August 6, 2025 • 52 mins
Reading scores in America are plummeting, and the crisis is deeper than just academics—it’s a cultural and spiritual emergency. Could reading aloud be the antidote? Wall Street Journal children’s book critic Meghan Cox Gurdon joins Raymond Arroyo to reveal how this simple, ancient practice can rewire attention spans, restore family connection, and ignite a lifelong love of learning.
Plus, Raymond sounds off on the controversial production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, where Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo starred as Jesus. Is this boundary-pushing theater—or a double standard when it comes to religious offense? From the decline in literacy to the rise of performative blasphemy, this episode connects the dots between cultural collapse and spiritual hunger.
You’ll also hear about the push to cancel classic children’s authors like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Dr. Seuss, why smartphones are sabotaging young minds, and how one classroom mystery story sparked Raymond’s own love of reading. If you care about kids, culture, or the written word, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Subscribe to Arroyo Grande now and join the movement to revive faith, imagination, and human connection—one story at a time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Reading comprehension among fourth and eighth graders are an all
time low. How can it be turned around? And is
reading aloud? The answer of Wall Street Journal's children's book
reviewer Megan Cox Gurdon is here with answers and a
wicked witch plays Jesus. I'll get into all of it
on this Arroyo Grande show. Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo.
(00:32):
Welcome to a Royal Grande. Go subscribe to the show
right now. Turn those notifications on. I want you to
know what's coming this good stuff. Let's start with a
culture counter. There was a rather obnoxious concert at the
Hollywood Bowl recently. They staged Jesus Christ Superstar starring Wicked
Cynthia Arrivo. Is Jesus, Why just why? I know the
(00:53):
shock values appealing to some, but imagine casting a guy
as Mama Rose and Gypsy or Manny your Gun. There
would be howls of protests, or you'd hope they would
be from actresses who've trained their whole lives for this
kind of opportunity. But this is different. Jesus Christ Superstar
always tilted to just this side of blasphemy, suggesting a
(01:17):
more intimate relationship between the Savior and Mary Magdalene than
the scriptures or tradition ever afforded. There's no disputing the
vocal powerhouse that arevo is. She's an incredible singer, But
why is she playing this role of Jesus. God could
have come as a woman or as a camel if
he wanted to, but he came as a man. And
(01:38):
when you start twisting that historic reality, you rub believer's
sensitivities the wrong way. And it's not people being prudes.
They actually believe that Jesus Christ, who was born two
thousand years ago, is the Messiah, and so you're treading
on sacred ground and they are justifiably offended when a
(01:58):
bald woman shows up as Jesus. Now, I know it's
just a summer musical, but if the creative team really
wanted to be edgy, why doesn't the Hollywood Bowl stage
a Mohammed musical? They could call it Man from La
Meca with Cynthia Arrivo in the lead role. Let me
know what the audience reaction is. I'll be hiding under
the seat. They wouldn't dare. But why is offending Christian's
(02:23):
fair game? When I first saw images of a Rivo
as Jesus. I have to say, the thought that came
to mind was, Oh, this must be that beloved musical,
my fair nos Ferantu. With those challenges, she's downright scary.
She does look like an angel, the fallen variety. The
amazing thing to me is that same weekend of the
(02:43):
Hollywood Bowl Jesus Musical, on the other side of the
world there was another Bowl showcasing Jesus. Pope Leo addressed
a million young people from all over the globe at
a huge outdoor event in Rome. It was a jubilee
for youth. There was beautiful muse no screaming or talons,
and a very powerful message.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
If you truly want to encounter the risen Lord, then
listen to his word, which is the Gospel of salvation.
Reflect on your way of living, seek justice in order
to build a more humane world, serve the poor, and
(03:25):
so bear witness to the good that we would always
like to receive from our neighbors. At every step. As
we seek what is good, let us ask him Stay
with us.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Lord. As I watched this right after seeing clips of
Arivo wailing and arriving on the floor of the Hollywood Bowl.
I thought, isn't it curious that there are two Jesus
bulls if you will, but only one will have any
real impact or power in time? Oh, some were thrilled
at the vocals of the Andrew Lloyd Webbery stage. But
will it change any lives convict people to choose a
(04:02):
new path? Doubtful. But surely the massive papal event where
the focus was on the actual word and person of
Jesus Christ, not the superstar the Savior. I bet that
will have a much longer legacy. As for the Hollywood
Bowl Jesus Christ Superstar, it may not have been an
accurate depiction of the Son of God, but there's one
(04:24):
thing you have to say about it, and it would
have been a great tagline for them. Arevo and company
put the mess back in Messiah up next? Did you
see this news that a male artificial contraceptive is entering
human trials? God help us. This is just what we
need at a time when sperm counts have declined by
(04:45):
fifty percent in the last forty years. Researchers don't know
exactly why men are seeing a drop off, but sedentary
lifestyles and eating fast food of probably contributing factors. The
body needs to be well fed and moved to function.
Exercising your thumbs playing video games is not exactly robust
cardiac activity. With testosterone and sperm counts falling. Who thought
(05:09):
it would be a good idea to introduce men to
a pill that literally stops sperm production, and who knows
what side effects this thing will have. If it's anything
like the female contraceptives, they're likely to be very, very bad,
which can destroy fertility and cause bloating in other difficulties.
Look this summer, the US birth rate hit an all
time low, when men are already having an identity crisis
(05:33):
and reluctant to even approach women. Is this the time
to neuter guys altogether? The researchers would be better off
spending their time working to increase fertility in men and
the components necessary to facilitate it. We as a society
should be promoting committed love so we have more children.
We need more people guys. In terms you can understand,
(05:57):
it's like that age of Empire's game. Do you want
a bigger army or one guy in your campaign? You
want the sprawling legions, So don't let anyone take away
your army of swimmers, or distort the pool they're entering
with unnatural hormone regimes. Finally, a zoo in Denmark has
posted a message asking for the donation of smaller pets,
(06:21):
which sounds like a nice idea until you read the
fine print. Their Instagram post asks did you know that
you can donate smaller pets to Alborg Zoo? Chickens, rabbits,
guinea pigs make an important part of the diet of
our predators, especially in the European locust, which needs whole
(06:42):
prey which is reminiscent of what it would naturally hunt
in the wild. That's right. They aren't collecting animals to
show them off. They're collecting dinner for the lions and cougars.
They even suggest donating your horse if you have a
spare one in the barn. This is crazy. Who's going
to willingly give their pets away knowing they'll be consumed
by a predator. Next, they'll be asking for any extra
(07:04):
grandparents or relatives you have lying around. They're already euthanizing
people in Asia. I guess the lions have to eat too.
Funny how the zoo is so concerned about protecting the
animal's natural eating habits. I wish they'd show the same
concern for the natural lifespans and reproductive habits of humans.
(07:25):
Now to our deep dive. My guest today has been
a foreign correspondent and since two thousand and five, the
Wall Street Journal's children's book reviewer. She wrote the most
incredible book called The Enchanted Hour, The Miraculous Power of
Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. Megan Cox Gurdon,
thank you for being here. Look, I was stunned by
(07:47):
your recent column where you wrote only five percent of
English majors at two Midwestern schools could make sense of
the paragraphs from Bleak House by Charles Dickens. How did
we get here? What happened in the culture and in
the schools that created this outcome where you have college
kids who simply can't comprehend what was once fought part
(08:10):
of the English canon.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It wasn't just part of the English canon. I mean,
Dickens was a popular writer. He was writing for everybody.
He wasn't writing for esoteric you know, seminars. Yeah, yeah,
I mean what has happened in the culture, My goodness,
that's a big question, Like what are the causes of
World War two.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Uh but you.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Know, I so so that little column that I wrote
was really about me grappling with the thought that something
that has been an axiomatic part of civilization for you know,
hundreds and hundreds of years, which is reading as a
practice and a discipline and a kind of aspirational thing,
reading is actually retreating from our culture. It's it's quite remarkable.
(08:52):
I mean, there we are, we are, we are almost
at a point now where reading is an uncommon activity.
I mean, yeah, people get a lot of information from
their phones and from technology and from other things. They
get short snippets. They don't read. I mean, obviously there
are outliers and everything. But you know, your standard issue
(09:13):
college student isn't reading for pleasure, Your standard issue high
school student isn't reading for pleasure, or isn't expected to
read even for comprehension for classrooms. You know, in that
same piece that you mentioned, we've seen this race recent
thing where the SAT now has cut the length of
the reading comprehension passages to one hundred and fifty words.
(09:36):
So it's getting it's like the tweetification of the whole culture.
Everything's getting shorter. Now, obviously society has you know, we've
things have come in and out of fashion, but to
leave behind reading seems like a very profound cutting us
off from the past.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well look, I mean you're talking the piece about the
impact of smartphones. I mean this is now almost a
spiritual devotion to people. Okay, there for information, relationships, affirmation,
basic what was once basic lived experience they now do
entirely through the phone and through a virtual connection. The
(10:12):
impact of that, though, you don't have the deep reflection
that reading brings, and if that practice dies out, you
do lose a great deal as a culture, as a person,
just as a human person and a soul.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right right, I mean we have you know, the body
of literature is sometimes referred to as the great conversation. Right,
this is conversation between people long dead and people still
yet to be born. And we can, through reading literature
and kind of you know, intellectual works, essays and whatnot,
we can participate in the thinking processes of people who
(10:49):
lived two thousand years ago or a thousand years ago.
You know, it's quite extraordinary. There's this long golden thread
of conversation that comes to us, call it from Greeks
up till now, and if you lose the ability to read,
and literally reading is not a natural thing. And as
Marianne Wolf has described it so well, you know, reading
(11:10):
is not natural to our brains. We have to we
have to learn to read, and it's difficult. It's you know,
as a lot of us know from our school years
or when we had children going to learning to read.
It's an arduous process. So it takes it takes a
certain cultivation of the brain that allows us to participate
in this conversation with the past.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And I always say it's like a time machine, Megan.
I mean, you know, every book is like a time machine,
and you can go places you will never go in life,
and experience and touch minds and historical figures that you'd
have no access to otherwise. That's a great gift.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's a great gift. I mean, James Baldwin once said
something like I can't do the mangle the quotation if
I try it, but something like, you know, you can
feel alone in your life or in some predicament that
you're experiencing, and it actually turns out that other people
have felt it and they've been in it, and so
so Baldwin, as a black man in the modern era
could read Shakespeare and think I feel seen, I feel understood.
(12:08):
I am connected to this great human project. So yeah,
so having reading disappears, you know, it's it's more significant,
as you say, it's like a soul question as well,
you know, if you don't have if you you know
this this idea of college students not being able to
really understand metaphorical and figurative language, which was the real
problem for them with the seven paragraphs of Dickens. They
(12:31):
are simply at sea. They are cut off from the conversation.
