April 2, 1987

This is, for those of you who come to this corner seeking chronological bearings, "The Year of the Reader," so declared by the Library of Congress.

The intent of the special designation, which overlaps with The Year of the Golden Plover and The Decade of Uncommon Social Persuasion, is to make reading more accessible to Americans of all ages.  President Reagan hopes the effort will "restore reading to a place of preeminence in our personal lives and in the life of our nation."

An estimated 27 million people in this country are functionally illiterate, which means they cannot read at a fifth grade level.  When you toss in the millions of pre-schoolers and primary grade students the number of functionally illiterate mushroom dramatically.

Now the reading bandwagon has been loosed from the garage and sent rumbling across the continent, hordes are stampeding to get on board.  For instance, K-Mart, where America goes to shop, is recognizing the special year by putting up signs, handing out bookmark bag stuffers and encouraging their employees to serve as literary tutors to their communities.

Develop a mental picture of the clerk who zipped your items across the bar-marking reader the last time you visited the big city bustle - and - hustle mart.  Is this someone you want coming into your home with a reading list?

Think about the stock boy piling toilet paper into a tottering mound in aisle 32.  Is this a guy you want reading stories to you functionally illiterate?

This is how serious we are about wiping out illiteracy.  We're prepared to arm our stock boys with an arsenal of Barbara Cartland and send them off to conquer the world for readership. Restoring preeminence, indeed.

In fact, despite Steven Spielberg's comments at Monday night's Academy Award program, reading is a relic of the past, booted into antiquity by motion pictures and television.  Lifting the Titanic from the ocean floor would be kid's play compared to raising reading to its former preeminence.  And both are better left lying right where they are.

Back in the old days when people read, when the printed word was the basis for communal thought, people were too analytical, they delved too far below the surface, they too often read between the lines.  In those days they created their own images of life at seas, of flight in a balloon, of the horror of slavery.  And because they created their own images, those images became real, influencing society from the grassroots up.

When reading was preeminent, people gathered on street corners and in meeting halls to debate religion, politics, social developments.  It was a disruptive time.  People had opinions and they could back them up with words printed in black ink on white paper.

Back then politicians used the printed word to convey their beliefs.  Voters knew where their elected officials stood, and they held them accountable.  Wavering on issues was difficult when words were recorded with black ink on white paper.

Today we seldom see the written words of a president.  We see his smile, his full head of hair, his crisp wave on the evening news.  It come and it goes.  Little accountability for mistakes.  Few solid opinions.  A handsome face replacing a contemplative mind as the only qualification for high office.

Is it any wonder then, that in "The Year of the Reader" we are enlisting stock boys to raise our country's literacy rate....  ~T. Stucky