Reading on paper vs. on screens

Columbia University Teachers College Neurosciene DPM Study Speech, September 23, 2023

By John R. MacArthur

President/Publisher of Harper’s Magazine

??????????????????????????????????????????????????

?

Universities work in mysterious ways -- none, perhaps, more mysteriously than Columbia. Vast in its resources, affiliates, and bureaucracy, Columbia University in the City of New York can seem opaque and intimidating to someone with a new idea to propose, or just a new question to pose. But as I learned as an undergraduate here, that’s no reason not to try to pierce the veil, to understand the mystery. And the brief story I’m about to tell – the story that has brought us to today’s exciting symposium at Teachers College (an independent, autonomous, separately- governed affiliate of Columbia University) – will, I hope, testify clearly to the success of one of the central missions of this great university – the mission to propagate knowledge, based on highly sophisticated research, that can sometimes originate with one simple notion.

Nine years ago, on April 25, 2014 to be exact, I delivered the Delacorte lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, a few blocks from here, and my faculty host, Victor Navasky, had opened the floor to questions. A pointed one came from Stephen Schlesinger, a very fine

historian, who challenged my critique of digitized journalism and its

depredations -- especially Google’s larcenous, monopolistic stranglehold on the advertising market and its systematic violation of copyright -- by suggesting that there were other profound problems unrelated to Google or the internet afflicting the journalism and publishing business. Among them were, and I quote, in part: “You have a younger generation that doesn’t read and is proud of it.” I challenged Steve back, but I didn’t really address his counternarrative about what was killing newspapers and magazines.

Nevertheless, something in his critique of my critique stuck in my brain – was retained, shall we say -- and about ten minutes later – I can’t tell you why -- I came back to Steve’s comments. With due acknowledgement to YouTube, I quote myself: “There needs to be a study done at the new Zuckerman neurological institute at Columbia, you know, a real controlled test of reading on a screen versus reading on the page and seeing what the retention rate is. I tell the [Columbia] provost, my friend John Coatsworth – I’ve told him this ten times -- you gotta get the neurological institute to do this study. And what if we find out the retention rate is 30 % less, 50 % less [on screens]? The consequences could be catastrophic.”

This narrative would have been pedagogically and Socratically improved if I had voiced my exhortation as a question, and had also

mentioned comprehension, but what I said was good enough. At the very

back of the audience there happened to be a 2001 graduate of the Journalism School, Ellen Lee, who asked a question and then later approached me after the event: “There have been studies,” she told me. Among them were a 2011 University of Oregon study that found better recall of news stories read in printed newspapers than when they were read online, but a more significant one had been conducted by a Norwegian Professor of Literacy named Anne Mangen, whose 2013 study compared the reading of texts in print and on a screen among high school students. According to Mangen, Ellen Lee told me, the print-reading students scored better on their reading comprehension test than the digital- reading students.

Well, this sounded promising, so I decided to read for myself Anne Mangen’s excellent work, including later papers she co-authored with the neuroscientist Jean-Luc Velay of the University of Aix-Marseille. I started forwarding copies of Mangen’s “Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension” to friends and colleagues all over the world. Some of them responded with incomprehension, some were appreciative, and others ignored me. In most cases I was sending links to Professor Mangen’s papers at the speed of light, but whatever the efficiency of my delivery, I didn’t seem to be

advancing the cause of science, or reading, or anything other than promoting a Norwegian scholar whom I had never met. Isn’t this interesting, I would say to my friends? Isn’t this potentially a world-straddling sociological and cultural crisis? Yes, very interesting, they would reply. “Excuse me, I have another email to answer.”

Finally, I had a new idea, though it was decidedly unscientific. I had lunch with an actual policy expert, my friend Tony Shorris, who had been first deputy mayor of New York City in the first three years of the DeBlasio administration and before that the vice dean of the NYU School of Medicine. At lunch I handed Tony a paper copy of Anne Mangen’s study in an envelope. To make a long story short, Tony told me that if I wanted to get serious about starting a political and policy conversation on paper versus screen, print versus digital, I would have to get scientists, specifically neuroscientists, involved. Social science could take us only so far with the policy makers. So I called John Coatsworth yet again and asked if he could assemble the best, most interesting minds at Columbia to consider my suggestion that we study this issue using fully controlled scientific methods, in a laboratory setting. Not to worry, I recklessly told John. If we found the right researchers I would raise the money for such a study. So, under the auspices of Coatsworth and Columbia Vice-Provost

Justin Pearlman, we met at Low Library around a big conference table with many fascinating minds on May 31, 2019 – we’re now five years on from my original challenge at the J School – but none of these brilliant people wanted to lead the charge, though some of them did send me links to new studies I didn’t know about. And I’m pretty sure someone mentioned a name…. Karen Froud. A professor, not at the Zuckerman Institute, but at Teachers College. Someone was delegated to ask her if she would be interested in such a research project.