And these are English majors, so we really are we
are at a kind of hinge point. And you know.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What does a book furnish individuals with that? The dopamine
rush of phone scrolling does not.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
It's a slower burn, isn't it. What does a book?
I mean a book, any book? And the truth is right,
you have to from a book, you well, I mean,
as you know, I've done a lot of work with
books and children, and it is certainly the case with
young people that if they are read to, which is
one way, it's very easy. You don't have to you
(13:15):
don't have to train your brain to be read to.
You know, the person who's reading has to have the
trained brain, but the person who's listening merely has to
people to make sense of the words, which is very
easy to do with the ears. You get a kind
of a kind of depth, don't you. You You get
a depth of characterization and of scene making and connections
(13:36):
between the world that you are in and connections with
the thing on the page. And there's a lot of
work that goes on in the young brain, you know,
to process this information. That is that has seems to
have a kind of I want to say, what is
the thing that causes someone to flourish? It produces a
kind of flourishing of the intellect and also of language,
so that a person who who is reading the written
(13:58):
word is getting really a more sophisticated form of language
than the spoken word. You know, you and I in
this conversation may use one or two esoteric terms, but
we're not going to use any archaisms. Probably well, unless.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I just did, yeah, hold my beer, we'll see. Can
reading here's my question. Can reading counteract some of the
damage that phones inflict on the brain, And it does
take a toll on the human brain. We have all
the data.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Now, yeah, yeah, I mean I think I think that
that's probably true. You know, I'm not a clinician, so
I can't speak directly to that, to the trade offs there,
but we do know that forgive me for banging on
my particular drum here, but that reading aloud is absolutely
absolutely supplies things that are being depleted by the phones.
(14:50):
And some of these, you know, to back to your
point about so some of these, these these these sort
of qualities of being are a little slippery, like feelings
of connectedness, feelings of presence. You know, we know that
children today and this has been a while now, I mean,
the phones have been with us for a long time now, Uh,
they're accustomed to the adults around them not really being there.
(15:13):
There's this concept of absent presence. So a person on
his or her phone, you know, is in the phone.
I mean, we've all done it. We can see everyone
around us doing it, and they're they're they're in the
room with you, but they're not really there, you know,
And the presence of the phone even it's you know,
we know, it's demonstrated that if a phone is on,
let's say at dinner table, everyone at the table is
(15:36):
slightly altered by the presence of the phone. Because the
phone is this portal to dopamine and alternate information and
entertainment and whatever they do. The phones do have these distorting,
uh you know, reshaping effects.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Huh Yeah. And I want to get into some of
what you've discovered and shared with us over the years
about reading aloud, because it is a powerful tool. I've
seen it in my own face. I know you relate
how it touched your five children and yourself in incredible ways.
Eighty five percent of kids Megan who got into trouble
with the law had poor literacy skills. Right. I read
(16:13):
a statistic today, twenty one percent of American adults are
functionally illiterate. That's forty five million people. Why has reading
for pleasure all but disappeared among young people?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, that is another one of these massive questions. Why
has it disappeared? I mean, obviously the phones have been
very important in displacing you know, you don't, you don't.
It doesn't require any there's there's no kind of preparation
required for receiving pleasure and dopamine from the phone. You
just open it and it goes. Whereas with reading, I
(16:48):
mean as those of us who grew up reading and
loving it. No, it's you know, you go through the
sort of the arduousness of learning to do it, and
then you get to just disappear into these worlds. I mean,
obviously not everybody always has read enthusiastically for pleasure. It's
been a real struggle for you know, a lot of people.
I know, my own husband didn't learn to read for pleasure.
(17:09):
I didn't really read for pleasure until he was in
his teens. By then, of course I had spent years,
you know, curled up reading. Yeah, so it just it is.
It is a very deep and profound pleasure that has
not been accessible to everybody. And the phones are accessible
to everybody. And I think that's one good answer for
you right there.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah. Well, the minute and a half videos are a
lot less, there's less commitment there, and you just scroll
through to the next one if you don't like what
you see. I mean, the retention rates even of these
videos make it. And obviously, being a broadcaster, I spend
time watching this stuff. It's infantasimal. You're talking about eight
to ten seconds people thirty seconds they're watching these things
before they're off to the next so and that too,
(17:51):
I see as a function of the mind that is
just bouncing all over the place with ad D like
you know, abandoned, other than focusing on a story, a character,
a through line, holding these elements together. That reading trains
you to do right some more right.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
That's training is a good word for it, because you
have to be trained in order to do it, and
you have to train yourself to do it and you
and it trains you and forms you as you do it.
I didn't know about you, but I know a lot
of people myself included, who Now, if I really want
to do deep reading, I have to put the phone away.
It has to be at a physical remove for me,
(18:31):
because if it's under my leg or just buy my
elbow or something, it prompted by Heaven knows what. I Well,
I find myself bick and I'll think the heck I
was reading? Like what am I doing now?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's like a familiar you know, prowling around waiting
for you. I need to take the fall. Yeah, let's
talk not just about reading. And I want to get
to practical tips to help young people to read later
and parents certainly need this. But tell me about the
power of reading aloud. You had five children, have five children,
(19:06):
you read to all of them from really before they
were born. Yeah, tell me about that, and why? What
the power of reading aloud as opposed to just reading
the written word itself.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, So reading aloud. One of the things that's wonderful
about it, as I mentioned earlier, is that the person
who's doing the reading is essentially, you know, applying the training,
and you know, it's very easy for and the language
that we get through books is more sophisticated than the
regular language that we get. So when to use the
simplest example, a parent is reading aloud to a child,
(19:38):
the parent can read books that are more sophisticated or
pitched at a level above the child's age. Say not
not to you know, to make it demanding and difficult,
but it's simply it's a child can take in information
that's quite sophisticated. You and I may have talked about
this before, but you know, we all of us have
(19:59):
a receptive vocabulary. So when you read aloud, not only
are you giving a child in this case again parent
and chob a story, and you're giving them rich language.
You're creating worlds in their heads. What the old radio
people used to call theater of the mind. It's just
the sound and it allows a kind of deep, deep
(20:22):
brain engagement for children, especially if they're they're young children,
and they're looking at pictures that aren't moving, so still
pictures that allow their brains to make sense of the image.
They're hearing a story, they're perceiving the kind of physical
presence of the loving adult, and that's very significant. There's
a kind of hormonal shift that takes place when parents
(20:43):
and children sit down to read together. It isn't just
an intellectual exercise. It's an emotional exercise. I mean, the
dimensions of this are extraordinary. And as you know, as
I know, you know, when you sit with a child
and read, something happens. Something more than regular life is happening.
There's a kind of knitting together that is, it's it's
(21:06):
in the imagination, it's in it's it's in a physical sense.
There's a kind of comfort that comes. You know, the
stress hormones go down, the bonding hormones go up, and
all of this is taking place over a piece of writing.
So you get grammar and syntax and story and you know,
and good stories obviously too. You don't know what's going
(21:28):
to happen, so there's a sense of something is, something
is happening as you read. It isn't just that you
know that it's done when you sit down to read together,
but you're also in a process of sort of mutual
discovery and excitement when you read a story.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I mean, no, it's an imaginative journey. I mean you
said it it's an enchanted hour.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And there's something incredible about I mean, there's a there's
the connection, empathy, I think focus, having everybody in the
room on an entire family focused on the same thing,
which is law. You know, TV used to do this
for us, Megan, and at one time. Now everybody's on
their own phone doing their watching and in their own world.
This is a moment where everybody comes together imaginatively in
(22:09):
a moment and rhythm is imparted and focus and empathy
for the characters that are going on. And as you
mentioned it, it reminded me of something, you know, my early life.
I was a classically trained actor. I did Shakespeare and
Racine and mol year. When you have that kind of
greatness in your mouth, that those ideas and words and shape,
(22:30):
it does transform you. It does leave a mark.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I like that greatness in your mouth. That's right, that's right.
So when you yeah, if you read. So, my husband
and I just did a little reading up here. We're
up in Main this summer, and we did a reading
of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and we had
a small audience and it was great because we were
embodying Coleridge, you know, it just it wasn't just us
(22:53):
standing there talking. It was using these beautiful phrases which
have been running through my head ever since. No, you're
exactly right. Yeah, you know something else about children's books.
You know, not every parent is really good at saying
using loving phrases, right, Not everybody is very sort of effusive,
(23:14):
And a lot of books for little children have built
into them loving language. So we talked about the greatness
in the mouth. But when a parent reads aloud a
book that is portraying a loving situation and that one
character is saying a loving thing to another, the child
hears those words in the parent's voice. So in a way,
(23:35):
books can also be a kind of primer to developing closer,
you know, just helping people express express themselves in ways
that they might not ordinarily be able to do.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No deeper emotional ties. It does certainly create that, and
we both had the experience. And I think anybody who's
read to a child where you pick up a book
you knew in your young life, yes, and you read
it as an adult to your and the entire emotional
landscape beneath it shifts on you, and you know, you
start crying at the oddest moments reading Treasure Island or
(24:09):
Peter Pan, and you know it's it's and that that
moment too, and explaining because the kid inevitably looks and goes,
why are you crying? Yeah, you keep reading, and you
have a moment to explain to them how the evolution
of that story changed you and what it really means.
You know. So it is it's an on ramp to
so much humanity.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I want to tell you one little story, if I may,
And this doesn't really have so much to do with
reading to children, though it's part of it. My mother
has died, but before she died, I read Kipling's Just
So Stories to her, and she had read them to
me when I was a girl, and I had read
them to my children. And the last time that my
mother had heard the Justice Stories when was when her
(24:51):
own mother was reading to her. So it was a
deep and enriching experience for both of us because here
I was reading words that my mother had read to me,
that I had read to my children, that she hadn't heard.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It was creating this like lovely braided feeling through time
from my long dead grandmother to my now dead mother
to you know, like it was really yeah, So there's
a kind of generational knitting together as well that you get.
And you mentioned Peter Panaman that's a speaking weird stories.
That is a really weird story, but it's.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It is a bizarre story. But reading that.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Weaves us together with the Victorians a little, you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Know, that's right. It does and about and it's about
youth and the loss of youth and having to become
an adult and all of that. You know, there's such
richness in those in those works, a little bit bizarre
beneath the surface. Well, but there's a lot of richness here.
