In all the fuss last week about the dip in NAPLAN results, comments from a principal at one of the schools which scored well stood out for me. Felicity Preston from Como West Public School in Sydney's Sutherland Shire told The Australian how some commonsense practices had served her young pupils well.

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Among them was a return to pen and paper over digital devices and the embrace of physical books, as well as explicit learning.

All old school stuff.

The kids were now focused on the teacher at the front of the classroom rather than a screen on the desk. Their comprehension had improved and having hard copy books in their hands instead of iPads had fostered a genuine love of literature.

Preston's words took me back to my own analogue childhood, where the printed word held sway and screen time was limited to an hour or two in front of the black-and-white Baird TV with rabbit ears that needed constant adjustment.

Visits to the public library were a regular weekend highlight. After those borrowed books were read, adventures were had in the pages of Encyclopedia Britannica, which took pride of place on the bookshelves. Searching out one topic would lead to another and take me on journeys of discovery on rainy Saturday afternoons. Books - physical, not digital - have been constant companions ever since.

But I had wondered if I was part of a dying breed. A disturbing article in The Atlantic suggests the age of reading is coming to an end and paints a bleak picture of a post-literate world, a new dark age of short attention spans and ignorance.

It cites research that shows Americans, once proudly literate, now read much less than they used to. Fewer than half of all adults read a book of any kind in 2022. The proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 per cent in 2003 to 16 per cent in 2023.

Those who do still read are consuming shorter, much simpler books. And university students are even complaining about having to read entire texts rather than synopses and summaries.

Fortunately, Australia lags behind the US's slide into post-literacy. The latest National Arts Participation Survey reveals almost 69 per cent of Australians aged 15 and over read at........

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