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The U.S. is producing civilizational illiterates. How will they compete against America’s global rivals?
编者注：illiterate: If you describe someone as musically, technologically, or economically illiterate, you mean that they do not know much about music, technology, or economics.
rival: Your rival is a person, business, or organization who you are competing or fighting against in the same area or for the same things.
Illlustration by Peter Oumanski
[1] The good news is that today’s teenagers are avid readers and prolific writers. The bad news is that what they are reading and writing are text messages.
编者注：avid: If you say that someone is avid for something, you mean that they are very eager to get it.
prolific: A prolific writer, artist, or composer produces a large number of works.
[2] According to a survey carried out last year by Nielsen, Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 send and receive an average of 3,339 texts per month. Teenage girls send and receive more than 4,000.
编者注：survey：If you carry out a survey, you try to find out detailed information about a lot of different people or things, usually by asking people a series of questions.
[3] It’s an unmissable trend. Even if you don’t have teenage kids, you’ll see other people’s offspring slouching around, eyes averted, tapping away, oblivious to their surroundings. Take a group of teenagers to see the seven wonders of the world. They’ll be texting all the way. Show a teenager Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi. You might get a cursory glance before a buzz signals the arrival of the latest SMS. Seconds before the earth is hit by a gigantic asteroid or engulfed by a super tsunami, millions of lithe young fingers will be typing the human race’s last inane words to itself:
C u later NOT :(
编者注：unmissable：注意到词根 ‘un-’ 和 ‘-able’ 词义就明了了。
offspring：You can refer to a person's children or to an animal's young as their offspring. (FORMAL)
slouch：If someone slouches, they sit or stand with their shoulders and head bent so they look lazy and unattractive.
avert：If you avert something unpleasant, you prevent it from happening.
Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi：文艺复兴大师波提切利的《三博士来朝》，创作于1475年－1476年间的名画。画面显示《圣经》中东方三博士朝拜耶稣基督的故事。现藏于意大利佛罗伦萨的乌菲兹美术馆。
a cursory glance：A cursory glance or examination is a brief one in which you do not pay much attention to detail.
gigantic：If you describe something as gigantic, you are emphasizing that it is extremely large in size, amount, or degree.
asteroid：An asteroid is one of the very small planets that move around the sun between Mars and Jupiter. 小行星。
engulf：If one thing engulfs another, it completely covers or hides it, often in a sudden and unexpected way.
tsunami：海啸。
inane：If you describe someone's behaviour or actions as inane, you think they are very silly or stupid.
[4] Now, before I am accused of throwing stones in a glass house, let me confess. I probably send about 50 emails a day, and I receive what seem like 200. But there’s a difference. I also read books. It’s a quaint old habit I picked up as a kid, in the days before cellphones began nesting, cuckoolike, in the palms of the young.
编者注：quaint: Something that is quaint is attractive because it is unusual and rather old-fashioned.
cuckoolike: cuckoo：布谷鸟。构词同新概念三册第一篇文章第一句Pumas are large, catlike animals.
palm：手掌。
[5] Half of today’s teenagers don’t read books — except when they’re made to. According to the most recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, the proportion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who read a book not required at school or at work is now 50.7 percent, the lowest for any adult age group younger than 75, and down from 59 percent 20 years ago.
编者注：18岁至24岁的美国人自觉读书的人数比例是50.7%，这个比例是75岁以下所有成年人年龄组中最低的。二十年前这个比例是59%。
[6] Back in 2004, when the NEA last looked at younger readers’ habits, it was already the case that fewer than one in three 13-year-olds read for pleasure every day. Especially terrifying to me as a professor is the fact that two thirds of college freshmen read for pleasure for less than an hour per week. A third of seniors don’t read for pleasure at all.
[7] Why does this matter? For two reasons. First, we are falling behind more-literate societies. According to the results of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent Program for International Student Assessment, the gap in reading ability between the 15-year-olds in the Shanghai district of China and those in the United States is now as big as the gap between the U.S. and Serbia or Chile.
