What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate

When I was a kid, there was a public service announcement that ran on TV for the Reading is Fundamental foundation for children’s literacy. The catch phrase, “reading is FUN-da-mental!” was shouted by some sort of animated, elf-like creature.

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fj9vlWjLgo&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLB499EFA49F214170

They have more modern, grown-up versions of the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) PSA today. But they aren’t nearly as much fun. And apparently, they aren’t quite as effective…if my recent interactions with people are any indication.

As an editor and writer, I read for a living. I read for fun. Now, I read for school. Reading for comprehension is, as the PSA noted, fundamental to successful communication. I like to think I am fairly adept at understanding and retaining what I read. Not always, but more often than not. Yet occasionally, I start to think I am the ONLY one who does.

More often than not – and sometimes daily – I struggle to understand why people no longer read. Let me clarify that: why they no longer seem to understand what they read. Many times, after conversing with a person, or sitting in a meeting, or participating in a teleconference, I am left wondering why more than one person in the room asks an inane question. I wonder why she or he doesn’t stop and think about what they’ve read before asking the question…that has almost always already been answered in what the person just read.

Just this week, I became frustrated when I engaged in an email conversation in which I tried to make a point no less than five times. Using the same words, only occasionally punctuating them with capital letters, underlines and at least twice adding the question, “are we all in agreement” I struggled in vain to make my point. It was futile. My correspondents did NOT understand.

I think I know what this is. We no longer are patient enough to make our way through a novel…or the front section of a newspaper…or even the back of a cereal box, without quickly giving up on the quest for meaning. Information comes at us so rapidly, from so many sources and in so many different mediums, and nearly unceasingly, that our comprehension simply has to suffer. I think our brains just become paralyzed, or partially so, and just snap shut after letting tiny shards of information poke through…but not too much and certainly not enough to allow for true understanding. At least I hope that’s it. I hope it’s not that we just don’t care enough anymore to try to comprehend. That would be sad.

And it’s not generational (so those of you who are picturing me as the cranky old lady complaining about the darned kids on my front lawn can just stop that now). No, this affliction knows no age. The other day, a teacher where I work (a man in his 60s who is about to retire for a second time) stopped by my office the day after an email announcement was made noting that while I was moving to Michigan, I would still be working as the Seattle school’s director of marketing and communication (remotely, of course). “We’ll miss you around here…how will we ever find someone to replace you?” he said, meaning well.

“Thanks, Steve,” I replied. “But you won’t have to replace me. I’m not really leaving. I’m just going to be working remotely. That’s what the email was all about,” I said. “Oh, I guess I didn’t read that part,” he said, sheepishly.

Sigh. I guess not.