Here we are in 2006 asking our students to read in black and white, when most of the world once read in color and is again doing much of its reading in color. Have we educators gone crazy?
A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts (Hill, 2004) is a resounding confirmation of the need for a radically new solution to our literature and literacy problems. Americans—especially young Americans—are reading much less than before. In an age of television, the Internet, movies, and music videos, never again will Gutenberg-style black-and-white text be the fountainhead of “a free, innovative, or productive society,” as the NEA report says (p. vii).