What would you recommend to people to families? How do
you begin this if you haven't done it yet?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So my recommendation is you just as with anything that
you want to do, you just start, You just do
a baby step. You just start today. You know today,
you just at some point when everyone's together. Let's say
it might be a dinner, you know, it might be
an early dinner, it might be bathtime, whenever it is
when you have people kind of corralled and everyone's together,
pick something up and start to read, and then do
(26:10):
the same thing again tomorrow at the same time. And
you know, it doesn't have to be an enchanted hour.
It can be enchanted five minutes. One of the things
that certainly, I mean, I've seen this happen, that people
get a taste of this, you know, as we were
talking about how it's this rare and wonderful experience, it's
not like the rest of life, and then they they
it can be almost a little embarrassing for some kids.
(26:32):
They're kind, they're you know, they're jaded, and they're used
to their phones and whatever, like, mom, what are you
doing reading? But actually they're not immune to the charms
of this process. And you give it to them for
five minutes today, five minutes tomorrow, and then pretty soon
you may find as there's a test case in my
book actually of a family that did this and they
they were a big TV family. They didn't think it
(26:52):
was going to work, and it turned out to be
in sourcel the whole lot of them. Everyone loved it. It
was everyone's favorite part of every day, wasted hour in
the evening. So I believe it can happen. You know,
even bach families, that can happen well.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And you're also creating family rituals and deep, deep emotional,
artistic and imaginative memories that I think carry through the
rest of your life. I mean, they just do they
mark you.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yeah, No, I I one hundred percent endorse that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
In your book, you talk about going Megan, if I'm
remembering correctly, to the Cincinnati Children's Reading and Discovery Center,
tell me what you learned there. They spoke of something
called the Goldilocks effect. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
So the Goldilocks effect, as the old story goes, Remember,
there's there's parts that's too hot, in pars that's too cold,
and then there's parts that's just right, and a bed
that's too soft, in a bed that's too hard, in
a bed that's just right. So the Goldilocks of effect
obviously refers to the thing that is just right and
that is just this is what happened, what the researchers
(27:58):
there did, and the research which was led by John Hutton,
I should credit him. They put children through scanners and
then look to see what brain domains were activated under
certain circumstances. So they showed the children, for instance, they
showed them video, they showed them still pictures. They allowed
(28:18):
the children to listen to a story simply read with
no visuals, and then the Goldilocks moment was these were
young children. They were sort of roughly four year olds,
but three to five, but mostly four year olds. The
Goldilocks was essentially the picture book Raymond. So it was
hearing a story read aloud and seeing pictures that didn't
(28:40):
jump around, that didn't move because the thing with video,
you know, you mentioned earlier about phones and how people's
attentions pan jumps around, but it very much engages our
the portions of our brain that you know, register sort
of the shock and awe of moving things, of things
that are happening quickly. But there can't be there simply
(29:01):
cannot be deeper reflection if it's all going so fast,
jump jump, jump, cut. You know, a child can't make
there's no sense, there's no moment to pause, and some
of the deep work that happens in the brain really
helping to habituate the brain to concentration and to focus
and all of these wonderful things that we want to
achieve with children. Yeah, developing empathy and theory of mind
(29:22):
and all that that really can only that work can
only take place at a more sedate pace. So a
picture book is really it is the Goldilocks. Just write porridge,
just right chair, just right bed, because it takes place
in a way that gives a child time to process
what's happening at a deeper level, and the different brain
(29:42):
domains communicate, allowing you know, thoughts to flow in.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, somewhere in the book you write, and I'm gonna
quote you, you write, besides developing language facility, empathy, and
cultural literacy, reading a loud creates a deep bond between
reader and listener, sweeping them together in a lovely neurochemical tsunami.
(30:08):
I love that lot because it's so true. And look,
you mentioned the study at the Cincinnati Reading and Development Center.
There was another study I read, and the researchers basically
put adults into an MRI and they fed audio into
their ears. Of a chapter of Charles Dickens, and their
brains fired in the same domains, in the same place
(30:32):
at the same time. Their breathing also became consistent. No
matter who they were, old, young, black, white, they had
a consistency of not only brain activity, but the breathing regulated.
And the researcher said, story was a deep brain device
capable of making people react in the same way at
(30:55):
the same time, right right.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's fantastic. I don't know about that. I would love
to see it. That is exactly what I found when
I was researching my book, that this was one of
the one of the many knock on extraordinary things, one
of the explanations for the for the that feeling of
goodness that happens. There's some connection and symmetry and synchronicity
and whatever it is you know when you're when someone's
(31:19):
reading to you, because your brain's literally synchronize. And this
doesn't just happen in reading, it can also happen. Let's
say you have a great raconteur spinning a story. If
you were to monitor the brain of the raconteur and
the brains of the people listening to the story, which
is actually what happens when someone's reading aloud. It's as
though you impersonate the great raconteur, You're the great story Ah.
(31:40):
The brains synchronize, uh, in response to the story, and
that produces that chemical reality, which is that everybody is
kind of on the same page and feels together. And
it's one of the and as you as you say
this is this can be felt not just by children
and by parents, but you know, for the book, I
and spent some time with a reading group for very
(32:02):
old people. Some of them were at that time a
few years ago, they had survived the Holocaust. They were
children at the time, and they felt that this shared
reading experience that they had. It was a once a
week thing, for an hour kind of thing. Somebody would
read to them and they would all follow along. They
experienced that synchronicity and it was immensely restorative and joyful,
(32:23):
and it was, you know, a way to use the brain,
to feel the brain and the emotions being engaged without
having you know, or without some people. I mean, of course,
people lose their ability to read. They can't move around
very much in extreme old age, you know, they don't
get touched very often in extreme old age, and this
was a way to kind of have the whole human person,
(32:45):
the soul of the person, you know, catered to just
through the written word turned into the spoken word. I mean,
really quite magical.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I'll say, I'll say, and deeply human were wired
this way. I mean I had a great comedian one
tell me you know. I asked him, when you go out,
you what's the first thing you do? And he said,
the first thing you have to do is to get
them in your rhythm. You have to send out your
rhythm and impose it on them. And that's kind of
what a great rock on tour, a great reader does.
(33:16):
You kind of everybody gets swept up in the same vibe,
if you will.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah, that's right. And there's a kind of authority. Well,
you said you were a performer. You know this. I
mean if an actor comes on stage and says, well
I'm not really sure about this material, guys, everyone loses confidence.
But you come out and you occupy you have the
greatness in your mouth, as you said, occupy the role.
You begin to read. You are the authority. People can
kind of relax into the experience. This is one of
(33:41):
the things that is very noticeable in classrooms when teachers
use reading aloud, which anecdotally I understand that it's not
such a practice as it once was. But almost ever,
you scratch an adult and there's a story about how, oh,
my fourth grade teacher read to us. You know, everyone remembers, right.
And the great thing about it is in the classroom
setting is you have children very different abilities, some of
(34:04):
whom will maybe never be able to read for pleasure
because they just don't have the cognitive you know, to
do that or whatever they're the attention has been. But
in a classroom, it's kind of they're imprisoned. They have
to be there. The teacher reads aloud, they can all
relax into the experience, and so the A student and
the C student can get a story at the same time.
(34:26):
But it's kind of the same level of pleasure because
they can just relax.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
You know. I have parents write me all the time, Megan,
and they tell me their kids ask them to reread
some picture book over and over and over again. What
is it about repetition? You know, there's a Christmas picture
book I did years ago. Every Christmas I get inundated
with more letters, and it's about that. My kids want
me to keep reading it, and I mean, I love this.
(34:51):
I mean that's why you Yeah, as an author, you're right,
you want people to experience it and make it a
part of their lives, their rituals. But why do why
do they want to hear it told again and again?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Well, okay, so there is an answer, or there are
some answers, but there is also an element of mystery.
So the mystery is we don't really know why that is,
but some of one answer is and and this is
documented that with each successive read, a child gets understands
(35:21):
more of what they're hearing, so they have Also there's
a kind of there's there's the pleasure of comprehension. There's
the pleasure of return and revisiting characters you're already familiar with.
We know this as adults, right, If you reread a book,
sometimes you get much more out of it the second time.
I just read Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country for
the third time, and I finally feel like I really
(35:45):
kind of extracted all the goodness from that story. And
I mean, you know, I'm a decent reader, but it
took me three times through just to really feel as
though I got it all and and so that that
happens with children. And there was a there was a
study done in England's years ago in which made up
words were smuggled into picture books and children were read
(36:06):
the picture books and and so these were words they
would never encounter in real life because they were in
fact made up things. But by the time that the
children had had the stories read to them several times,
they they had a meaning for these made up words,
you know, because that the context gave them something. So
so there, so there is all of that. There's that,
there's familiarity, and children, as you know, love, they love routine,
(36:29):
they love reassurance. Yes, it gives their world boundaries. And
you hear the same story over and over again is
to experience the pleasure over and over again. But again,
I think there is I think it's important to be
a little humble about it, that there there is an
element of mystery. It's not just pedagogical, because our experience
of literature is not just about you know, becoming a
(36:51):
better of citizen or learning more English or you know whatever.
It's not. It's not cod liver oil. There's magic here.
It's it's it's about beauty and something deep in the
heart and you know your Christmas story. Yeah, that's the
kind of story absolutely children. I mean, it would come
out annually. There's that, so there's the pleasure of return
at Christmas and yet that excitement when they opened the box.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Like and we're wired that way. We're just wired. I
think we're wired for story, We're wired for affection, we're
wired for imagination and joy. And I think that you know,
in some ways, those picture books, particularly those children's literature
or what once was children's literature, captured a lot of that.
Why is live reading preferable to audiobooks?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Megan, Oh, well, okay, so I think I'm a huge
proponent of audiobooks and I.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Love Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah, I think they're great. The only preference I would
say is in the context of children, especially younger children,
because an audiobook, like a television show, is not going
to pause or answer your questions or give you a
moment to reflect. And so if a child is just listening,
So if you're listening, like say you're in the car,
(38:01):
somebody doesn't the child doesn't understand something that just went by.
And you can often when you're with a child, you
can see if you're reading to a child, you can
see the face goes a little blank, the eyes get
a little long focused, and you think, did you did
you understand that? And you can pause and stop. So
if you if you just put an audiobook on for
your child and you leave the room and there's nobody
there to mediate or to be a resource, that that's fine.
(38:22):
The child may just have a wonderful time and not
it doesn't matter, you know, that's there is that it
doesn't always matter. But a live reading is you're much
more contingent. The child has the contingency of an adult
who is interested in the child getting from the story
what the story has to offer. So that's really that's
that's the principal reason. And contingency with young children is
(38:45):
very important. It's one of the ways that allows them
to learn. You know, you can't children learn from being
spoken to. They learn, they learn language certainly that way.
