International Reading Data from 2011 PIRLS – Huge Surprise Again: Sky Isn’t Falling » PIRLS reading 4th grade 2011 by nation
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My grandchildren would all score in the top percentile of test. The problem is–they don’t read. Raised by parents who view video games as great baby sitters most of them have become video game junkies and, as such, will never discover Nabokov, Faulkner, Orwell et al. They will never have a literary comrad like Marlow or be moved to tears upon reading Calvin Trillin’s description of the passing of his wife, Alice. “A Confderacy of Dunces” will never grace the bedside table of their beach house. Their world will be so removed from their grandfather’s that it will be impossible to find “common terms that define the difference”.
So, Mr. Brandenburg don’t become complacent over the scores. People that live in a land with readers my also abide in a land without literature.