in criticizing the article. You also
continue this nonsense about reading that can only have the effect of being
insulting.

------
jurassic
After several months of intensely self-studying Spanish, I decided to try to
find some native language books or magazines to use for reading practice. I
thought that in Los Angeles, a city with latino population measured in the
several millions, I'd be able to find some kind of book shop catering to
Spanish speakers. But I never did. The most promising place -- Libreria Mexico
de Echo Park -- appeared to be out of business when I went by one afternoon. I
asked a few native speakers near the shuttered bookshop where else I might be
able to find books and nobody had any suggestions. But maybe they just didn't
want to talk to a crazy gringo.

If anybody knows a good place to browse and buy spanish language books in the
LA area, I'd love to know about it.

~~~
tzs
Have you tried Barnes & Noble? In my small town in Washington, not exactly a
hot bed of Spanish speaking, B&N has a pretty big Spanish section, so I'd
expect similar elsewhere.

~~~
jurassic
I've looked in big book chains before, and while they always have some stuff
the selection is pretty small: often best sellers and religious books only.
I'd like to find a shop specializing in spanish language because I think
they'd have a broader selection of topics, hopefully including some
interesting nonfiction.

I know these books exist because I see them in online shops based out of
Europe, but I'd like to avoid paying the high exchange rate + shipping to get
books all the way from overseas.

~~~
eru
Have you tried Amazon?

~~~
jurassic
Of course, but I still find bookstores more pleasant than Amazon for general
browsing. So if there's a brick and mortar location with a lot of spanish
books in LA, I'd like to check it out.

------
magoghm
I'm Mexican and live in Mexico City. Although there are people in Mexico who
like to read books, I'd say they represent less than 5% of the population.

When I'm invited to somebody's home, one of the first things I tend to look at
is the books they have. Often there doesn't seem to be any books there, and
when I ask them about it they do confirm that nobody in that house owns any
books. It turns out that the only books they have ever had were their school
textbooks and they usually quite puzzled about why I think anybody might be
interested in owning any books.

~~~
cafard
Here is an exercise you can try next time you are in a US city on a weekend.
Take the Sunday real estate ads, and visit as many houses as you can
conveniently fit into the afternoon--1 to 4 pm is the usual open time. See
what you see in the way of books. I don't think that you will find that things
are radically different here. I've seen houses with very interesting
bookshelves; I've seen plenty with pretty scan holdings.

------
jessriedel
I am more worried that, in the most famous newspaper in the most powerful
country in the world, opinion pieces are overwhelmingly dominated by
emotionally charged anecdotes while actual data plays only a cursory role.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
That fits the definition of the word perfectly. Also, the author cites a study
from Unesco that confirms his emotionally charged anecdotes. Data alone will
rarely spur people to action.

~~~
jessriedel
1\. Citing two data point among paragraphs of anecdote is cursory.

2\. Opinion pieces (should) mean they have a declared persuasive goal, not
that all forms of rhetoric are acceptable. The word "opinion" is not a license
to argue from astrology.

------
stephengillie
_Even if baseline literacy, the ability to read a street sign or news
bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not._

This means literacy is on the rise. The author is one of many people who are
concerned because our society is moving away from the novel as a form of
expression.

I would argue that videogames are filling that niche -- instead of sitting and
reading a book for 40-60 hours, we sit and guide a character and live their
story for 40-60 hours.

The question here becomes: Are Mexican children playing enough videogames?

~~~
PakG1
The brain has very high plasticity. It is able to rewire itself for tasks that
are done frequently so that it is able to perform those tasks better. The
ability to read, understand, consider, and analyze long-form text is a skill
that will be slowly lost in such a scenario. And I'd argue that the ability to
read and understand documentation about complex ideas goes hand-in-hand with
various important things, including complex scientific research, the details
of an M&A deal, economic agreements between nations, or application source
code. Maybe the average person doesn't need to do these things, but if more
and more drop reading, the gross numbers of people able to grow into those
roles would probably also decline.

I think the general consensus in the scientific community is that reading
enables more long-term brainpower than does television or video games. Staving
off Alzheimer's is one area that is frequently cited as a benefit for example.

edit: wording

~~~
vellum
> _complex scientific research, the details of an M &A deal, economic
> agreements between nations, or application source code._

Most of those activities you listed are what a ’93 DOE survey called “level 5”
tasks[1]. Only 3-4% of American adults are at level 5.[2] There was a followup
survey was in 2003, but they combined level 4 and 5 [3]. There weren’t any
significant changes to the other 3 levels, so I doubt level 5 increased
either.

