{"id":45295,"date":"2023-05-28T19:08:41","date_gmt":"2023-05-28T19:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/everything-was-always-better-before-speech\/"},"modified":"2023-05-28T19:08:43","modified_gmt":"2023-05-28T19:08:43","slug":"everything-was-always-better-before-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/everything-was-always-better-before-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything was always better before – Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Already Aristotle knew this: The youth of these days, he wrote, do not respect authority, they wallow in luxury, they are completely without manners, they tyrannize their teachers and leave blanks in their parents. And so it is, everyone says, still. Last week we were able to see the results of, and the comments on, a new reader survey. The result was as follows: “Norwegian children read worse than before”. Here things went wrong, as they say in Sweden. The survey was carried out by PIRLS; Progress in Reading Literacy Study, it is conducted every five years among \u2013 follow right here \u2013 fifth graders. And this is how the story turned out: A fifth of Norwegian 10-year-olds score at or below the lowest level. Twice as many as in the previous survey. And even worse: We are the worst in the Nordics. And of course: The boys are the worst. Now the talk is going around dinner tables and in railway carriages: The youth these days. And out come the politicians: We must do something about this. We will order more investigations, we will get to the bottom of this. Solution: We will increase the desire to read. What shall we do? Since the youth are the future and it’s going to hell with them, what on earth are we going to do? It must be true, what is said? All statistics say so. The youth are in love with themselves, they stare at their smooth skin while snorting Russian cocaine; the last thing these ungrateful idiots want is to read a book. Even worse: They have lost the ability to read a longer text. As we could, in our generation, not least our parents, who started the day with Kant, continued with a little Olav H. Hauge for lunch, some Bj\u00f8rg Vik at dinnertime, a little Dostoevsky for the evening and a dash of Agatha Christie in bed, to get sleep. Everyone knows that shades are the mother of the gods, so if I may report some strange experiences. For me, a writer in my thirtieth year, heading into the autumn months of life and thus with a view to green eyes and sighs and groans; it’s so strange that I can’t quite see the misery. In all modesty; I spend every day in the literary landscape, I visit a lot of bookstores every year, I tour the country and the beach and talk to large numbers of readers. I should have enough experience to reflect on the scandalous development. I have been suspicious of the contemporary narrative for quite some time. Who tells it and why? Where does it come from? Could it be that nostalgia has been mistaken for truth? So I’ve started to follow the narrative, and ask myself what it does to us, and see if I’m the way I think; that there is also another narrative. One the statistics don’t want to spot? A media not comfortable with? One you don’t want, because it confuses the doom thesis – you could compare it to a government ordering a report and getting one that doesn’t correctly confirm what they hoped to find. Tore, then. Now you are simply conspiratorial. If so, I apologize. Here is some experience: I stop, for example, in the Norwegian bookshops. Strikes a conversation. As I did the other day. Yes, I say, these are bad times, eh? Huh, I say, you have to shut down? Farewell on gray paper? No, said the bookseller, that is not true. We have never sold more books than now. It is going really well. We are rather dismayed by that rumour, we do not recognize it. Every day, then. Then I go into a school class to meet these students who can’t read. To look them into the empty eyes. Last week; Molde VGS. The poor teachers have pushed my novel, Tollak to Ingeborg, on the students. They have had to read the whole thing. In Nynorsk. How will this go. A flurry of engaged students, questions, discussions. No, but every day? Then I remember a meeting with Olav and Guri Vesaas, the children of Halldis and Tarjei up in Vinje, where I was allowed, hallelujah, to enter Midtb\u00f8, a writing farm I had dreamed of since I fell in love with the Vesaas couple’s books when I was in the silly youth. At one point I said to Olav; how wonderful, then, that your father could sell so many books, I mean, he who wrote so advanced! Olav opened the laughing door; sell lots of books! No, you, there weren’t many books, you – but father lived well with the popularity in the school work and the little he needed. You must not believe the romantic tales of the past, he said. Every day, then. Then I constantly meet people who come up to me and say: Those audio books are so good. I’ve never been able to read on paper, now I’m all in, hello Hillev\u00e5gsgj\u00e4ngen, have you heard Hilde Susan J\u00e6gtnes, by the way? Flekkefjord lady? Stone good. I’m emailing the booksellers’ association, I’m asking: Is the narrative of doom true? Well, they sigh, we miss the god of shades. We think that the focus is self-reinforcing. I check some other statistics. 74 percent of book readers stated in 2021 that they read as many or more books than before. 71 per cent answered that they bought at least one book in 2021. That is just over 3 million Norwegians. What are we to think of all these millions of readers? What is happening right before our eyes? Who is seeing what they want to see? I? I remember a trip to a cafe with my friends at the gymnasium. It is 1991. It is Aslak Sira Myhre, me and two or three others. What are we so concerned about while we sit and roll cigarettes? The knife to the throat by Kjartan Fl\u00f8gstad. Is it as good as two of us claim? Isn’t it much weaker than The Seventh Climate? Then there is someone who says: But we don’t need to talk about this, because you’ve heard it, right? What? The novel is dead anyway. Ludvig Holberg also said it, in the middle of the 18th century, specifically 1748; epistle three: “On the art of printing.” Among the many human inventions, says the Bergen-born enlightener, I consider the art of printing to be one of the most wonderful. But alas, he says, now so many useless writings are published that fill up the brains of the studying people, they can no longer give themselves time to reflect on what they read, they can no longer find room for their own thoughts! The whole thing has become like a traffic, an industry for merchants and shopkeepers who enrich themselves on the goods, says Denmark-Norway’s leading literary figure. Literature will soon perish. And now we are there again. Once again it goes under. I want to raise my hand and ask: Is what we say true? Or is it the case that we humans need, and have always needed, the dear doom story. The confirmation of your own disappointment? How many heavy readers of novels were there in your class, let’s say in first gym? Two, three, four? How many do you think there are now? Two, three, four? The next heartbreak: Fifth graders? We are testing fifth graders. Now I am not a researcher, and I have great respect for them, I think they are necessary in our society, but then; fifth graders? I am very unsure of what the results before upper secondary school – when something as complicated and rewarding as reading takes its toll on a person – can contribute. Then there was the narrative. We all know, don’t we, what a story, and especially a story of doom, does to us. If it is told often enough, it confirms and cements it. Tell a young person that they are miserable: They begin to feel that way. Here we could draw in the contemporary narrative about the sick young people: You have ADHD, you are bipolar, things have gone to hell with you. Mom, what diagnosis do I have? And always: The boys. Always the boys, the miserable boys. Confession: I am also afraid that technology will stifle one’s own thinking. I’m also afraid to sit and surf the brain’s mobile all day. But one day a friend said this to me: I recently discovered that my daughter lies awake all night with that phone in her hands. Phew, I said, so bad. That phone! She reads, he said, all nights. On the phone. We let the young take the brunt. Always. And preferably the boys.
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