READING PATTERNS—I Bookseller’s Search For A Measure Of Literacy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31211, 8 November 1966, Page 15

READING PATTERNS—I Bookseller’s Search For A Measure Of Literacy

Unusual though it may be for a study of this kind, business considerations were the original motivating reasons for this inquiry. Increases in turn-over in my bookselling business did not come up to the desired increases required of an expanding population which had been subject to higher education for an appreciable number of years.

With primary and secondary schools bursting their seams for a number of years, it seemed reasonable to assume that there was a growing number of readers within the community I served, yet my turn-over figures did not seem to bear out this basic assumption. Having examined the service I was offering, I then focused my attention on the

market I was attempting to supply. Questions without answers immediately came to light. What were the reading patterns of the Christchurch population? Had these patterns changed, and if so, in what direction? Obviously it would be a waste of time and money to try to sell books in a community with a diminishing number of readers. But always I came back to the prime question of what was the public’s reading pattern. Education and Reading

Knowledge of the pattern of reading within the community at large assumed more importance the more I thought about it. Apart altogether from the narrow view point of bookselling, other groups surely would be inter-

ested in the over-all picture of the reading behaviour of the community. Education at all levels has always been greatly concerned about reading. In a sense all formal education is merely reading under the guidance or tuition of teachers. What happens when pupils leave school and students obtain their degrees? Do they continue reading without guidance or tuition, or does the attainment of a degree or certificate mean that a certain absolute level of literacy has been reached? Perhaps a measure of the reading patterns of a community would indicate the efficacy, or otherwise, of an education system insofar as one would expect a successful education system to result in an increase in the reading proportion of the population. A decrease in the illiteracy of a population appears to be the first step an underdeveloped community takes on the road towards development. But in a developed community how does one measure literacy if not in terms of the reading patterns of that community?

Measuring Progress To measure the decrease in the illiteracy of a community appears to be a much simpler task than that of measuring an increase in the literacy of a people. If a person can neither read nor write, he is termed illiterate and it is comparatively simple to discover when he has achieved the mechanics of those two operations. It is not so easy, however, to discover his progress in proficiency with those operations once he has ceased to be illiterate, and it is even more difficult to measure the rate of progress away from illiteracy of a whole population. Traditionally, in westernEuropean countries at least, ■it is assumed that the more 1 persons who undergo or are subject to an education 1 system, the more literate that country is. However, although the terminal examinations of an education system certainly provide a measure of competency or proficiency of subjects within the limits of that system, it is questionable how far the number of successes in such examinations provide a measure of the literacy of a whole community. Is it a sufficient measure of literacy within a community to say that x per cent of the population have School Certificate, or a university degree? Does not such a measure omit entirely those persons who, for reasons of a differential in maturation, or temperament, or circumstance even, achieve neither satisfaction nor success within a formal education system? Fruitless Search Some measure of literacy outside the narrow confines of an education system seemed desirable, and it appeared that a picture of the reading patterns of a population at large might, perhaps, provide some such measure. What were these patterns?

Inquiries among educationists brought nothing concrete to light. There was work available on patterns of reading within various educational institutions but none on the community at large. Also, there were many theories on the importance and value of reading in schools, but very little relating to the whole population. Children certainly were being taught to read and educationists were continually improving their methods of teaching, notable progress

being made in critical awareness of the use of language in the classroom.

Special attention was being paid to slow readers, to comprehension, to the sort of books children were being encouraged to read. An increase in the use of school libraries was reported. But nothing was known about the patterns of reading among the post-school population. The proceedings of the twenty-eighth Annual Conference on Reading at Chicago University, 1965, contained in the opening paper an admirable statement of belief: “One important role of reading in the schools is to offer materials and professional instruction that will assist children and youth to acquire cognitive understandings, values, and innovating goals for the imagined tomorrows they desire for themselves, their community, and their nation.” Guesses. No Facts