[1] - <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf>, page 10 [2] -
<http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf>, page 17 [3] -
<http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp>

------
auggierose
I am really shocked by many of the answers I am reading here. Do you really
think that reading books is an optional thing? I would even go as far as
saying: if you are not a regular reader of books, you cannot be a world class
programmer. Because you just lack the necessary imagination for it.

~~~
king_jester
> Do you really think that reading books is an optional thing?

Yes, reading books is optional. Note that many people who do not read books do
read other formats: essay, magazine, news, short form stories, poetry, and so
on.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Or in the case of many here, technical journal articles and blogs and the
like.

------
pigou
> Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much
> less. They learn almost nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population
> that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more
> illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago.

So...literacy rates are going up? That doesn't sound so bad.

~~~
Evbn
Sadly, innumeracy is increasing among NYT writers and editors.

~~~
pigou
To be fair, The proportion of NYT writers and editors that is numerate is
going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more innumerate people at the NYT
now than there were 12 years ago.

------
gadders
I'm an atheist, but if there is a hell, people like the leader of the
teachers’ union, Elba Esther Gordillo, need to be in it.

The amount of lives that have been ruined by her union and the teachers they
control must be in the millions.

------
guard-of-terra
It is very strange to me that people can be illiterate (as in, unable to read
anything) in Mexico considering how easy the written Spanish language is
(compared to e. g. English) and how prevalent is it around the globe.

They should be seeing written phrases everywhere and these should be trivial
to read once they know the alphabet.

~~~
dannyp32
Well that's not what the author means by illiterate. He uses it as a way of
saying that they virtually never read books.

~~~
raverbashing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy>

------
corporalagumbo
This article reinforces my belief that there is just something very, very
important and special about books. I'm going to have to think about exactly
what this is, but it seems like books are the difference ultimately between
people with dignity and values, things they are willing to make a stand and
fight for, and people without. Why is that I wonder?

~~~
aptwebapps
I suggest you try substantiating that idea before trying to decipher why it is
...

~~~
aptwebapps
Sorry for the above, it sounded way less snarky to me when I wrote it. I'd
delete it if I could.

~~~
corporalagumbo
Nice of you to say. I'm glad I didn't respond with equal snark - I was
tempted...

------
prof_hobart
As both a parent and the husband of a teacher, this kind of comment annoys me

“How is it possible that I hand over a child for six hours every day, five
days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?

I know it's a hypothetical parent asking this question, but it is quite a
common attitude.

Yes, schools clearly have a responsibility to teach childen to read, write, do
maths etc.

But parents should take some responsibility for bringing up their children as
well. And things like a an actual love of reading (as opposed to the basic
mechanisms of understanding words) are far more likely to come from home life
than from school.

------
cafard
Is history not one of the humanities?

------
OGinparadise
This can be and it is said for many countries: "back when were in school...now
teachers....all day on facebook...we were afraid of our parents...kids these
days"

Maybe it's a generational thing.

~~~
corporalagumbo
Maybe it's true.

~~~
kansface
Could be, but Plato said the same thing more or less.

~~~
corporalagumbo
Maybe it was true then too.

------
logjam
"The Country That Stopped Reading" vs "The proportion of the Mexican
population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are
more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago."

In other words literacy is increasing.

And that's where I stopped reading Toscano's vapid screed.

~~~
simonw
There's a good chance the author if the opinion piece didn't compose (or even
approve of) the headline. Generally it's good idea not to get too hung up on
headlines for this kind of article.