You can't just play like, you know, Mandarin for four
year olds to an English speaking child and expect the
four year old to get it. But a Mandarin speaker
can teach a four year old child Mandarin, you know,
(39:05):
to the very easy.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Easy Yeah, well for them, not for us. Yeah, no,
for me, the forty percent of fourth graders are beneath
reading proficiency. Now, yeah, Megan, a third of eighth graders
are not hitting the reading benchmarks. That's the largest percentage ever.
What does that mean for the country.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
It's bad. It's bad news, Raymond. As you mentioned earlier
that there are there's an alarming number of functionally illiterate adults.
It is also the case, and this is I believe
well documented that early illiteracy produces later illiteracy produces later criminality.
It's it's just you know, it's does it produce criminality?
(39:51):
Is it? Does it go along with it? I mean,
there are a lot of things that there are a
lot of kind of contributing factors, no doubt, but it
is absolutely the case that large numbers of people who
are in curs rated have very low literacy levels, and literacy,
you know, by eighth grade, it's kind of too late,
you know, It's I mean, I don't know that in
every individual case you would say it's too late. There
(40:12):
are probably reclamation efforts that can be made, but for
a for a classroom of children if most of them
can't read, as we know from some schools that none
of them can read. You know, it's the knock on
effects are going to be profound that these are people
If you can't read, you know, it's leaving aside the
esoteric beauties of the past and the great conversation of
(40:32):
literature and intellectual development and all that. Of course, you
have no hope of penetrating any of that. But you
how even can you manage the simplest, you know, documentation
of you know, getting your car registered or whatever. You
can't read, It's really difficult to function in the world.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah, and the statistics are terrifying. I mean I pulled
this the other day. Two thirds of students who can't
read by fourth grade are more likely to end up
in poverty, welfare, or incarcerated. Right, I mean that's two thirds,
and now we have an explosion of illiteracy in the country. Right,
how do what would be your recommendation to parents for
(41:12):
exciting and addicting their children to reading?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So look, I'm going to sound like the man who
has a hammer. Everything is a nail, right, So in
my case, the key to all mythologies, the solution to
all difficulties is start reading aloud to your children and
do it every day for as long as you can,
until they will not let you do it to them anymore.
And when they won't let you, read to them, read
to each other, read to your husband, read to your parents,
(41:38):
read to the neighbors, you know, read to your dog,
read aloud as much as you can. So in this
you alluded earlier to an article I'd written for the
Journal a couple of weeks ago. I guess it was
now about the disappearance of reading from the culture. Read
as if you being seen reading, You know, the literacy
of the country depends on you being seen reading. Because
(41:59):
we are all as social creatures, we respond to social norms.
And if reading used to be a social norm, it
was normal for people to read, to read on the train,
to read out loud, to a class, to read, you know,
I mean a lot of people used to. You could
see people. I was one of them. I'm afraid kids
walking along the sidewalk reading while they walked, because you
(42:19):
don't want to waste the time, you know, going from
one place for another. That's not the case now. The
thing that people are looking at they might be reading something,
but they're looking at their phones or at a device.
That's the norm. The norm Now you go into an
airport and everyone is reading a device. So if we
care about reading books, we need to be seen reading books.
(42:41):
So and if we care about preserving literacy amongst our children,
we need to read to them and show them what
books contain. I mentioned a little while ago about you know,
in the classroom, how reading is this wonderful. It lifts
all boats. When a teacher reads aloud, all the children
get to enjoy the story at the same time, and that,
(43:03):
you know, the teacher is also showing that reading is
normal and exposing children who might not otherwise be able
to read for pleasure to the magical contents of books
that you open this artifact of paper and glue and
cardboard and inside it's a portal to other worlds. And
(43:23):
if a child has not had that experience and knowing
that that's what a book can do, how are they
ever going to find when when their screens everywhere promising
to take them wherever they don't even know they want
to go. Yeah, often places they don't want to go,
you know. So the only way that they're the younger
people are going to know is if we show them.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Megan, as you were saying that, I was reminded, and
I haven't thought about this obviously. For decades. I had
a fifth grade teacher here in New Orleans who he
would read us. He was a big mystery fan, Ellery Queen,
who nobody remembers anymore but Ellery Queen. They were a
mystery writing team. You remember Ellery Queen, and he would
read and they were short mysteries, but they were great
(44:03):
visual who done it. And he would read the mystery
up until the body dropped and the mystery was set,
and then he closed the book and he'd say, gentlemen,
whoever wants to check it out, here it is. And
I remember elbowing people out of the way to get
to that Ellery Queen book. And he was the one
who really addicted me to story mysteries. And I have
(44:27):
to say, whether I'm writing for TV or writing a book,
that idea of creating a little cliffhanger in that sense
of mystery it does. It is kind of something I've
always done, and it just clicked that it's relatable to that.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Well, he knew it. He was doing, your teacher, he
really knew.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
When I was working in Channa Hour, I interviewed a
woman who I taught at a community college outside Washington, DC,
and she had, you know, a lot of adult students
who was teaching English. And you know, a lot of
her students had literally they'd come through the whole public
education system and had never read a book cover to cover.
That says something about our public education custom I think
a lot. But you know, those were people who came
(45:03):
they were coming to a higher education in later life,
and some of them had had some real knocks. And
what she would do is exactly what your teacher would do.
She would read them passages from sort of sexy, violent
books by James Patterson. Actually I don't know if they're violent,
but I remember she said they were sexy. And you know,
these are adult students. She's not kind of perverting the
minds of the young or anything. And people who had
(45:23):
never read a book in their lives before would come
up at the end of class and say, who's that
author I wanted, you know, and she would find that
some of them would like, they'd take the book home
and they'd stay up all night finishing it. And you know,
it might not be the vehicle that these people might
never go on to read Dickens. Okay, fair enough, but
at least they were getting that kind of deep pleasure
(45:44):
that comes from running words on the page through your
brain and creating this whole story.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah. The thirst for stories, the thirst for human knowledge,
the thirst for connecting with characters and people in places
you'll never otherwise encounters. That's a good human trade and
something we should all want. I mean, I have to
end with this. There was there was a purge over
the last few years of people like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Uh.
They stripped her name from awards and and wrote her
(46:12):
off as a racist. Doctor Seuss books, you'll remember, were
removed from circulation by the Seuss estate credit for allegedly
offensive illustrations. Even Shakespeare has written off as white supremacist.
Is there a reappraisal now of these works? I know,
I know there's a Little House on the Prairie TV reboot,
but I don't know if that.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Oh I didn't know about that. But yes, I do
think there is a reappraisal, and I think I think
it's come not a moment too soon.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
There, you know, you're you're right, And it's not not
not just Laura Ingles Wilder and and and Doctor Seuss,
but also even raw Dahl. You know, his his books
were boldlerized, which is a term initially applied to Shakespeare.
There was a guy called Thomas Boulder who thought Shakespeare
is very a little bit indecent for reading in the
family setting, you know, all those bodice rippings and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Caught a way.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, but I think so. I think, I think, you know,
people talk about a vibe shift, you know, I don't
know if it's come in time. Really, I think that
they're but the forces of revolution are on the back
foot now. I think we do have a problem in
our schools there. Undoubtedly we have a problem in our
schools with teachers who really wish to expunge the Western canon,
(47:21):
and they really wish to cut students off from books
that in some way, you know, transgress early twenty first
century political fashion. But there is a reappraisal, and I think,
you know, in the case of Laura Ingles Wilder in particular.
I recently wrote about this for the Journal. There's a
wonderful book which I highly recommend to everyone, especially anyone
(47:44):
who loves those books. It's called Too Good to Be
Altogether Lost, and it urges a reappraisal of the body
of work of Laura Ingles Wilder, and I'm a huge
fan of those books. They are much much more nuanced
than the revolutionaries would have you think. So, yeah, I
think we're I think we're in I think we're in
(48:07):
a better place than we were, certainly five years ago,
and there is a reclamation happening.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
What's the trend you're seeing in kids live? I mean,
nobody sits atop this world the way you do. You
get all this incoming, you get everything picture books and
young adult romances and adventure stories and twisted fairy tales.
What is the scariest trend and the best trend you're seeing?
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Well, Raymond, I have not actually been doing one hundred
percent children's books now for a little over a year.
I'm just I decided, actually I found the trends too dispiriting,
and after twenty years of writing about children's books one
hundred percent, I'm now doing them twenty five percent. And
I'm mostly working on books for younger children, because I
(48:52):
think that's still where there's more beauty and creativity, reliably.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
So.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
One of the things I've noticed about a lot of
children's writing, and again it's you know, this is a
this is a business. It's receptive to the market, and
the marketplace in the last five or ten years, as
we know, has been undergoing a kind of cultural revolution,
as so many other parts of our society, and this
very bruising, very unpleasant, repunitive kind of movement that's been
(49:22):
a foot in the country. And one of the things
that I think is has has disappeared as an important
part of storytelling is in fact storytelling. Now I don't
include you in this number, but there are so many
books that seem there. The point of the book is
to inculcate contemporary values. The point of the book is
(49:45):
not to take a child on an adventure, not to
come up with something like Once upon a Time, I mean,
take me to a far away place that I've never
heard of and tell me something that I haven't already heard. No, no, no,
there's lots and lots of catechizing about power dynamics and
privilege and decentering, and you know, all of the jargon
has worked its way into books. You know, there was
(50:08):
there's just been an immense push to get gender ideology
into every level of book. And I do think possibly
that that is there's still plenty of it and you
have to be wary because it comes and it comes
in different it comes under different guises. Right, I think
parents have to be wary. But I but I think
that we're getting a little less of that now. Is
(50:28):
that because the book industry is backing away from its
commitment to gender ideology? Probably not. It might just be
a response to market changes. Do you have activist teachers
people in the publishing industry, people who are writing for
publishing they want to put forth a particular idea and
what are considered or what we're considered retrograde ideas, patriotism,
(50:53):
traditional family, whatever. You know, these are things you want
to back away from or undermine.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Wow, Yeah, it's a it's it is. You see the
battleground around children's lit, and when you walk through that section,
you sort of see ideology everywhere. When everybody just wants
a good story and a laugh and a good time
with their with their children and to feel a little uplifted.
And if you can add a dash of beauty, why not, Megan,
(51:20):
you put that.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
On that that is, put that in put that in
stone somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Add I'm gonna get my I'm gonna get my my
chisel a minute we finish here. Meghan Cox Gurdon, thank
you so much for being here. And Meghan's book, The
Enchanted Hour of the Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in
the Age of Distraction is available everywhere. You really should
get it. You come away fuller after reading it, and
(51:45):
it will give you a sense of the importance of
what used to be commonplace in families and in our culture. Meghan,
thanks again for being Thanks pleasure, and I hope you'll
come back to a royal Grande soon. Why live a dry,
constricted life when if you fill it with good things,
it can flow into a broad, driving Arroyo Grande. I'm
raimed at Arroyo. Make sure to subscribe like this episode.
