There is only so much that can be covered in 2 hours time with that being said: Alot of people wanted to defend technology as being another form of reading or just as important as reading which I dont think was as important as looking at the dangers of not reading at all. We do not need this government survey to realize that people are reading less, just look around you, ask your friends/family how much they read. More importantly, reading TEXT is important because it develops our critical thinking skills and we need to be critical readers and thinkers instead of being yes-men and absorbing whatever is presented to us in the form of literature or media without question.

I was wondering how our decline in reading compares to the reading done in other countries. More specifically, I think our education system is a part of the problem because I think we push students through classes and have lower expectations for our students. In India, for example, students who major in English are forced to read,read,read. While as American students, we do not have as much required reading and we have cliffnotes etc. to help us make the grade. If students develop reading skills in their courses then they will be better readers outside the classroom as well and their work inside the classroom will make them want to read more outside of class.

there is also this awesome thing called imagination that we develop when we read text. I'm pretty sure the imagination can not be properly developed with video games, doing stuff while watching TV, and reading blogs (most blogs anyway).

yeah our education system is some shit, often we get As for doing most of the required work, I know in the UK for example you have to bust your ass to get an A and even then there is a good chance that you simply aren't smart enough to do it
when the last time any of us in the US was actually too dumb to get an A? (not that we aren't dumb but the school systems stay consistently dumber)

I find it a bit narrow to lionize text as a more effective aid than video games or film in the development of imagination. What is it about the printed word that incites a person to think creatively, to juxtapose symbols and experiences? Is this a phenomenon strictly limited to text?

It is a grave mistake to suggest that imagistic media stifle the imagination in providing readymade images. Text also provides these images in representative form, giving the reader the responsibility of their visualization. Perhaps text, given that it need not deliver its images visually, is capable of representing leaps in logic that film and video games cannot depict. However, the converse is also true. Though we attempt to describe or create experiences through text, the image is a far more immediate marker of our awareness, and I doubt seriously that every image (any image?) can be convincingly delivered through text. Juxtapositions of a different and unique order are available to artists in visual media, and to establish a stratified system of imaginative value between textual and imagistic media is to presume upon and confine the power of human imagination.

I'm not particularly excited about the spread of illiteracy, but I'm confident that the narratives and paradoxes that accelerate the development of the human mind will not disappear with a single medium.

Is it conservatism that incites such an apocalyptic reaction to an extant phenomenon?

I was unable to attend the Reading At Risk panel, but I agree with what Darrell says. I see visual media as a way for viewers to be more creative and imaginative with the given material than literary media, which generally imposes some sort of narrative. Visual media, however, engages a different aspect of thinking than pure reading. Much of modern and postmodern art poses questions that scholars have not been able to answer, and most of these questions were posed not to be answered, but rather, to be prompts to encourage viewers to think. Literary texts teach people to be critical readers and to look for aesthetic elements that are unique to writing, but I don't think that I can stress enough how little the average person, and even most art students, understand about visual media. Part of this has to do with the fact that modern and contemporary art is hard to understand without some background knowledge. So while illiteracy should first be addressed at the level of reading, it must also be addressed in the field of visual media.