RSA Group Reflections October 2024
Dear friends
According to a recent article in The Atlantic, in 1976 40% of American high school students had read at least six books during a calendar year. In 2024, that number is now 1%.
Reading has always played a huge part in my personal and professional life, and I must admit to feeling quite taken aback at these numbers. Judging by the commentary that emerged globally after the article was published, I am not alone.
Of course, in 1976 the world was a very different place, and your average high school student only really had access to four major information channels: books, television, radio and magazines. Today, the range of options is so diverse it is impossible to even try and list them all. So, while students are clearly not reading like they used to, there is also a case to be made that they may still be absorbing – at least to some degree – large amounts of information through new mediums.
On the other hand, there is a lot of research out there which shows that the act of reading long-form text, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, requires a 1 OCTOBER 2024 distinct set of mental processes that are particularly difficult to replicate in the digital environment. The question many experts are asking is, are our new generations at risk of becoming less able to grapple with complicated intellectual material because they no longer read long form text?
Time will answer this question, and, as a passionate amateur reader, I am really not in much of a position to address it thoroughly.
One thing I do know, however, is that throughout my life, books and the stories they contain, have played an incredibly important part in my personal and professional decision making. I find it difficult to imagine how I would have navigated crucial moments without the incredible resource of books at my disposal. And I still believe that, even in the thick of the digital age, the sharing of detailed, complex and challenging stories has enormous potential for driving positive socioeconomic growth and development in our country.
There is no doubt in my mind that if we can make sure that all our children have access to fiction and non-fiction, in a wide range of languages, we will put ourselves in a great position to achieve the growth we so desperately seek.
So, how can we get this right in an era of generally declining reading levels?
Well, maybe one of the solutions could be to detach ourselves from the slightly romantic idea of physical books being the only way to share our stories, and to place more focus on the stories themselves. Our fresh produce community, for example, is filled with fascinating stories from all dimensions of South African life. If we get better at sharing these stories using all of the fantastic tools that are available to us, maybe it won’t matter so much that many humans simply don’t go from cover to cover any more.
They say there is always a silver lining to every cloud. While books certainly seem to be fading from their central place in human society right now, we shouldn’t allow this trend to allow us to lose sight of the crucial role the stories within them play, and should always play, in our lives.
Best wishes,
Jaco Oosthuizen
P.S. Here’s a short list of a few of my favourite books, current and past, which could make for some interesting holiday reading:
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The End of Money: The Great Erosion of Trust in Banking, China’s Minsky Moment and the Fallacy of Cryptocurrency by David Buckham, Robyn Wilkinson & Christiaan Straeuli
- Leo by Deon Meyer