Did I say that mysterious ways can move very slowly? Six months later, on December 2, Tony and I met Karen and her colleagues, Lisa Levinson and Chaille Maddox, along with Justin Pearlman. Eureka! They were more than willing to conduct a study, using protocols never before attempted. There was a meeting of the minds. I foolishly repeated my pledge to find the money once they made a proposal with a budget.

?

?

Then Covid-19 happened.

?

?

?

I have grown to hate zoom meetings, but on January 29, 2021, Tony Shorris and I settled down in front of our computer screens and remotely

pitched Vartan Gregorian, the President of the Carnegie Corporation, on

Karen Froud’s proposal. Something went wrong on my end and my face never appeared, but I can still see Vartan in all his intellectual, sartorial and entrepreneurial glory. He was a force of nature and a very funny man, but also deeply serious about education. Of course he was interested. As the former head of the New York Public Library, provost at Penn and President of Brown, Vartan’s life was all about books and reading, about scholarship, about learning from texts. When he died three months later, on April 15th, it was a shock and a blow to me personally. But here’s the beautiful moment: a few days later Vartan’s chief of staff, Jeanne D’Onofrio, called me to say that Vartan had signed off on the grant to Teachers College and to Karen’s team, literally the day before he died. Out of respect for Vartan, Carnegie would honor his wish. I told you it was mysterious, didn’t I?

So here we are at Teachers College, on the cusp of something very big. I will leave it to Karen Froud and her brilliant team of Lisa Levinson, Chaille Maddox, and Paul Smith to explain their identification of a print-on- paper advantage for “deep reading,” but I will make clear what I see as the implications of this study for the future of reading and teaching. First and foremost has to be that the headlong rush to digitize everything – not least the classroom reading material for the 59 middle school students who participated in Karen’s study – may be not only counterproductive, but also

deeply damaging to society right now.?? When I read that the San Francisco board of supervisors has passed a resolution in support of digital libraries; when I read that the Houston public schools are closing dozens of libraries in the city’s poorest schools and turning them into multipurpose computer rooms; when I heard that St. Ignatius Prep, the iconic Chicago beacon of Jesuit learning had done away completely with printed books in its library and gone entirely digital ( a decision since then reversed), I fear for the future not only of reading, but of citizenship and learning itself. If, indeed, the screen as a medium – not just lockdown and remote learning -- is even partly to blame for the national declines in reading and math competency, then shouldn’t we pause to consider what this over reliance on digital formats is actually doing? And I’m not just worried about general readers like me and my children, I’m worried about the mechanics and technicians called to put out the fire and halt the radiation leak at Chernobyl. Where and how did they learn their repair techniques? Of course, we don’t want disadvantaged kids used as digital dumping grounds – and not always with the best intentions – but I’m also concerned about the more affluent kids whose parents have been sold a bill of goods – goods that they think are worth any price to keep their children ahead in school.

Nobody here, myself included, wants to eliminate screen reading or computerized searches. Nobody here is peddling nostalgia for a bygone era. But we must as citizens and parents address the findings in this study and memorize its very catchy title, Middle-schoolers’ reading and processing depth in response to digital and print media: An N400 study.

Later on today we might also get the chance to discuss the evidence that hand-written notes taken by high-school and college students, as well as hand-written letter formation by young children learning the alphabet, make for better students and better readers. Maybe smartboards aren’t so smart compared with chalk boards, at least in the early grades. Every school board in the country should debate these questions.

But for now, I’m very happy that Karen and company have gotten as far as they have with their groundbreaking study. With any luck, and new funding from an alerted and aroused foundation and university community, I’m confident that she and her team will unflinchingly take on the next important challenge in this field. Karen Froud, like Vartan Gregorian, is also a force nature, and I’m very pleased to give the floor to her.

?

?

?