(52:08):
Thanks for diving in and we'll see you next. Joe.
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. It's
available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Reading comprehension among fourth and eighth graders are an all
time low. How can it be turned around? And is
reading aloud? The answer of Wall Street Journal's children's book
reviewer Megan Cox Gurdon is here with answers and a
wicked witch plays Jesus. I'll get into all of it
on this Arroyo Grande show. Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo.
(00:32):
Welcome to a Royal Grande. Go subscribe to the show
right now. Turn those notifications on. I want you to
know what's coming this good stuff. Let's start with a
culture counter. There was a rather obnoxious concert at the
Hollywood Bowl recently. They staged Jesus Christ Superstar starring Wicked
Cynthia Arrivo. Is Jesus, Why just why? I know the
(00:53):
shock values appealing to some, but imagine casting a guy
as Mama Rose and Gypsy or Manny your Gun. There
would be howls of protests, or you'd hope they would
be from actresses who've trained their whole lives for this
kind of opportunity. But this is different. Jesus Christ Superstar
always tilted to just this side of blasphemy, suggesting a
(01:17):
more intimate relationship between the Savior and Mary Magdalene than
the scriptures or tradition ever afforded. There's no disputing the
vocal powerhouse that arevo is. She's an incredible singer, But
why is she playing this role of Jesus. God could
have come as a woman or as a camel if
he wanted to, but he came as a man. And
(01:38):
when you start twisting that historic reality, you rub believer's
sensitivities the wrong way. And it's not people being prudes.
They actually believe that Jesus Christ, who was born two
thousand years ago, is the Messiah, and so you're treading
on sacred ground and they are justifiably offended when a
(01:58):
bald woman shows up as Jesus. Now, I know it's
just a summer musical, but if the creative team really
wanted to be edgy, why doesn't the Hollywood Bowl stage
a Mohammed musical? They could call it Man from La
Meca with Cynthia Arrivo in the lead role. Let me
know what the audience reaction is. I'll be hiding under
the seat. They wouldn't dare. But why is offending Christian's
(02:23):
fair game? When I first saw images of a Rivo
as Jesus. I have to say, the thought that came
to mind was, Oh, this must be that beloved musical,
my fair nos Ferantu. With those challenges, she's downright scary.
She does look like an angel, the fallen variety. The
amazing thing to me is that same weekend of the
(02:43):
Hollywood Bowl Jesus Musical, on the other side of the
world there was another Bowl showcasing Jesus. Pope Leo addressed
a million young people from all over the globe at
a huge outdoor event in Rome. It was a jubilee
for youth. There was beautiful muse no screaming or talons,
and a very powerful message.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
If you truly want to encounter the risen Lord, then
listen to his word, which is the Gospel of salvation.
Reflect on your way of living, seek justice in order
to build a more humane world, serve the poor, and
(03:25):
so bear witness to the good that we would always
like to receive from our neighbors. At every step. As
we seek what is good, let us ask him Stay
with us.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Lord. As I watched this right after seeing clips of
Arivo wailing and arriving on the floor of the Hollywood Bowl.
I thought, isn't it curious that there are two Jesus
bulls if you will, but only one will have any
real impact or power in time? Oh, some were thrilled
at the vocals of the Andrew Lloyd Webbery stage. But
will it change any lives convict people to choose a
(04:02):
new path? Doubtful. But surely the massive papal event where
the focus was on the actual word and person of
Jesus Christ, not the superstar the Savior. I bet that
will have a much longer legacy. As for the Hollywood
Bowl Jesus Christ Superstar, it may not have been an
accurate depiction of the Son of God, but there's one
(04:24):
thing you have to say about it, and it would
have been a great tagline for them. Arevo and company
put the mess back in Messiah up next? Did you
see this news that a male artificial contraceptive is entering
human trials? God help us. This is just what we
need at a time when sperm counts have declined by
(04:45):
fifty percent in the last forty years. Researchers don't know
exactly why men are seeing a drop off, but sedentary
lifestyles and eating fast food of probably contributing factors. The
body needs to be well fed and moved to function.
Exercising your thumbs playing video games is not exactly robust
cardiac activity. With testosterone and sperm counts falling. Who thought
(05:09):
it would be a good idea to introduce men to
a pill that literally stops sperm production, and who knows
what side effects this thing will have. If it's anything
like the female contraceptives, they're likely to be very, very bad,
which can destroy fertility and cause bloating in other difficulties.
Look this summer, the US birth rate hit an all
time low, when men are already having an identity crisis
(05:33):
and reluctant to even approach women. Is this the time
to neuter guys altogether? The researchers would be better off
spending their time working to increase fertility in men and
the components necessary to facilitate it. We as a society
should be promoting committed love so we have more children.
We need more people guys. In terms you can understand,
(05:57):
it's like that age of Empire's game. Do you want
a bigger army or one guy in your campaign? You
want the sprawling legions, So don't let anyone take away
your army of swimmers, or distort the pool they're entering
with unnatural hormone regimes. Finally, a zoo in Denmark has
posted a message asking for the donation of smaller pets,
(06:21):
which sounds like a nice idea until you read the
fine print. Their Instagram post asks did you know that
you can donate smaller pets to Alborg Zoo? Chickens, rabbits,
guinea pigs make an important part of the diet of
our predators, especially in the European locust, which needs whole
(06:42):
prey which is reminiscent of what it would naturally hunt
in the wild. That's right. They aren't collecting animals to
show them off. They're collecting dinner for the lions and cougars.
They even suggest donating your horse if you have a
spare one in the barn. This is crazy. Who's going
to willingly give their pets away knowing they'll be consumed
by a predator. Next, they'll be asking for any extra
(07:04):
grandparents or relatives you have lying around. They're already euthanizing
people in Asia. I guess the lions have to eat too.
Funny how the zoo is so concerned about protecting the
animal's natural eating habits. I wish they'd show the same
concern for the natural lifespans and reproductive habits of humans.
(07:25):
Now to our deep dive. My guest today has been
a foreign correspondent and since two thousand and five, the
Wall Street Journal's children's book reviewer. She wrote the most
incredible book called The Enchanted Hour, The Miraculous Power of
Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. Megan Cox Gurdon,
thank you for being here. Look, I was stunned by
(07:47):
your recent column where you wrote only five percent of
English majors at two Midwestern schools could make sense of
the paragraphs from Bleak House by Charles Dickens. How did
we get here? What happened in the culture and in
the schools that created this outcome where you have college
kids who simply can't comprehend what was once fought part
(08:10):
of the English canon.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It wasn't just part of the English canon. I mean,
Dickens was a popular writer. He was writing for everybody.
He wasn't writing for esoteric you know, seminars. Yeah, yeah,
I mean what has happened in the culture, My goodness,
that's a big question, Like what are the causes of
World War two.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Uh but you.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Know, I so so that little column that I wrote
was really about me grappling with the thought that something
that has been an axiomatic part of civilization for you know,
hundreds and hundreds of years, which is reading as a
practice and a discipline and a kind of aspirational thing,
reading is actually retreating from our culture. It's it's quite remarkable.
(08:52):
I mean, there we are, we are, we are almost
at a point now where reading is an uncommon activity.
I mean, yeah, people get a lot of information from
their phones and from technology and from other things. They
get short snippets. They don't read. I mean, obviously there
are outliers and everything. But you know, your standard issue
(09:13):
college student isn't reading for pleasure, Your standard issue high
school student isn't reading for pleasure, or isn't expected to
read even for comprehension for classrooms. You know, in that
same piece that you mentioned, we've seen this race recent
thing where the SAT now has cut the length of
the reading comprehension passages to one hundred and fifty words.
(09:36):
So it's getting it's like the tweetification of the whole culture.
Everything's getting shorter. Now, obviously society has you know, we've
things have come in and out of fashion, but to
leave behind reading seems like a very profound cutting us
off from the past.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well look, I mean you're talking the piece about the
impact of smartphones. I mean this is now almost a
spiritual devotion to people. Okay, there for information, relationships, affirmation,
basic what was once basic lived experience they now do
entirely through the phone and through a virtual connection. The
(10:12):
impact of that, though, you don't have the deep reflection
that reading brings, and if that practice dies out, you
do lose a great deal as a culture, as a person,
just as a human person and a soul.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right right, I mean we have you know, the body
of literature is sometimes referred to as the great conversation. Right,
this is conversation between people long dead and people still
yet to be born. And we can, through reading literature
and kind of you know, intellectual works, essays and whatnot,
we can participate in the thinking processes of people who
(10:49):
lived two thousand years ago or a thousand years ago.
You know, it's quite extraordinary. There's this long golden thread
of conversation that comes to us, call it from Greeks
up till now, and if you lose the ability to read,
and literally reading is not a natural thing. And as
Marianne Wolf has described it so well, you know, reading
(11:10):
is not natural to our brains. We have to we
have to learn to read, and it's difficult. It's you know,
as a lot of us know from our school years
or when we had children going to learning to read.
It's an arduous process. So it takes it takes a
certain cultivation of the brain that allows us to participate
in this conversation with the past.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And I always say it's like a time machine, Megan.
I mean, you know, every book is like a time machine,
and you can go places you will never go in life,
and experience and touch minds and historical figures that you'd
have no access to otherwise. That's a great gift.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's a great gift. I mean, James Baldwin once said
something like I can't do the mangle the quotation if
I try it, but something like, you know, you can
feel alone in your life or in some predicament that
you're experiencing, and it actually turns out that other people
have felt it and they've been in it, and so
so Baldwin, as a black man in the modern era
could read Shakespeare and think I feel seen, I feel understood.
(12:08):
I am connected to this great human project. So yeah,
so having reading disappears, you know, it's it's more significant,
as you say, it's like a soul question as well,
you know, if you don't have if you you know
this this idea of college students not being able to
really understand metaphorical and figurative language, which was the real
problem for them with the seven paragraphs of Dickens. They
(12:31):
are simply at sea. They are cut off from the conversation.
And these are English majors, so we really are we
are at a kind of hinge point. And you know.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What does a book furnish individuals with that? The dopamine
rush of phone scrolling does not.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
It's a slower burn, isn't it. What does a book?
