I cannot run wires in my house, creating new electrical circuits, installing ceiling fans and outlets. I’ve tried to learn how. I’ve watched it done a dozen times and I’ve read books from the library but… it isn’t happening. I’ve even tried to get a neighbor to help me (RIP) but that turned out to be inadvisable and, most likely, illegal.

So, I understand ignorance. I don’t like it, but I understand it. What I will never understand is voluntary, willful ignorance.

Figures were released recently that, frankly, scare me… and, yet, explain so much about how our nation got into this mess. Over 40% of high school graduates never read another book their entire life. Over 35% of college graduates never read another book their entire life. The only good news is that about 52% of Americans say they sometimes read for pleasure… but that might be one book a year; a summer beach read, perhaps.

When I saw that study I flashed back to a cool morning in West Virginia. We lived on a mountain just outside the wonderful town of Morgantown, a university city just five miles from the border with Pennsylvania. On the mountain was a grade school serving kindergarten through third grade. It met in a couple low, cement block buildings painted white and a scattering of trailers to handle other classes. The teachers had asked if I could bring in some slides of Scotland and show them to the kids (yes, this was in the 90’s and PowerPoint was just starting up. We still used slides and projectors). I not only showed them slides of Scotland but of a host of other countries, too.  The kids listened in wide eyed awe. It was cool.

One of the kids asked me “How did you get to go to all these places?” Remember — many of the adults in this area had never been more than 50 miles from their place of birth. I said, “I read.” When the kids asked what I meant, I said something like this: “If you like to read, you learn things. Those things give you power. People want to meet you. They want to hear you talk. They ask you to come help them with this or that. The more you read, the more you can do anything you want to do.” We talked about that for a half hour or so and I swear I could see light bulbs going off over some of the kids’ heads.

In life, you can choose to be ignorant but — man! — why would you want to be? Why struggle in a bad marriage when there are tons of books that will teach you how to talk to each other and bond in new and better ways? Why get into financial hell when there are books out there by Dave Ramsey and Steve Diggs (to name just two) that show you simple ways to prosper? Why vote in people who will rob you of your labor, step on your liberties, and treat you like dirt when some reading could have shown you their character long before you saw their first hagiographic campaign commercial? Have you seen the “man in the street” interviews with Jay Leno? These people vote, but they don’t read (or think) and that costs all of us.

I know why some people hate reading: teachers. The vast majority of teachers I’ve met in my life were good people who were sincerely interested in their students but that doesn’t mean they were successful at passing on a love for their subject. My wife had a history teacher that killed her love for history. I’ve seen dozens of teens whose love of reading was killed by the way it was made a chore and by the material chosen. My son would bring home his reading assignments when he was in sixth and seventh grade and I shuddered. Instead of all the cool literature out there that would involve a young person’s mind and transport them to new lands and adventures, he had to read bizarre short stories written by a Japanese author I’d never heard of (but the teacher indicated that his lack of fame pretty much proved his importance), poetry by Maya Angelou, and other “important” literature that had no point, no structure, and nothing to hook the reader in. None of his friends liked to read after a year of that (their teacher piled on the reading so it was not only boring, it was a burden). I’m glad Duncan kept reading.

If you don’t like to read, consider what you are losing. You will never travel to distant lands. You will never tap into the thousands of years of human knowledge that are just a page away from you right this very instant. You will never be able to spread the gospel except accidentally. You will never teach a Bible class or, if you do, it will be dull and flat because you can only draw from your experience and not from the collective experience of all who have gone before you.

Yes, it seems odd to rant about this on a blog where regular readers gather… but maybe someone will print this off and read it to a recalcitrant mate. It’s time to read and grow. Maybe you won’t be able to absorb and understand it all (re: electrical wiring) but you will be growing as a person, creating new pathways in the brain (thus postponing Alzheimer’s and some other dementia) and you will be walking away from the self-referential ignorance that has brought us Paris Hilton, Cass Sunstein, Keith Olbermann, Us Weekly magazine.