"Nothing of intrinsically superior value adheres to pleasure-reading as opposed to pleasure-viewing. "At least they're reading" is just an empty slogan if what they're reading is no more sustaining as an experience that what they might be watching on tv. Training one's eyes on the printed page in itself is not a more profound act than training them on a screen full of visual images."

This is so stunningly wrong . Sorry, but the visual arts and reading are not easily equivalent or interchangeable. Study after study has shown that, in fact, "training one's eyes on the printed page in itself" shapes the mind in ways like, oh, say, "training one's eyes on arithmetical equations" can. Setting aside the huge and obvious issue of sheer information -- the amount of information in this society that can only be accessed through literacy --