Educators are reportedly concerned and baffled over the recent downward trend in students’ reading scores on standardized tests. Could this trend simply be the result of so much emphasis being put on what educators call “the new literacy”–that is, computer-video-techno literacy?
Schools place a high priority on and direct many resources toward this new techno-literacy in a zeal for preparing students for the “virtual reality” of the 21st Century, largely at the expense of teaching functional and critical reading skills. Many professional educators say traditional book learning is an anachronism, as obsolete and archaic to the 21st Century as the horse and buggy is to the 20th Century. Is it any wonder that this “new literacy” is creating a generation of illiterates?