But the whole conference, in its published proceedings, was notable for its lack of concern with the efficacy of its theories and methods outside the narrow confines of the education system. There were guesses and assumptions about the literacy of the population at large, but no facts. And what of the effects of the introduction of television to the community? Educationists in this country were well aware that television transmissions could have some effect on the reading habits I of children and they had read the comprehensive investigations into this matter made in Britain and in the United States. Articles on the effects of TV on children were printed in teachers’ journals and many talks on the same subject were given at parentteacher association meetings. With one or two confusing exceptions, however, these articles and talks related to inquiries made overseas. The underlying assumption was that New Zealand children would behave similarly, and though this assumption may well be borne out by facts, no comparable New Zealand inquiry had been published five years after the introduction of television. Effects of Television Booksellers also were working on assumptions and guesses. Trade journal articles on the effects of television on reading habits overseas indicated that a decline in popular reading was likely to follow the introduction of tele-

especially fiction, casebound, but this awareness results from impressions gained in daily trading and not from empirical observation or quantitative measurement Library issues from the Canterbury Public Library suggested a possible method of assessing quantitatively the reading patterns of the population at large. For several years the library had kept records of the number of issues it had made from its

adult library, its intermediate library, and from its children’s library. Furthermore, the record of issues from the adult library had been divided into “popular” issues and “serious” issues: “popular” being issues of westerns, romances, mysteries, and light non-fiction, and “serious” being issues other than “popular.” The possibility of using library issues to obtain an allover picture of reading patterns began to look promising. Also, a comprehensive investigation into the buying, reading and studying of books in Holland pointed at a positive relation between borrowing and buying in that “both buying and borrowing books are done under the influence of the same need for reading.” Examination of library issues in each category for the years 1956 to 1965 (see Table One) showed movement, but it was movement in isolation For the sort of picture of reading patterns I was looking for, it was necessary to relate the issues to people. The possibility of relating library issues to library membership was discarded for two reasons.

First, several changes in the method of compilation of library membership during the period under examination introduced a variable where a constant was required. Secondly, even though membership records had been kept in the same way for this period, relating of issues to membership would not have given the all-over picture required. Because it could be assumed with reason that a member of the library was a reader, a membership-issues relationship would show merely the pattern of reading within a small section of the community already known to be readers. I was looking for a larger pattern within the whole community. Was it possible to relate the library issues directly to the population of Christchurch? If the population was X and the number of library issues was Y, then the simple fomula Y over X would give the per capita issues. This method looked most promising. Assuming that library issues were made to readers, relation of issues to population should show a

(a) and (b). And conversely a decrease would indicate the contrary in each case. It began to look as though this method might provide a broad picture or measure of the literacy of the community. Library Issues

Popoulation figures for Christchurch were available from the Department of Statistics in the form of actual counts for the census years 1956 and 1961, and the department’s estimates of population for the intercensual years. A choice had to be made, however, whether to relate library issues to the population figures for Christchurch City or to the population of the Christchurch urban area. Because of the unsatisfactory nature of the library membership records, this decision had to be made subjectively. Discussing this with the librarian, it appeared that a significant proportion of issues were to persons living within the urban area. Further, although there are a number of suburban and commercial libraries within that area, we could locate no gross movements of population, or of issues, that would

distort the over-all picture. Also, the larger the population of the sample chosen, the less likely would be the possibility of distortion resulting from small movements of population. A large change in the proportion of children to adults in the population could introduce an undesirable variable in the proposed direct relation of the different classes of library issues to population. Examination of this possibility was made, but as there appeared to be no sudden or gross change here, it was decided to proceed cautiously and relate library issues to the population of the Christchurch urban area. Figures for issues from the intermediate library were excluded for two reasons. Covering a very small group within the population, namely 15 years to 18 years, issue figures from this library were thought to be too small for inclusion in such a broad programme. Also, members of the intermediate library were allowed to borrow from the adult library and these figures were not available separately. (To be concluded.)

This is the first part of an article by Gordon Tait, a I Christchurch bookseller. Mr Tait describes his search for a yardstick to measure the literacy of a community, and some means of discovering its reading pattern This, he says, is a preliminary report on a study which is still in progress