To the Editor:
Re “We’re Just Not as Good at Thinking Anymore,” by David Brooks (column, April 11):
As a former teacher, professor and principal, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Brooks’s warning about the dangers of incuriosity and the astoundingly low reading levels of many Americans.
He said what thousands of American teachers have been warning for years. Without advanced reading skills and a dedication to educational development, higher-level thinking cannot exist. Learning must be volitional and encouraged. Because of the bombardment of nonsensical information, a lack of supervision and direction from many homes and the presence of cellphones everywhere, teaching can become a game of Whac-a-Mole instead of a presentation and an exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Information is everything to a society. Having that knowledge cannot be achieved without understanding that reading is essential.
Any society that is not dedicated to learning, not dedicated to reading, to further thought and, most important, not aware of its ignorance, is doomed to fail.
Susan McCarthy-Miller
Raleigh, N.C.
To the Editor:
David Brooks writes that kids these days do not read books for fun, and I generally agree. But what he does not mention — what so many educators around the country would tell him — is that our students desperately want to read for fun. I am a high school teacher, and my students tell me this every day, over and over and over again.
My students want to fall in love with learning. They want to think critically, to analyze story lines, to turn off TikTok for a while and crack open a book. There’s just one thing stopping them: grades.
I’m being overly simplistic, of course, but so is Mr. Brooks. I would love to have a conversation with him about how students today feel pressured to spend more time pursuing that elusive A+ than perusing their local library. I would love to have a platform half the size of his so I could advocate gradeless education — so I could point to evidence that rating students on a letter scale ruins their passion for reading.
I would love to encourage students to stop making decisions based on whatever Harvard wants them to do and to start making decisions based on what makes them happy. And my students tell me every day, over and over and over again, that they know books would make them happy if they just had the time to read.
Emma-Claire Sunday
Lawrenceville, N.J.
To the Editor:
I hope tens of thousands of people read this column all the way to the end.
Critical thinking — the ability to discern what is accurate even if it means just finding the subject, the verb and the supporting evidence — is what energized my years teaching middle school.
Summers, I would often lead writing workshops. I’d give students a quote, then ask them to do quick writes that included a thesis backed by something in literature, something in history and their own experience. The best part was always the sharing aloud and discussions that followed.
My fear is that David Brooks is right when he writes that “a lot of people are disengaging from the whole idea of mental effort and mental training.” I went to my book club the other night. Most people there had not finished the book.
Judi Healey
La Canada, Calif.
To the Editor:
Bravo, David Brooks! Amid so much incredulous discussion about how President Trump got elected, his irrational policies and his mindless cabinet, you provided the frightening unifying theory: the declining quality of our education, especially civics; overconsumption of irresponsible social media; and a loss of intellectual curiosity.
Without a broad-based commitment from our political leaders and our society as a whole to address this dumbing down of America, we are lost.
Robert M. Smith
Santa Barbara, Calif.
To the Editor:
Having moved so rapidly from an analog society to a digital one, we are experiencing an overreliance on digital communication that may impair many people’s interpersonal skills, increasing loneliness and detachment from reality. Education must integrate the digital and the analog for there to be any hope for future generations.
Randy Weinstein
Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
To the Editor:
Thanks to David Brooks for his thorough assessment of the state of literacy in America.
I have long believed that any group of people, no matter their race, ethnicity or location, has the ability to do the most extraordinary things — if they are so inspired.
In 2007 The Times Magazine ran an article by a senior lecturer at Yale, Annping Chin, called “The Newest Mandarins.” In it she described how the Chinese had developed a “passion for learning” that included math, engineering, sciences, etc., as well as the wisdom of the ancient philosophers like Confucius and Lao Tzu, which they then applied to modern problems. It is that passion for knowledge that has helped propel China to where it is today.
Clearly we are in need of a renewed desire for knowledge, but there is no leader or movement to encourage deep reading or the adventure of difficult learning. As Mr. Brooks writes: “What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Donald Trump’s tariff policy.”
David Ligare
Carmel Valley, Calif.
To the Editor:
There are several bookstores within a 10-minute walk from my home in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. They are busy and thriving. Readers abound in neighborhood parks and cafes. Magazine and newspaper shops and kiosks are plentiful. The French read. They believe deeply in reading, writing and talking about what they read and write. Of course, screens are everywhere, but books are too.
Everett Cox
Paris
To the Editor:
In his essay, David Brooks confirms what anyone who has been paying attention already knows: Too many Americans don’t properly value the ability to think critically and the independence of mind and action that critical thought bestows.
Mr. Brooks does a great service by highlighting this problem. But one wishes he would also apply his considerable intellect and insight to an essay about possible solutions.
Roliff Purrington
Houston
