Jackie Hemond
The Syrian library in Daraya, which I wrote about last March, is no more. Forty rebel fighters, many of whom were university students, had collected books from destroyed private libraries to form a free public library in the basement of a bombed-out building. It became a sanctuary from the war. As the rebels who formed the library died in battle, a 14-year-old became the chief librarian. Last August, with only a few thousand people remaining in the town, the rebels were allowed safe passage to opposition-controlled areas and civilians were sent to centers for displaced persons. The 14,000-book library was left behind and looted by Assad’s soldiers.
Those Syrian rebels valued reading. As one of them said, “We want to be a free nation. And hopefully, by reading, we can achieve this.”
By contrast, Americans are reading less. A 2016 survey by the Pew Research found that one in four Americans have not read a book in a year, whether in print, digital or audio form. In a 2015 survey, the National Endowment for the Humanities found that the percentage of Americans who read literature —novels, short stories, poetry or plays — fell from 57 percent in 1982 to 43 percent in 2015. Even the reading of magazines dropped from 24.7 minutes per day in 2010 to 18.6 in 2015. Furthermore, among developed nations, the U.S. ranks 16th for adult literacy.
More dismal news is an estimate by Pfizer that low literary skills cost more than $73 million per year in direct health care costs. Still, there are Americans who value reading.
The New York City Strand Bookstore took a cue from Donald Trump in 2015 and designed a Make America Read Again baseball hat. The aim was to promote reading on immigration and women’s rights, and to encourage empathy. The store manager cited a 2013 study from the New School for Social Research which found that reading novels instilled tolerance. The slogan was so successful that the Strand now sells it on t-shirts, baby onesies, cups and totebags – even Natalie Portman was pictured with a totebag.
In 2019, a museum will be opening in Washington, D.C. Planet Word is the idea of Ann Friedman, a literacy advocate, former reading teacher, and the wife of author Thomas Friedman. Dismayed by the decline in reading, feeling that it threatened democracy, she wanted to popularize the love of language and reading. Among other things, the museum will demonstrate how words can influence us and reveal brain health. A robot will show how it can write or win at Jeopardy. In a language lab, visitors can become part of a study on how dialect can cause prejudice.
We should be careful to preserve our literacy. Read and take a cue from a book-loving rebel who said, “The regime destroyed [the library] because it is fighting science, culture and thought. The oppressors are fighting knowledge, because if the people were educated and cultured, they would demand their rights, which is a problem for [a]tyrannical regime.”