An Early Argument

In highschool, when students are assigned a book to read in class, the popular thing to do is just rent the movie and chuck the book. While watching the film provides most of the plot and story of the original book that can get you through a test, you are ultimately denying yourself access to characteristics of reading that could help you in other areas. Reading provides more beneficial skills to students than viewing film or TV.
Reading is better than watching the movie or TV show, because reading helps develop vocabulary skills while movies and TV do not. In the NEA's report "To Read or Not to Read," it is said that "each type of reading material contains a far greater average number of rare words than TV shows" (68). A student could learn more words from a single book than multiple TV shows. The words learned in books are helpful when writing essays for English or articles for the school newspaper. English teachers don't normally reward the use of simple words in assignments. These learned vocabulary skills from reading also help with other school subjects like history and science (Wise 370). Watching film versions deprive students of higher vocabulary, and in a world where grades are the most important, students might find themselves doing poorly in their other courses.

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After reading Mark Bauerlein's view on the decline of reading in our generation, I commented on cec's post Is Bibliophobia a social disease?

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I just commented Kee's blog post No More Paper Routes. It is an interesting post about the decline of paper newspapers being distributed.