Opinion: Reading has been reduced to skimming, but newspapers can help open minds

John Keats’s famous poem Ode On A Grecian Urn describes the power of meaningfulness artistically crafted onto a beautiful solid object to last far longer than the fleeting orations and activities of mortals. Thus, I write this ode for an actual paper newspaper, despite its less romantic title and flair.

I have written similarly before in these pages, but although I write often in newspapers, I am neither employed by them nor receive even a pittance of remuneration. Of course, only inveterate readers past a certain age will have any resonance with the phrasing above, as we are so firmly embedded in this waning age of print media that reading itself has become a threatened species, especially for those under 30.

When I say reading, I don’t mean the literal ability to read, but the capacity to sustain concentration and interest — the outcome of contemplative reflection that stems from having read writing that adds to one’s reservoir of what matters in life or what is truly going on in the world. And when I say reading, I also mean finding meaning and enjoyment in the mental activity of doing it.

Instead, as esteemed University of California professor Maryanne Wolf has found through extensive research, true reading has shrunk into skimming, and with this comes the commensurate shrinking of intellectual retention — especially for those who have grown up immersed in social media technology.

And how could it not be this way? Every one of us has watched as whole families sit at restaurant tables, each individual flicking through their cellphone. No matter where we are, our cellphones appear and command our attention with their luminous plastic interface. We thus spend hours every day practising skimming through what we stare at, and so skim away the vitality of being present and fully engaged.

Now, to the ode on paper newspapers. Yes, we also hold the newspaper and stare. But that holding and turning of paper pages, replete with the headlines and full text of the articles, pulls us into real journalism from real writers, directly speaking to us as we turn pages. The consequent brain exercise is complex. The range of topics in newspapers is, indeed, intended to give us the news in all its varied importance. It is curated and vetted.

Instead of the absurd decision of the Vancouver school board and others in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada to embed AI chatbots in students’ school WiFi accounts, a wiser decision could be to have paper newspapers in every classroom. Just imagine students every day holding a newspaper in their hands, reading with intention, and then discussing with each other the goings on in the city, province, country and world. Then, the students could cut out articles to keep for later reference in their own writing. They could even cut out sections, photos and headlines to compose meaningful collages — as was the case in former years.

The embrace of chatbots in schools will inevitably reinforce kids’ relationships with plastic to the undeniable detriment of the depth and meaningfulness in their human relationships. In China, there is recognition that children’s AI chatbot relationships are increasingly more important than their human ones.