[8] But the more important reason is that children who don’t read are cut off from the civilization of their ancestors.
[9] So take a look at your bookshelves. Do you have all — better make that any — of the books on the Columbia University undergraduate core curriculum? It’s not perfect, but it’s as good a list of the canon of Western civilization as I know of. Let’s take the 11 books on the syllabus for the spring 2012 semester: (1) Virgil’s Aeneid; (2) Ovid’s Metamorphoses; (3) Saint Augustine’s Confessions; (4) Dante’s The Divine Comedy; (5) Montaigne’s Essays; (6) Shakespeare’s King Lear; (7) Cervantes’s Don Quixote; (8) Goethe’s Faust; (9) Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; (10) Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; (11) Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
编者注：canon：A canon of texts is a list of them that is accepted as genuine or important. (FORMAL) 总的规则、标准或原则。
syllabus：教学大纲，课程提纲。
semester：学期（美）。
(1)至（11）分别是：（古罗马）维吉尔的《埃涅阿斯记》、奥维德的《变形记》、奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》、但丁的《神曲》、《蒙田随笔》、莎士比亚的《李尔王》、塞万提斯的《堂吉诃德》、歌德的《浮士德》、奥斯汀的《傲慢与偏见》、陀思妥耶夫斯基的《罪与罚》和弗吉尼亚•伍尔芙的《到灯塔去》。
[10] Step one: Order the ones you haven’t got today. (And get War and Peace, Great Expectations, and Moby-Dick while you’re at it.)
编者注：《战争与和平》、《远大前程》和《白鲸》。
[11] Step two: When vacation time comes around, tell the teenagers in your life you are taking them to a party. Or to camp. They won’t resist.
[12] Step three: Drive to a remote rural location where there is no cell-phone reception whatsoever.
编者注：rural: 乡村的。
[13] Step four: Reveal that this is in fact a reading party and that for the next two weeks reading is all you are proposing to do — apart from eating, sleeping, and talking about the books.
编者注：reveal：To reveal something means to make people aware of it.
propose：If you propose to do something, you intend to do it.
[14] Welcome to Book Camp, kids.
编者注：illiterate: If you describe someone as musically, technologically, or economically illiterate, you mean that they do not know much about music, technology, or economics.
rival: Your rival is a person, business, or organization who you are competing or fighting against in the same area or for the same things.
Illlustration by Peter Oumanski
[1] The good news is that today’s teenagers are avid readers and prolific writers. The bad news is that what they are reading and writing are text messages.
编者注：avid: If you say that someone is avid for something, you mean that they are very eager to get it.
prolific: A prolific writer, artist, or composer produces a large number of works.
[2] According to a survey carried out last year by Nielsen, Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 send and receive an average of 3,339 texts per month. Teenage girls send and receive more than 4,000.
编者注：survey：If you carry out a survey, you try to find out detailed information about a lot of different people or things, usually by asking people a series of questions.
[3] It’s an unmissable trend. Even if you don’t have teenage kids, you’ll see other people’s offspring slouching around, eyes averted, tapping away, oblivious to their surroundings. Take a group of teenagers to see the seven wonders of the world. They’ll be texting all the way. Show a teenager Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi. You might get a cursory glance before a buzz signals the arrival of the latest SMS. Seconds before the earth is hit by a gigantic asteroid or engulfed by a super tsunami, millions of lithe young fingers will be typing the human race’s last inane words to itself:
C u later NOT :(
编者注：unmissable：注意到词根 ‘un-’ 和 ‘-able’ 词义就明了了。
offspring：You can refer to a person's children or to an animal's young as their offspring. (FORMAL)
slouch：If someone slouches, they sit or stand with their shoulders and head bent so they look lazy and unattractive.
avert：If you avert something unpleasant, you prevent it from happening.
Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi：文艺复兴大师波提切利的《三博士来朝》，创作于1475年－1476年间的名画。画面显示《圣经》中东方三博士朝拜耶稣基督的故事。现藏于意大利佛罗伦萨的乌菲兹美术馆。
a cursory glance：A cursory glance or examination is a brief one in which you do not pay much attention to detail.
gigantic：If you describe something as gigantic, you are emphasizing that it is extremely large in size, amount, or degree.
asteroid：An asteroid is one of the very small planets that move around the sun between Mars and Jupiter. 小行星。
engulf：If one thing engulfs another, it completely covers or hides it, often in a sudden and unexpected way.
tsunami：海啸。
inane：If you describe someone's behaviour or actions as inane, you think they are very silly or stupid.
[4] Now, before I am accused of throwing stones in a glass house, let me confess. I probably send about 50 emails a day, and I receive what seem like 200. But there’s a difference. I also read books. It’s a quaint old habit I picked up as a kid, in the days before cellphones began nesting, cuckoolike, in the palms of the young.
编者注：quaint: Something that is quaint is attractive because it is unusual and rather old-fashioned.
cuckoolike: cuckoo：布谷鸟。构词同新概念三册第一篇文章第一句Pumas are large, catlike animals.
palm：手掌。
[5] Half of today’s teenagers don’t read books — except when they’re made to. According to the most recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, the proportion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who read a book not required at school or at work is now 50.7 percent, the lowest for any adult age group younger than 75, and down from 59 percent 20 years ago.
编者注：18岁至24岁的美国人自觉读书的人数比例是50.7%，这个比例是75岁以下所有成年人年龄组中最低的。二十年前这个比例是59%。
[6] Back in 2004, when the NEA last looked at younger readers’ habits, it was already the case that fewer than one in three 13-year-olds read for pleasure every day. Especially terrifying to me as a professor is the fact that two thirds of college freshmen read for pleasure for less than an hour per week. A third of seniors don’t read for pleasure at all.
[7] Why does this matter? For two reasons. First, we are falling behind more-literate societies. According to the results of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent Program for International Student Assessment, the gap in reading ability between the 15-year-olds in the Shanghai district of China and those in the United States is now as big as the gap between the U.S. and Serbia or Chile.
[8] But the more important reason is that children who don’t read are cut off from the civilization of their ancestors.
[9] So take a look at your bookshelves. Do you have all — better make that any — of the books on the Columbia University undergraduate core curriculum? It’s not perfect, but it’s as good a list of the canon of Western civilization as I know of. Let’s take the 11 books on the syllabus for the spring 2012 semester: (1) Virgil’s Aeneid; (2) Ovid’s Metamorphoses; (3) Saint Augustine’s Confessions; (4) Dante’s The Divine Comedy; (5) Montaigne’s Essays; (6) Shakespeare’s King Lear; (7) Cervantes’s Don Quixote; (8) Goethe’s Faust; (9) Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; (10) Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; (11) Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
编者注：canon：A canon of texts is a list of them that is accepted as genuine or important. (FORMAL) 总的规则、标准或原则。
syllabus：教学大纲，课程提纲。
semester：学期（美）。
(1)至（11）分别是：（古罗马）维吉尔的《埃涅阿斯记》、奥维德的《变形记》、奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》、但丁的《神曲》、《蒙田随笔》、莎士比亚的《李尔王》、塞万提斯的《堂吉诃德》、歌德的《浮士德》、奥斯汀的《傲慢与偏见》、陀思妥耶夫斯基的《罪与罚》和弗吉尼亚•伍尔芙的《到灯塔去》。
[10] Step one: Order the ones you haven’t got today. (And get War and Peace, Great Expectations, and Moby-Dick while you’re at it.)
编者注：《战争与和平》、《远大前程》和《白鲸》。
[11] Step two: When vacation time comes around, tell the teenagers in your life you are taking them to a party. Or to camp. They won’t resist.
[12] Step three: Drive to a remote rural location where there is no cell-phone reception whatsoever.
编者注：rural: 乡村的。
[13] Step four: Reveal that this is in fact a reading party and that for the next two weeks reading is all you are proposing to do — apart from eating, sleeping, and talking about the books.
编者注：reveal：To reveal something means to make people aware of it.
propose：If you propose to do something, you intend to do it.
[14] Welcome to Book Camp, kids.