I mean a book, any book? And the truth is right,
you have to from a book, you well, I mean,
as you know, I've done a lot of work with
books and children, and it is certainly the case with
young people that if they are read to, which is
one way, it's very easy. You don't have to you
(13:15):
don't have to train your brain to be read to.
You know, the person who's reading has to have the
trained brain, but the person who's listening merely has to
people to make sense of the words, which is very
easy to do with the ears. You get a kind
of a kind of depth, don't you. You You get
a depth of characterization and of scene making and connections
(13:36):
between the world that you are in and connections with
the thing on the page. And there's a lot of
work that goes on in the young brain, you know,
to process this information. That is that has seems to
have a kind of I want to say, what is
the thing that causes someone to flourish? It produces a
kind of flourishing of the intellect and also of language,
so that a person who who is reading the written
(13:58):
word is getting really a more sophisticated form of language
than the spoken word. You know, you and I in
this conversation may use one or two esoteric terms, but
we're not going to use any archaisms. Probably well, unless.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I just did, yeah, hold my beer, we'll see. Can
reading here's my question. Can reading counteract some of the
damage that phones inflict on the brain, And it does
take a toll on the human brain. We have all
the data.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Now, yeah, yeah, I mean I think I think that
that's probably true. You know, I'm not a clinician, so
I can't speak directly to that, to the trade offs there,
but we do know that forgive me for banging on
my particular drum here, but that reading aloud is absolutely
absolutely supplies things that are being depleted by the phones.
(14:50):
And some of these, you know, to back to your
point about so some of these, these these these sort
of qualities of being are a little slippery, like feelings
of connectedness, feelings of presence. You know, we know that
children today and this has been a while now, I mean,
the phones have been with us for a long time now, Uh,
they're accustomed to the adults around them not really being there.
(15:13):
There's this concept of absent presence. So a person on
his or her phone, you know, is in the phone.
I mean, we've all done it. We can see everyone
around us doing it, and they're they're they're in the
room with you, but they're not really there, you know,
And the presence of the phone even it's you know,
we know, it's demonstrated that if a phone is on,
let's say at dinner table, everyone at the table is
(15:36):
slightly altered by the presence of the phone. Because the
phone is this portal to dopamine and alternate information and
entertainment and whatever they do. The phones do have these distorting,
uh you know, reshaping effects.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Huh Yeah. And I want to get into some of
what you've discovered and shared with us over the years
about reading aloud, because it is a powerful tool. I've
seen it in my own face. I know you relate
how it touched your five children and yourself in incredible ways.
Eighty five percent of kids Megan who got into trouble
with the law had poor literacy skills. Right. I read
(16:13):
a statistic today, twenty one percent of American adults are
functionally illiterate. That's forty five million people. Why has reading
for pleasure all but disappeared among young people?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, that is another one of these massive questions. Why
has it disappeared? I mean, obviously the phones have been
very important in displacing you know, you don't, you don't.
It doesn't require any there's there's no kind of preparation
required for receiving pleasure and dopamine from the phone. You
just open it and it goes. Whereas with reading, I
(16:48):
mean as those of us who grew up reading and
loving it. No, it's you know, you go through the
sort of the arduousness of learning to do it, and
then you get to just disappear into these worlds. I mean,
obviously not everybody always has read enthusiastically for pleasure. It's
been a real struggle for you know, a lot of people.
I know, my own husband didn't learn to read for pleasure.
(17:09):
I didn't really read for pleasure until he was in
his teens. By then, of course I had spent years,
you know, curled up reading. Yeah, so it just it is.
It is a very deep and profound pleasure that has
not been accessible to everybody. And the phones are accessible
to everybody. And I think that's one good answer for
you right there.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah. Well, the minute and a half videos are a
lot less, there's less commitment there, and you just scroll
through to the next one if you don't like what
you see. I mean, the retention rates even of these
videos make it. And obviously, being a broadcaster, I spend
time watching this stuff. It's infantasimal. You're talking about eight
to ten seconds people thirty seconds they're watching these things
before they're off to the next so and that too,
(17:51):
I see as a function of the mind that is
just bouncing all over the place with ad D like
you know, abandoned, other than focusing on a story, a character,
a through line, holding these elements together. That reading trains
you to do right some more right.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
That's training is a good word for it, because you
have to be trained in order to do it, and
you have to train yourself to do it and you
and it trains you and forms you as you do it.
I didn't know about you, but I know a lot
of people myself included, who Now, if I really want
to do deep reading, I have to put the phone away.
It has to be at a physical remove for me,
(18:31):
because if it's under my leg or just buy my
elbow or something, it prompted by Heaven knows what. I Well,
I find myself bick and I'll think the heck I
was reading? Like what am I doing now?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's like a familiar you know, prowling around waiting
for you. I need to take the fall. Yeah, let's
talk not just about reading. And I want to get
to practical tips to help young people to read later
and parents certainly need this. But tell me about the
power of reading aloud. You had five children, have five children,
(19:06):
you read to all of them from really before they
were born. Yeah, tell me about that, and why? What
the power of reading aloud as opposed to just reading
the written word itself.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, So reading aloud. One of the things that's wonderful
about it, as I mentioned earlier, is that the person
who's doing the reading is essentially, you know, applying the training,
and you know, it's very easy for and the language
that we get through books is more sophisticated than the
regular language that we get. So when to use the
simplest example, a parent is reading aloud to a child,
(19:38):
the parent can read books that are more sophisticated or
pitched at a level above the child's age. Say not
not to you know, to make it demanding and difficult,
but it's simply it's a child can take in information
that's quite sophisticated. You and I may have talked about
this before, but you know, we all of us have
(19:59):
a receptive vocabulary. So when you read aloud, not only
are you giving a child in this case again parent
and chob a story, and you're giving them rich language.
You're creating worlds in their heads. What the old radio
people used to call theater of the mind. It's just
the sound and it allows a kind of deep, deep
(20:22):
brain engagement for children, especially if they're they're young children,
and they're looking at pictures that aren't moving, so still
pictures that allow their brains to make sense of the image.
They're hearing a story, they're perceiving the kind of physical
presence of the loving adult, and that's very significant. There's
a kind of hormonal shift that takes place when parents
(20:43):
and children sit down to read together. It isn't just
an intellectual exercise. It's an emotional exercise. I mean, the
dimensions of this are extraordinary. And as you know, as
I know, you know, when you sit with a child
and read, something happens. Something more than regular life is happening.
There's a kind of knitting together that is, it's it's
(21:06):
in the imagination, it's in it's it's in a physical sense.
There's a kind of comfort that comes. You know, the
stress hormones go down, the bonding hormones go up, and
all of this is taking place over a piece of writing.
So you get grammar and syntax and story and you know,
and good stories obviously too. You don't know what's going
(21:28):
to happen, so there's a sense of something is, something
is happening as you read. It isn't just that you
know that it's done when you sit down to read together,
but you're also in a process of sort of mutual
discovery and excitement when you read a story.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I mean, no, it's an imaginative journey. I mean you
said it it's an enchanted hour.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And there's something incredible about I mean, there's a there's
the connection, empathy, I think focus, having everybody in the
room on an entire family focused on the same thing,
which is law. You know, TV used to do this
for us, Megan, and at one time. Now everybody's on
their own phone doing their watching and in their own world.
This is a moment where everybody comes together imaginatively in
(22:09):
a moment and rhythm is imparted and focus and empathy
for the characters that are going on. And as you
mentioned it, it reminded me of something, you know, my early life.
I was a classically trained actor. I did Shakespeare and
Racine and mol year. When you have that kind of
greatness in your mouth, that those ideas and words and shape,
(22:30):
it does transform you. It does leave a mark.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I like that greatness in your mouth. That's right, that's right.
So when you yeah, if you read. So, my husband
and I just did a little reading up here. We're
up in Main this summer, and we did a reading
of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and we had
a small audience and it was great because we were
embodying Coleridge, you know, it just it wasn't just us
(22:53):
standing there talking. It was using these beautiful phrases which
have been running through my head ever since. No, you're
exactly right. Yeah, you know something else about children's books.
You know, not every parent is really good at saying
using loving phrases, right, Not everybody is very sort of effusive,
(23:14):
And a lot of books for little children have built
into them loving language. So we talked about the greatness
in the mouth. But when a parent reads aloud a
book that is portraying a loving situation and that one
character is saying a loving thing to another, the child
hears those words in the parent's voice. So in a way,
(23:35):
books can also be a kind of primer to developing closer,
you know, just helping people express express themselves in ways
that they might not ordinarily be able to do.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No deeper emotional ties. It does certainly create that, and
we both had the experience. And I think anybody who's
read to a child where you pick up a book
you knew in your young life, yes, and you read
it as an adult to your and the entire emotional
landscape beneath it shifts on you, and you know, you
start crying at the oddest moments reading Treasure Island or
(24:09):
Peter Pan, and you know it's it's and that that
moment too, and explaining because the kid inevitably looks and goes,
why are you crying? Yeah, you keep reading, and you
have a moment to explain to them how the evolution
of that story changed you and what it really means.
You know. So it is it's an on ramp to
so much humanity.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I want to tell you one little story, if I may,
And this doesn't really have so much to do with
reading to children, though it's part of it. My mother
has died, but before she died, I read Kipling's Just
So Stories to her, and she had read them to
me when I was a girl, and I had read
them to my children. And the last time that my
mother had heard the Justice Stories when was when her
(24:51):
own mother was reading to her. So it was a
deep and enriching experience for both of us because here
I was reading words that my mother had read to me,
that I had read to my children, that she hadn't heard.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It was creating this like lovely braided feeling through time
from my long dead grandmother to my now dead mother
to you know, like it was really yeah, So there's
a kind of generational knitting together as well that you get.
And you mentioned Peter Panaman that's a speaking weird stories.
That is a really weird story, but it's.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It is a bizarre story. But reading that.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Weaves us together with the Victorians a little, you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Know, that's right. It does and about and it's about
youth and the loss of youth and having to become
an adult and all of that. You know, there's such
richness in those in those works, a little bit bizarre
beneath the surface. Well, but there's a lot of richness here.
What would you recommend to people to families? How do
you begin this if you haven't done it yet?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So my recommendation is you just as with anything that
you want to do, you just start, You just do
a baby step. You just start today. You know today,
you just at some point when everyone's together. Let's say
it might be a dinner, you know, it might be
an early dinner, it might be bathtime, whenever it is
when you have people kind of corralled and everyone's together,
pick something up and start to read, and then do
(26:10):
the same thing again tomorrow at the same time. And
you know, it doesn't have to be an enchanted hour.
It can be enchanted five minutes. One of the things
that certainly, I mean, I've seen this happen, that people
get a taste of this, you know, as we were
talking about how it's this rare and wonderful experience, it's
not like the rest of life, and then they they
it can be almost a little embarrassing for some kids.
