Here we are in 2006 asking our students to read in black and white, when most of the world once read in color and is again doing much of its reading in color. Have we educators gone crazy?
A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts (Hill, 2004) is a resounding confirmation of the need for a radically new solution to our literature and literacy problems. Americans—especially young Americans—are reading much less than before. In an age of television, the Internet, movies, and music videos, never again will Gutenberg-style black-and-white text be the fountainhead of “a free, innovative, or productive society,” as the NEA report says (p. vii).
But this is a time to celebrate, not lament. There is a solution. It is right in front of our eyes—literally. The best way to get Americans reading again is to do what other cultures have done for thousands of years: engage readers visually.
Neuroscientists are now confirming in the laboratory what the Egyptian, Buddhist, Mayan, Chinese, and medieval European illuminators knew all along: Colorful visuals are a powerful stimulus to learning. Neuroscientists have found that when we read in black and white, many regions of our brains—such as those that process color, form, motion, orientation, and position—are effectively shut down, put in sleep mode (Zeki, 1999). The most effective learning strategies motivate readers by activating their emotions (LeDoux, 2003). Adding color and design to our literature is a way of activating these emotions in different areas of the brain (Zeki, 1999).
Building on the pioneering work of these neuroscientists as well as the ancient traditions of manuscript illumination, I have been teaching Chaucer, Shakespeare, Plato, Homer, and Poe to high school students in color for the past eight years. I have been using new technologies to transform these visually stale classics with colored words, various font sizes, and eye-catching imagery. Every time I teach a lesson to my high school English students in color, their reading comprehension skyrockets to at least 20 percent higher than that of students who read in black and white. With Homer and Plato, test scores were 32 percent higher among students who read in color. Last year, 96 percent of my students passed their Regents Exams—and I teach in one of the poorest urban districts in the United States.
The credit goes not to any outstanding teaching skills on my part, but to an important paradigm shift taking place in our culture. We should not mistake what was once a technical and economic necessity for a universal truth about reading and writing. In the old days, black-and-white writing was the only kind of writing. But now that multi-sensory writing (which I call designer writing) is both economical and practical, we face an unavoidable question: Why continue to read, write, and teach in black and white?
The critics can't have it both ways. They can't on the one hand lament the decline of serious reading, and on the other hand insist that reading (and writing) remain a static, black-and-white activity.
Some educators and technology gurus have mistakenly assumed that if you take black-and-white text and simply transfer it to a computer screen, young people are more likely to read it. Yet in my classroom, I am finding that my students love paper just as much as adults do. The debate about the future of the book is not between print and screen. It is between the non-visual and the visual. It is between rectangular blocks of black-and-white text and colorfully designed pages. It is between the Gutenberg cliché and a vernacular that speaks directly to the eyes. It is between the Old Way of Reading and the New.
The advertising industry understands this perfectly well. After the invention of color printing in the late 19th century, the advertising industry switched immediately to color and has never turned back. No one has ever doubted the effectiveness of using color in advertising. If you send a direct mail advertisement in color, a much higher percentage of people will open the envelope and make a purchase. One widely cited study found that adding color produced a 34 percent improvement in response rate, a 25 percent increase in the size of the order, a 48 percent increase in repeat orders, a 32 percent increase in overall profit, and a 35 percent improvement in response time (Romano, 2001). I was astonished when I read this. If we could get even half the improvement in student learning that the advertisers are getting in consumer response, we would be ecstatic.
Breakthroughs are always anchored in the past. At the dawn of the third millennium, we are witnessing the most remarkable paradigm shift in the visual experience of reading since the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. The Web art for this article is adapted from a manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid that is nearly 2,000 years old. The citizens of ancient Rome understood a timeless truth about reading: The eye reveals as much as the ear. And in the stale black-and-white format, we are too often left blind to the deeper truths—the mystery of what makes us human.
History warns us that the establishment rarely recognizes a paradigm shift in its earliest manifestations. Maybe this time history will be wrong. Maybe this time the education establishment will wake up to what our students are screaming for: visually stunning, multi-sensory ways of reading and writing.
