The Decline of the West:

One day after the National Endowment for the Arts released its latest findings that we don't read much anymore (and reading comprehension test scores continue to fall), the hot news is that colleges and universities are relying ever more heavily on over worked and under paid part-time instructors to teach students in higher education. (See The New York Times story.)

Meanwhile Google has plans to create what the tech industry is referring to as "Google Magazine," presumably a magazine that allows the subscriber to choose what content, including which ads, he or she wishes to receive, corresponding to the social networking programs the tweeners, teenagers, and twenty-somethings spend all of their time with now (in place of reading?).

And yesterday, the big news was the release of a new eBook reader by Amazon.com. The device, which is wireless and plays music, costs $399, not counting the cost of the content. Who will purchase and use it to read with? Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO and founder, expects travelers and techies to be the primary market. Guess this won't help us all that much with our education problems.

What's interesting about the issues concerning the decline in reading and teaching is that these topics have been of primary concern among educators for over thirty years. Now that the economy is in free fall and America's place in the world seems more uncertain than at any time since the end of World War II, they have come to the fore.