Why America's Children Stopped Falling in Love with Reading (msn.com) 184
"A shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun," writes a New York-based children's book author in the Atlantic. But why?
The ubiquity and allure of screens surely play a large part in this — most American children have smartphones by the age of 11 — as does learning loss during the pandemic. But this isn't the whole story. A survey just before the pandemic by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984. I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling — and depressing — is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books....
In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early '80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost. This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language...."
[A]s several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices.... [W]e need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can't let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it's not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids.
"There's a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now," librarian/public school teacher Jennifer LaGarde tells the Atlantic. And their article notes the problem doesn't end after grade school.
"By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group."
In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early '80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost. This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language...."
[A]s several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices.... [W]e need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can't let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it's not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids.
"There's a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now," librarian/public school teacher Jennifer LaGarde tells the Atlantic. And their article notes the problem doesn't end after grade school.
"By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group."
Don't forget Florida (Score:2, Insightful)
Which actively bans books and as a result, has bare bookshelves in its schools [newsweek.com]. And fires teachers who expose the truth.
Can't enjoy reading books if you don't have any.
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I wonder if Fahrenheit 451 is on the banned books list. And if, why.
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:3)
Ironically, that's one of the books that most people misunderstood. Perhaps critical analysis would have helped people be dissuaded from the notion that it's about censorship. It's actually about how new forms of media make us stupid.
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Weird. Most interpretations of the book don't even touch the theme of media and instead focus on the dangers of enforced conformity and the ban of individualism.
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What truth? That banning books is bad? I doubt InSanities' political enemies would mind propagating that.
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Which actively bans books and as a result, has bare bookshelves in its schools [newsweek.com]. And fires teachers who expose the truth.
Can't enjoy reading books if you don't have any.
Other way round.
Schools used to assign good books - there was a reason they were called "classics" - instead of books that just check a box as to the author's skin hue, or books that just promote the latest perversion of the week.
I still preferred reading on my own, but at least the school wasn't actively working against me.
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
Schools used to assign good books - there was a reason they were called "classics" - instead of books that just check a box as to the author's skin hue, or books that just promote the latest perversion of the week.
But Florida's parents never know whether one of these classics might contain a picture of Michelangelo's David, warping little Madison's mind forever.
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I'll bet Madison's mom got really upset when Madison asked her "Why didn't Michaelangelo use a Jewish model?"
Hence, the complaint.
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
School was actively working against my reading enjoyment even when all the books were by white men. I was in K-12 in the '80s and '90s, and by the time we reached high school is was all terrible books, all the time. The Sun Also Rises and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were two I particularly hated. Catcher in the Rye supposedly appeals to high schoolers, but Holden Caulfield was the most unsympathetic, self-involved asshat of a protagonist, and I couldn't get past that. etc., etc.
The problem is not diversity, or abandoning the classics, it's that they choose books that are interesting to people with English degrees for deep analysis. If that's your thing, you'll have a great time. But if it's not, and you're not already the type to read voraciously for pleasure (I am, come from a family of librarians), I can absolutely see how you'd raise a generation that thinks all reading is boring. I doubt I had a single assigned novel after 6th grade that was truly enjoyable to read (Lord of the Flies came closest, and I'd label it more on the interesting than enjoyable end of the spectrum), and of course pre-6th grade, they weren't really assigning full novels.
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This could be really well worked in as an antidote to 'internetism' - I could absolutely see a lesson assignment like 'here are some review sites for books and movies. "Think of your favourites, look up a review y
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I really enjoyed the history books, to be honest. I'd read the entire thing each year, despite the teacher not actually getting to the latter half of the book.
A better question would be why they insist on reteaching US history so many times or why my world history class completely ignored Asia and Africa. Sure, we learned lots about south american and some more US history and some ancient greece and egypt but that's it.
I was of course taught to read at a young age and loved to read fiction. It became a spec
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:3)
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I got assigned Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". Sure it might be an iconic book, but for 15 year old me it was a very boring read and I struggled to get through it - even though I was reading lots of other books for fun at the time.
Even the movie bored me to tears.
"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" was much more enjoyable and still had about 80% of the original plot and themes.
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:2)
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I was really lucky for my first book report in 7th grade, I chose myself. And wrote the report/review myself. It was the first book where, as I read, I watched the movie in my head. Up until then, it was some scramble of words. I must have hit some developmental milestone.
After that, I vacuumed all the Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, and others from the Junior High library as well as from mom and dad's library. And the ANALOG magazine they got each month.
My brother never got this and only reads occasionally for p
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The problem is not diversity, or abandoning the classics, it's that they choose books that are interesting to people with English degrees for deep analysis.
It's also like the maths equivalent of skipping over algebra entirely and diving straight into vector calculus apropos nothing. It's much, much harder to analyse something that's been winnowed down from the last 150 years of general publishing for its quality because there are no obvious fuckups.
Holden Caulfield was the most unsympathetic, self-involved
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh look, some lame person found a way to try to make this about the current stupid culture war.
The "classics" were what all the kids hated reading (for the most part) when I was in school and I took AP English. If you want kids to be into reading have them read modern books that they can relate to not books written multiple generations before these kids were even born.
I remember one of the few books I really genuinely enjoyed in AP English was Enders Game and that was only a bit over a decade old when they had me read it.
