How to revive our reading culture

Engelsberg Ideas | Tiffany Jenkins

An OECD survey of 160,000 adults across 31 countries reveals a decade-long drop in adult reading proficiency, with Denmark and Finland standing as sole exceptions. While public discourse blames smartphones and social media algorithms for eroding attention spans, the broader decline stems from systemic cultural and institutional devaluation of literary engagement.

Historical figures including 18th-century German publicist Johann Georg Paul noted similar panics over hasty reading habits long before modern digital media emerged. Higher education institutions have compounded the crisis by replacing full texts with short excerpts, cutting humanities departments, and treating canonical literature with skepticism. Meanwhile, literacy charities framing reading as a ten-minute wellness habit reduce complex intellectual pursuit to mere self-help therapy. Self-improvement through literature has collapsed. Reversing this post-literate trajectory requires restoring high expectations for deep reading rather than treating modern technology as an inevitable scapegoat.

Comment

The 1934 expansion of Welsh coalfield miners' libraries demonstrates how institutional architecture once sustained dense literacy independent of formal academic oversight. By maintaining over 100 miners' libraries holding an average of 3,000 volumes each, these Welsh industrial communities institutionalized rigorous reading as a mechanism for political self-mastery. Current degree closures at Canterbury Christ Church University illustrate the opposite trajectory, where academic institutions dismantle humanities frameworks in favour of short-term vocational metrics.

In 1792, German publicist Johann Georg Paul documented similar concerns regarding hasty reading habits among European audiences well before digital platforms existed. However, 18th-century educational institutions responded by codifying sustained attention through civic reading societies rather than curtailing literary requirements. The drop in OECD literacy benchmarks signals an institutional abandonment of these classical standards rather than an unmanageable technological crisis.

Strategic Question for Discussion

Which factor exerts a greater long-term impact on institutional literacy standards — the structural removal of humanities degree programs like those at Canterbury Christ Church University or the shift toward ten-minute habit models promoted by modern literacy charities?

The pattern suggests that structural university rollbacks, such as degree terminations at Canterbury Christ Church University, inflict far greater long-term damage by dismantling the formal mechanisms that enforce rigorous textual analysis. While superficial ten-minute reading campaigns trivialise literacy, the institutional surrender of canonical curricula permanently lowers academic expectations for future cohorts.

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