When a new study on literacy habits revealed that Americans are reading less, a long-ago comment by 90-year-old author Ray Bradbury provides a chilling vision of what less reading could mean.
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture," Bradbury said, "Just get people to stop reading them."
Indeed. Indicators of how the American culture performs—or doesn't—continue to paint a national portrait of decline in every important field required for a strong, innovative, economically independent country.
The literacy study comes at a time when other indices of U.S. standings in the world also show declines unfitting for a country that once held premiere positions.
In a landmark study, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and the American Institute of Medicine found that "America's ability to compete for quality jobs of the global economy has continued to deteriorate ... while other nations have been markedly progressing, thereby affecting America's relative ability to compete for new factories, research laboratories and jobs."
These facts should set thinking Americans back on their heels:
( In 2009, more than half—51 percent—of U.S. patents were issued to non-American companies.
( China has replaced the U.S. as the No. 1 high-tech exporter and is now second in publishing biomedical research papers.
( Nearly one-third of U.S. manufacturing firms responding to a survey said they are experiencing skills shortages.
( 78 percent of U.S. high school grads in 2008 fell short of entry-level requirements in math, science, reading and English.
( The quality of math and science education in the U.S. stands 48th in the world, according to the World Economic Forum.
Conservative columnist George Will of The Washington Post also notes with chagrin that American colleges award 16 percent of their degrees in engineering and natural sciences while South Korea and China award 38 and 47 percent respectively, thereby ranking U.S. graduates 27th in the world in these disciplines.
As if to dig deeper holes, the federal government has drastically cut financial support for engineering and physical sciences research by as much as half, crippling invention and innovation.
China provided a high-tech wakeup call this week. It rolled out a bomber-sized stealth fighter, the J-20, indicating its scientists and engineers are rapidly catching up to the U.S. lead in aerospace.
When Americans shortchange learning, the nation comes up short.
