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Power of Reading

Power of Reading

The conception of a reading crisis is a sublimation of moral panic against the rise of new media and the concomitant contest of values this has brought about. Consequently, the meaning of reading has been obscured amidst impassioned debate, even as the reader is increasingly cast as an endangered animal whose extinction is perversely anticipated.

Frank Furedi says:

"Readers gain meaning from their experience through engaging with content, and how people read is influenced by wider cultural attitudes towards reading.

Contemporary society finds it difficult to take ideas and the authority of knowledge seriously. Ours is an Information Age, not an Age of Ideas. In a climate where the status of ideas and the objective significance of knowledge claims are regarded casually, literacy itself will be seen as no big deal.

The history of reading has always been bound up with the search for meaning. And meaning - whether religious, philosophical, or scientific - acquires reality for the self through providing insight into what is true.

When reading becomes divested of its truth-seeking potential it becomes banal."

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