New anti-literacy posters appear in library*

Although proliteracy posters and advertisements have been posted in various Edina Public Schools since 1971, media centers and libraries at Edina High School have begun a new, controversial campaign to show both the pros and cons of attaining and practicing the ability to read.

“We want to move away from the classic, one-dimensional view of literacy that most schools promote,” said EHS media center employee Sara Swenson, “While still telling students about the advantages of reading, we also want to let them know that learning to read also lends itself to some disadvantages.

“For one thing, if you spend your time reading then you have less time to spend on other things you want to do. For another, people who read for more than twelve minutes a day make up only 7% of the world population, meaning that regular readers are probably isolated elitists who are disconnected from the rest of the world.”

While still keeping up some of the posters featuring various celebrities and fictional characters endorsing literacy, new anti-literacy posters replaced roughly half of the old ones. The new posters feature a variety of arguments against reading. One such poster features Russian President Vladimir Putin standing heroically over a pile of burning books with a caption “Ideas are dangerous: Never read”. One of the more popular posters features actor Adam Sandler throwing a book into a basketball hoop, with the caption below “I don’t need basic reading skills to be awesome.”

While the media center claims to have conceived the idea for a campaign against

literacy, many speculate that the school employees actually caved under pressure. “All I know is that I wrote dozens of angry letters to the school system about how mad I was that they blatantly promoted reading. Why, I’m beginning to think that all of these teachers and librarians were under the impression that to succeed in this country you need to be able to decipher written word with some competence!”

Are the new posters enough to show both sides of the issue? A recent poll of parents, students, and staff showed that 42% think so. Another 12% think that the captions on the posters could actually be detrimental to promoting illiteracy and 46% think that the only side of the issue should be shown.