(26:32):
They're kind, they're you know, they're jaded, and they're used
to their phones and whatever, like, mom, what are you
doing reading? But actually they're not immune to the charms
of this process. And you give it to them for
five minutes today, five minutes tomorrow, and then pretty soon
you may find as there's a test case in my
book actually of a family that did this and they
they were a big TV family. They didn't think it
(26:52):
was going to work, and it turned out to be
in sourcel the whole lot of them. Everyone loved it. It
was everyone's favorite part of every day, wasted hour in
the evening. So I believe it can happen. You know,
even bach families, that can happen well.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And you're also creating family rituals and deep, deep emotional,
artistic and imaginative memories that I think carry through the
rest of your life. I mean, they just do they
mark you.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yeah, No, I I one hundred percent endorse that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
In your book, you talk about going Megan, if I'm
remembering correctly, to the Cincinnati Children's Reading and Discovery Center,
tell me what you learned there. They spoke of something
called the Goldilocks effect. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
So the Goldilocks effect, as the old story goes, Remember,
there's there's parts that's too hot, in pars that's too cold,
and then there's parts that's just right, and a bed
that's too soft, in a bed that's too hard, in
a bed that's just right. So the Goldilocks of effect
obviously refers to the thing that is just right and
that is just this is what happened, what the researchers
(27:58):
there did, and the research which was led by John Hutton,
I should credit him. They put children through scanners and
then look to see what brain domains were activated under
certain circumstances. So they showed the children, for instance, they
showed them video, they showed them still pictures. They allowed
(28:18):
the children to listen to a story simply read with
no visuals, and then the Goldilocks moment was these were
young children. They were sort of roughly four year olds,
but three to five, but mostly four year olds. The
Goldilocks was essentially the picture book Raymond. So it was
hearing a story read aloud and seeing pictures that didn't
(28:40):
jump around, that didn't move because the thing with video,
you know, you mentioned earlier about phones and how people's
attentions pan jumps around, but it very much engages our
the portions of our brain that you know, register sort
of the shock and awe of moving things, of things
that are happening quickly. But there can't be there simply
(29:01):
cannot be deeper reflection if it's all going so fast,
jump jump, jump, cut. You know, a child can't make
there's no sense, there's no moment to pause, and some
of the deep work that happens in the brain really
helping to habituate the brain to concentration and to focus
and all of these wonderful things that we want to
achieve with children. Yeah, developing empathy and theory of mind
(29:22):
and all that that really can only that work can
only take place at a more sedate pace. So a
picture book is really it is the Goldilocks. Just write porridge,
just right chair, just right bed, because it takes place
in a way that gives a child time to process
what's happening at a deeper level, and the different brain
(29:42):
domains communicate, allowing you know, thoughts to flow in.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, somewhere in the book you write, and I'm gonna
quote you, you write, besides developing language facility, empathy, and
cultural literacy, reading a loud creates a deep bond between
reader and listener, sweeping them together in a lovely neurochemical tsunami.
(30:08):
I love that lot because it's so true. And look,
you mentioned the study at the Cincinnati Reading and Development Center.
There was another study I read, and the researchers basically
put adults into an MRI and they fed audio into
their ears. Of a chapter of Charles Dickens, and their
brains fired in the same domains, in the same place
(30:32):
at the same time. Their breathing also became consistent. No
matter who they were, old, young, black, white, they had
a consistency of not only brain activity, but the breathing regulated.
And the researcher said, story was a deep brain device
capable of making people react in the same way at
(30:55):
the same time, right right.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's fantastic. I don't know about that. I would love
to see it. That is exactly what I found when
I was researching my book, that this was one of
the one of the many knock on extraordinary things, one
of the explanations for the for the that feeling of
goodness that happens. There's some connection and symmetry and synchronicity
and whatever it is you know when you're when someone's
(31:19):
reading to you, because your brain's literally synchronize. And this
doesn't just happen in reading, it can also happen. Let's
say you have a great raconteur spinning a story. If
you were to monitor the brain of the raconteur and
the brains of the people listening to the story, which
is actually what happens when someone's reading aloud. It's as
though you impersonate the great raconteur, You're the great story Ah.
(31:40):
The brains synchronize, uh, in response to the story, and
that produces that chemical reality, which is that everybody is
kind of on the same page and feels together. And
it's one of the and as you as you say
this is this can be felt not just by children
and by parents, but you know, for the book, I
and spent some time with a reading group for very
(32:02):
old people. Some of them were at that time a
few years ago, they had survived the Holocaust. They were
children at the time, and they felt that this shared
reading experience that they had. It was a once a
week thing, for an hour kind of thing. Somebody would
read to them and they would all follow along. They
experienced that synchronicity and it was immensely restorative and joyful,
(32:23):
and it was, you know, a way to use the brain,
to feel the brain and the emotions being engaged without
having you know, or without some people. I mean, of course,
people lose their ability to read. They can't move around
very much in extreme old age, you know, they don't
get touched very often in extreme old age, and this
was a way to kind of have the whole human person,
(32:45):
the soul of the person, you know, catered to just
through the written word turned into the spoken word. I mean,
really quite magical.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I'll say, I'll say, and deeply human were wired
this way. I mean I had a great comedian one
tell me you know. I asked him, when you go out,
you what's the first thing you do? And he said,
the first thing you have to do is to get
them in your rhythm. You have to send out your
rhythm and impose it on them. And that's kind of
what a great rock on tour, a great reader does.
(33:16):
You kind of everybody gets swept up in the same vibe,
if you will.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah, that's right. And there's a kind of authority. Well,
you said you were a performer. You know this. I
mean if an actor comes on stage and says, well
I'm not really sure about this material, guys, everyone loses confidence.
But you come out and you occupy you have the
greatness in your mouth, as you said, occupy the role.
You begin to read. You are the authority. People can
kind of relax into the experience. This is one of
(33:41):
the things that is very noticeable in classrooms when teachers
use reading aloud, which anecdotally I understand that it's not
such a practice as it once was. But almost ever,
you scratch an adult and there's a story about how, oh,
my fourth grade teacher read to us. You know, everyone remembers, right.
And the great thing about it is in the classroom
setting is you have children very different abilities, some of
(34:04):
whom will maybe never be able to read for pleasure
because they just don't have the cognitive you know, to
do that or whatever they're the attention has been. But
in a classroom, it's kind of they're imprisoned. They have
to be there. The teacher reads aloud, they can all
relax into the experience, and so the A student and
the C student can get a story at the same time.
(34:26):
But it's kind of the same level of pleasure because
they can just relax.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
You know. I have parents write me all the time, Megan,
and they tell me their kids ask them to reread
some picture book over and over and over again. What
is it about repetition? You know, there's a Christmas picture
book I did years ago. Every Christmas I get inundated
with more letters, and it's about that. My kids want
me to keep reading it, and I mean, I love this.
(34:51):
I mean that's why you Yeah, as an author, you're right,
you want people to experience it and make it a
part of their lives, their rituals. But why do why
do they want to hear it told again and again?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Well, okay, so there is an answer, or there are
some answers, but there is also an element of mystery.
So the mystery is we don't really know why that is,
but some of one answer is and and this is
documented that with each successive read, a child gets understands
(35:21):
more of what they're hearing, so they have Also there's
a kind of there's there's the pleasure of comprehension. There's
the pleasure of return and revisiting characters you're already familiar with.
We know this as adults, right, If you reread a book,
sometimes you get much more out of it the second time.
I just read Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country for
the third time, and I finally feel like I really
(35:45):
kind of extracted all the goodness from that story. And
I mean, you know, I'm a decent reader, but it
took me three times through just to really feel as
though I got it all and and so that that
happens with children. And there was a there was a
study done in England's years ago in which made up
words were smuggled into picture books and children were read
(36:06):
the picture books and and so these were words they
would never encounter in real life because they were in
fact made up things. But by the time that the
children had had the stories read to them several times,
they they had a meaning for these made up words,
you know, because that the context gave them something. So
so there, so there is all of that. There's that,
there's familiarity, and children, as you know, love, they love routine,
(36:29):
they love reassurance. Yes, it gives their world boundaries. And
you hear the same story over and over again is
to experience the pleasure over and over again. But again,
I think there is I think it's important to be
a little humble about it, that there there is an
element of mystery. It's not just pedagogical, because our experience
of literature is not just about you know, becoming a
(36:51):
better of citizen or learning more English or you know whatever.
It's not. It's not cod liver oil. There's magic here.
It's it's it's about beauty and something deep in the
heart and you know your Christmas story. Yeah, that's the
kind of story absolutely children. I mean, it would come
out annually. There's that, so there's the pleasure of return
at Christmas and yet that excitement when they opened the box.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Like and we're wired that way. We're just wired. I
think we're wired for story, We're wired for affection, we're
wired for imagination and joy. And I think that you know,
in some ways, those picture books, particularly those children's literature
or what once was children's literature, captured a lot of that.
Why is live reading preferable to audiobooks?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Megan, Oh, well, okay, so I think I'm a huge
proponent of audiobooks and I.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Love Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah, I think they're great. The only preference I would
say is in the context of children, especially younger children,
because an audiobook, like a television show, is not going
to pause or answer your questions or give you a
moment to reflect. And so if a child is just listening,
So if you're listening, like say you're in the car,
(38:01):
somebody doesn't the child doesn't understand something that just went by.
And you can often when you're with a child, you
can see if you're reading to a child, you can
see the face goes a little blank, the eyes get
a little long focused, and you think, did you did
you understand that? And you can pause and stop. So
if you if you just put an audiobook on for
your child and you leave the room and there's nobody
there to mediate or to be a resource, that that's fine.
(38:22):
The child may just have a wonderful time and not
it doesn't matter, you know, that's there is that it
doesn't always matter. But a live reading is you're much
more contingent. The child has the contingency of an adult
who is interested in the child getting from the story
what the story has to offer. So that's really that's
that's the principal reason. And contingency with young children is
(38:45):
very important. It's one of the ways that allows them
to learn. You know, you can't children learn from being
spoken to. They learn, they learn language certainly that way.
You can't just play like, you know, Mandarin for four
year olds to an English speaking child and expect the
four year old to get it. But a Mandarin speaker
can teach a four year old child Mandarin, you know,
(39:05):
to the very easy.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Easy Yeah, well for them, not for us. Yeah, no,
for me, the forty percent of fourth graders are beneath
reading proficiency. Now, yeah, Megan, a third of eighth graders
are not hitting the reading benchmarks. That's the largest percentage ever.
