• E S NO. 2 IN A SERIES "THE READING CRISIS"

Why We Don't Read—and Who's to Blame

A re advances in science and technology being slowed down by wrong attitudes toward reading?

Have important segments of business and science, in the name of efficiency and economy, adopted unrealistic ideas* about reading?

Should many scientists and business executives re-think their ideas of what to *-ead? Of how to read?

A growing number of leaders in both science and industry will say "yes" to all of these questions. This means that we face a crisis in reading.

AVhat has happened to reading? Why has this crisis grown? Let's look at a statistic or two. The last quarter century has seen a tremendous growth in reading matter. In the field of business papers alone, the number has grown from 1474- in 1940 to more

than £000 today. During the same period, the number of editorial pages increased over 70%· I have no figures on the growth of scientific journals. However, the AIIEHICAN CHEMICAL

SOCIETY, which .50 years ag;o was publishing two journals, today issues seven. The Society added each new journal because of pressures to publish the ever-increasing amount of sound, essential scientific- material in pure and applied chemistry and chemical engineering. In most other fields of science and industry there has been similar growth.

The increase in the amount of reading material has made the reader's task at times seem baffling and bewildering-.

Other developments have intensified the problem. Two great competitors for reading time, radio and television, have come along — one in the early £0\s, the other in the middle 40\s.

Because of the automobile and the plane, people move about further and faster than ever before. That makes more competitors for reading time — sporting events, week-end trips, and many other distractions.

Science, technology, and industry have grown in size and complexity. The modern scien­tist and businessman may work shorter hours, but they are asked to do much more in those hours than their grandfathers. Caught in this inflationary squeeze of more t o read with seem ingly less time to read i t , the potential readers have sought refuge in a contradictory solution.

They have more to read, but there is more that should be read. So they have tried to solve their problem by spending less time in reading. Or they have welcomed such devices as abstracts, pre-reading, and other methods which stand — sometimes as mediators, but more often as walls — betweem readers and their reading. That these aren't solutions at all is be­ginning to dawn on the people who grasped at them so eagerly.

In many companies the number of employees has grown, but the amount of reading furnished to the staffs lias not grown at the same rate.

Hard-boiled accounting, economy waves, and so-called realistic examination often result in a smaller number of magazines available to employees and a larger number of people sup­posed to read each magazine. The magazine route list that used to have three or four names today may have a dozen or more. Yet the actual dollar saving is pitifully small if you consider the harmful results.

There is another paradox. The amount of helpful, vital reading available is greater than ever before. But many company executives cling to the antiquated idea that to read anything but routine correspondence and long, over-written "reports" in office hours is unbusinesslike.

All of this has affected the business executive and the scientist working in industry. Discouraged by their companies from doing the amount and kind of reading they should do, they have easily fallen into the habit of repeating the cliche, "There is too much to read and not enough time to read it.""

Today, many scientists and executives are doing far less reading than they could, are making a poorer selection of material to be read (or, what is worse, allowing* others to select it for them), are getting into lazy reading habits. They deny themselves information which is essential to the rapid advance of sound, scientific management methods.

Next week I would like to talk about some of the so-called solutions to the reading prob­lem and why they complicate rather than solve the problem.

C. B. LARRABEE Director of Applied Publications American Chemical Society

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