Most of my college students don't read for pleasure either. They're also incredibly ignorant on a wide variety of topics. Wonder if there's a correlation?
I've also noticed that some parents who complain their kids don't read much have no books in the house and the parents watch TV all evening. My kids read too damn much, we have to threaten them every night to put their books down and go to sleep. Of course it helps that my wife and I both read a lot, our house is loaded with books, we go to library sales all the time, and at any one time have dozens of books checked out of the public library. We also no longer have cable TV.
I'm going to go read right now (a book called How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
by Mike Brown). I'll post a review in a couple of days.
In the small sample sizes of my high school math classes, I would absolutely say there is a correlation both between readers and non-readers. The students that read are more inquisitive and are concerned with the why questions. The students that don't read are more inclined to just float through their school career. I have a student in my Algebra II class that I loaned Consciousness (Blackmore). He wants to be a neuroscientist. When I ask the students who don't read recreationally what they want to do I get "I dunno."
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