What does that mean for the country.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
It's bad. It's bad news, Raymond. As you mentioned earlier
that there are there's an alarming number of functionally illiterate adults.
It is also the case, and this is I believe
well documented that early illiteracy produces later illiteracy produces later criminality.
It's it's just you know, it's does it produce criminality?
(39:51):
Is it? Does it go along with it? I mean,
there are a lot of things that there are a
lot of kind of contributing factors, no doubt, but it
is absolutely the case that large numbers of people who
are in curs rated have very low literacy levels, and literacy,
you know, by eighth grade, it's kind of too late,
you know, It's I mean, I don't know that in
every individual case you would say it's too late. There
(40:12):
are probably reclamation efforts that can be made, but for
a for a classroom of children if most of them
can't read, as we know from some schools that none
of them can read. You know, it's the knock on
effects are going to be profound that these are people
If you can't read, you know, it's leaving aside the
esoteric beauties of the past and the great conversation of
(40:32):
literature and intellectual development and all that. Of course, you
have no hope of penetrating any of that. But you
how even can you manage the simplest, you know, documentation
of you know, getting your car registered or whatever. You
can't read, It's really difficult to function in the world.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah, and the statistics are terrifying. I mean I pulled
this the other day. Two thirds of students who can't
read by fourth grade are more likely to end up
in poverty, welfare, or incarcerated. Right, I mean that's two thirds,
and now we have an explosion of illiteracy in the country. Right,
how do what would be your recommendation to parents for
(41:12):
exciting and addicting their children to reading?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So look, I'm going to sound like the man who
has a hammer. Everything is a nail, right, So in
my case, the key to all mythologies, the solution to
all difficulties is start reading aloud to your children and
do it every day for as long as you can,
until they will not let you do it to them anymore.
And when they won't let you, read to them, read
to each other, read to your husband, read to your parents,
(41:38):
read to the neighbors, you know, read to your dog,
read aloud as much as you can. So in this
you alluded earlier to an article I'd written for the
Journal a couple of weeks ago. I guess it was
now about the disappearance of reading from the culture. Read
as if you being seen reading, You know, the literacy
of the country depends on you being seen reading. Because
(41:59):
we are all as social creatures, we respond to social norms.
And if reading used to be a social norm, it
was normal for people to read, to read on the train,
to read out loud, to a class, to read, you know,
I mean a lot of people used to. You could
see people. I was one of them. I'm afraid kids
walking along the sidewalk reading while they walked, because you
(42:19):
don't want to waste the time, you know, going from
one place for another. That's not the case now. The
thing that people are looking at they might be reading something,
but they're looking at their phones or at a device.
That's the norm. The norm Now you go into an
airport and everyone is reading a device. So if we
care about reading books, we need to be seen reading books.
(42:41):
So and if we care about preserving literacy amongst our children,
we need to read to them and show them what
books contain. I mentioned a little while ago about you know,
in the classroom, how reading is this wonderful. It lifts
all boats. When a teacher reads aloud, all the children
get to enjoy the story at the same time, and that,
(43:03):
you know, the teacher is also showing that reading is
normal and exposing children who might not otherwise be able
to read for pleasure to the magical contents of books
that you open this artifact of paper and glue and
cardboard and inside it's a portal to other worlds. And
(43:23):
if a child has not had that experience and knowing
that that's what a book can do, how are they
ever going to find when when their screens everywhere promising
to take them wherever they don't even know they want
to go. Yeah, often places they don't want to go,
you know. So the only way that they're the younger
people are going to know is if we show them.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Megan, as you were saying that, I was reminded, and
I haven't thought about this obviously. For decades. I had
a fifth grade teacher here in New Orleans who he
would read us. He was a big mystery fan, Ellery Queen,
who nobody remembers anymore but Ellery Queen. They were a
mystery writing team. You remember Ellery Queen, and he would
read and they were short mysteries, but they were great
(44:03):
visual who done it. And he would read the mystery
up until the body dropped and the mystery was set,
and then he closed the book and he'd say, gentlemen,
whoever wants to check it out, here it is. And
I remember elbowing people out of the way to get
to that Ellery Queen book. And he was the one
who really addicted me to story mysteries. And I have
(44:27):
to say, whether I'm writing for TV or writing a book,
that idea of creating a little cliffhanger in that sense
of mystery it does. It is kind of something I've
always done, and it just clicked that it's relatable to that.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Well, he knew it. He was doing, your teacher, he
really knew.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
When I was working in Channa Hour, I interviewed a
woman who I taught at a community college outside Washington, DC,
and she had, you know, a lot of adult students
who was teaching English. And you know, a lot of
her students had literally they'd come through the whole public
education system and had never read a book cover to cover.
That says something about our public education custom I think
a lot. But you know, those were people who came
(45:03):
they were coming to a higher education in later life,
and some of them had had some real knocks. And
what she would do is exactly what your teacher would do.
She would read them passages from sort of sexy, violent
books by James Patterson. Actually I don't know if they're violent,
but I remember she said they were sexy. And you know,
these are adult students. She's not kind of perverting the
minds of the young or anything. And people who had
(45:23):
never read a book in their lives before would come
up at the end of class and say, who's that
author I wanted, you know, and she would find that
some of them would like, they'd take the book home
and they'd stay up all night finishing it. And you know,
it might not be the vehicle that these people might
never go on to read Dickens. Okay, fair enough, but
at least they were getting that kind of deep pleasure
(45:44):
that comes from running words on the page through your
brain and creating this whole story.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah. The thirst for stories, the thirst for human knowledge,
the thirst for connecting with characters and people in places
you'll never otherwise encounters. That's a good human trade and
something we should all want. I mean, I have to
end with this. There was there was a purge over
the last few years of people like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Uh.
They stripped her name from awards and and wrote her
(46:12):
off as a racist. Doctor Seuss books, you'll remember, were
removed from circulation by the Seuss estate credit for allegedly
offensive illustrations. Even Shakespeare has written off as white supremacist.
Is there a reappraisal now of these works? I know,
I know there's a Little House on the Prairie TV reboot,
but I don't know if that.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Oh I didn't know about that. But yes, I do
think there is a reappraisal, and I think I think
it's come not a moment too soon.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
There, you know, you're you're right, And it's not not
not just Laura Ingles Wilder and and and Doctor Seuss,
but also even raw Dahl. You know, his his books
were boldlerized, which is a term initially applied to Shakespeare.
There was a guy called Thomas Boulder who thought Shakespeare
is very a little bit indecent for reading in the
family setting, you know, all those bodice rippings and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Caught a way.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, but I think so. I think, I think, you know,
people talk about a vibe shift, you know, I don't
know if it's come in time. Really, I think that
they're but the forces of revolution are on the back
foot now. I think we do have a problem in
our schools there. Undoubtedly we have a problem in our
schools with teachers who really wish to expunge the Western canon,
(47:21):
and they really wish to cut students off from books
that in some way, you know, transgress early twenty first
century political fashion. But there is a reappraisal, and I think,
you know, in the case of Laura Ingles Wilder in particular.
I recently wrote about this for the Journal. There's a
wonderful book which I highly recommend to everyone, especially anyone
(47:44):
who loves those books. It's called Too Good to Be
Altogether Lost, and it urges a reappraisal of the body
of work of Laura Ingles Wilder, and I'm a huge
fan of those books. They are much much more nuanced
than the revolutionaries would have you think. So, yeah, I
think we're I think we're in I think we're in
(48:07):
a better place than we were, certainly five years ago,
and there is a reclamation happening.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
What's the trend you're seeing in kids live? I mean,
nobody sits atop this world the way you do. You
get all this incoming, you get everything picture books and
young adult romances and adventure stories and twisted fairy tales.
What is the scariest trend and the best trend you're seeing?
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Well, Raymond, I have not actually been doing one hundred
percent children's books now for a little over a year.
I'm just I decided, actually I found the trends too dispiriting,
and after twenty years of writing about children's books one
hundred percent, I'm now doing them twenty five percent. And
I'm mostly working on books for younger children, because I
(48:52):
think that's still where there's more beauty and creativity, reliably.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
So.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
One of the things I've noticed about a lot of
children's writing, and again it's you know, this is a
this is a business. It's receptive to the market, and
the marketplace in the last five or ten years, as
we know, has been undergoing a kind of cultural revolution,
as so many other parts of our society, and this
very bruising, very unpleasant, repunitive kind of movement that's been
(49:22):
a foot in the country. And one of the things
that I think is has has disappeared as an important
part of storytelling is in fact storytelling. Now I don't
include you in this number, but there are so many
books that seem there. The point of the book is
to inculcate contemporary values. The point of the book is
(49:45):
not to take a child on an adventure, not to
come up with something like Once upon a Time, I mean,
take me to a far away place that I've never
heard of and tell me something that I haven't already heard. No, no, no,
there's lots and lots of catechizing about power dynamics and
privilege and decentering, and you know, all of the jargon
has worked its way into books. You know, there was
(50:08):
there's just been an immense push to get gender ideology
into every level of book. And I do think possibly
that that is there's still plenty of it and you
have to be wary because it comes and it comes
in different it comes under different guises. Right, I think
parents have to be wary. But I but I think
that we're getting a little less of that now. Is
(50:28):
that because the book industry is backing away from its
commitment to gender ideology? Probably not. It might just be
a response to market changes. Do you have activist teachers
people in the publishing industry, people who are writing for
publishing they want to put forth a particular idea and
what are considered or what we're considered retrograde ideas, patriotism,
(50:53):
traditional family, whatever. You know, these are things you want
to back away from or undermine.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Wow, Yeah, it's a it's it is. You see the
battleground around children's lit, and when you walk through that section,
you sort of see ideology everywhere. When everybody just wants
a good story and a laugh and a good time
with their with their children and to feel a little uplifted.
And if you can add a dash of beauty, why not, Megan,
(51:20):
you put that.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
On that that is, put that in put that in
stone somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Add I'm gonna get my I'm gonna get my my
chisel a minute we finish here. Meghan Cox Gurdon, thank
you so much for being here. And Meghan's book, The
Enchanted Hour of the Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in
the Age of Distraction is available everywhere. You really should
get it. You come away fuller after reading it, and
(51:45):
it will give you a sense of the importance of
what used to be commonplace in families and in our culture. Meghan,
thanks again for being Thanks pleasure, and I hope you'll
come back to a royal Grande soon. Why live a dry,
constricted life when if you fill it with good things,
it can flow into a broad, driving Arroyo Grande. I'm
raimed at Arroyo. Make sure to subscribe like this episode.
(52:08):
Thanks for diving in and we'll see you next. Joe.
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. It's
available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Raymond Arroyo
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