Dana Gioia (MHT-090)

Thursday, September 02, 2010



"Reading is not a natural activity. Reading is not like walking. It's like playing the piano. It requires an ongoing practice and mastery which is to the end that you can sit and you can play the piano without even thinking about it, but that reflects years of sustained attention and practice." —Dana Gioia Dana Gioia, the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, joins Ken Myers to talk about the recently released NEA report on reading in America. Gioia believes the report highlights literacy trends that show a decreasing ability in young and adult Americans to sustain the attention in reading required to deal with complex, multi-dimensional issues and problems. The growing educational focus on the literacy of children is not being followed through to the adolescent and adult years, precisely when other commercial media step up their influence. Gioia discusses possible ways that schools and churches and other communities and cultural institutions can navigate adolescent and adult Americans back to learn the complex joys of literature and the arts.	To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence, a 2007 report by the National Endowment of the Arts

The National Endowment of the Arts published an earlier study under Dana Gioia entitled Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004) available here.	Reading Literacy

To subscribe to the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal call 1.800.331.6407 or order online
Download a free MP3 sample of the Journal Request a demonstration issue on cassette or CD