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There is no book banning law. There is only a recent law that says children should not be exposed to pornography before third grade and parents should have a say in the books their children have access to. If that means there are no books in a school library (although those videos have long since been debunked), that should tell you something about the book choices they had before.
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There is only a recent law that says children should not be exposed to pornography before third grade and parents should have a say in the books their children have access to.
That's a completely different law, and Florida is in the process of revising that law [myfloridahouse.gov] from specifically covering K through 3rd grades and ambiguously covering higher grades, to specifically covering all grades. [orlandosentinel.com] Much to the surprise of basically no one, except maybe for folks who'll now need a new way to argue in bad faith that it was only about protecting very young children.
The "book ban" bill is this one. There really wasn't as big of a stink made about the law initially, because I don't think anyone wa
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:4, Informative)
Ugh, I really need to not just click preview and then smash submit. The link to the "book ban" bill is here. [flgov.com]
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:4, Insightful)
So far the theory, but have you pondered what it means in practice?
What do you think is the immediate consequence if you make someone personally liable for something that they have no reason to want more than their job or personal freedom? Right. They will remove it from existence. Twice so if what they are liable for is something as ambiguously defined as "pornography" (aka "I know it when I see it").
LOL (Score:2)
You mean another transparent attempt to use law to enforce your personal religious beliefs on others. Something Republican/Christians do in spades. But, don't forget, your Bible can be considered a negative influence under the same dumb fuckery. [sltrib.com]
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:2)
"Riding the bus" is a euphemism now? Or is it only mention of "riding in the *back*" that stirs the loins?
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"Riding the bus" is a euphemism now? Or is it only mention of "riding in the *back*" that stirs the loins?
Apparently, the story behind that was that a textbook publisher practiced "malicious compliance" with Florida's new law by removing all mentions of race from the story of Rosa Parks.
It's kinda like how I received a ban for "hate speech" on Reddit for mentioning that IRL I sometimes get called a "faggot" for being gay. Whitewashing the past and gaslighting the present has become something of a bipartisan thing these days.
Such a tragedy! (Score:2)
Because, you know. The shelves are temporarily empty bc. the books are formally under review by the school library, who will then be responsible if the books turn out to have stuff inappropriate for children. I think it's a little extreme, but that's backlash for you, in reaction to
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:2)
Florida banned books from schools that have sexual content in them. Why is that a problem?
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:2)
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Florida banned books from schools that have sexual content in them. Why is that a problem?
Are are books with sexual content a problem? Are you falsely equating them with pornography? 'Cause they're not the same thing, despite what many narrow-minded people think.
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Which actively bans books and as a result, has bare bookshelves in its schools [newsweek.com]. And fires teachers who expose the truth. Can't enjoy reading books if you don't have any.
An informed electorate who can think critically and for themselves is harder to manipulate and problematic for authoritarian politicians.
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:2)
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Since the school systems are full of so many groomers, FL's law states that books must be approved before being placed in schools. Teachers are also made liable for any sexually explicit material and can be prosecuted like any other pedo that is giving children explicit content. No more special pedo privileges for the left.
Ahahaha.
You're a fucking groomer.
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the school systems are full of so many groomers
That was an invented narrative created by folks who couldn't stand the idea that LGBTQ+ tolerance was being promoted in public schools. Somehow the concepts of "gay people exist in real life" and "please don't bully your classmates for their sexual orientations" got twisted into some delusion that the schools are actively trying to turn your kids gay.
There's always been LGBTQ+ youth. Before they had representation, they just hid it, and the ones who couldn't handle the mental anguish of hiding it killed themselves [thetrevorproject.org]. Acknowledging that LGBTQ+ youth exist and letting them be themselves isn't grooming, it's being a decent human being to a marginalized minority group. Tolerance and understanding is no more likely to make your straight kid gay than it is to make your white kid turn black.
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Are there any recorded cases of that happening? Seems like a solution in search of a problem
Re: Don't forget Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
A principal just got fired for showing kids Michaelangelo's David. Some parents said it was "pornographic". If that's what you mean by "pornographic" material, then your opinion on the matter is worthless. If that's not what you mean, then you should provide examples.
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I suspect that the kid's mom who complained was upset that her Madison was asking why Michaelangelo didn't use a Jewish model.
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I think your primary gripe is that it's mostly the LGBTQ+ teachers who are doing this and they're affected the most. If so then that's probably a fair assessment.
If you think that it's okay for teacher's personal sexual orientation to have ANY effect on how they teach, then, well, fuck you is all I can say, that's way past the threshold of what may be discussed in a civil way.
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry but I think it's inappropriate for any school instructor to be talking to or providing sexually explicit material to a child, especially without parental consent.
Florida has always required parental permission slips for sex-ed curriculums, and if a teacher isn't following the proper protocols they should be punished. No new laws were needed in this regard.
I think your primary gripe is that it's mostly the LGBTQ+ teachers who are doing this and they're affected the most.
Nope, my primary gripe is that Florida's recent laws in these matters are overly broad by virtue of being intentionally ambiguous. They also take away the rights of parents who have LGBTQ+ children and parents who might actually prefer that their straight children have a better understanding of the world they're sharing with LGBTQ+ folks.
It's personal to me because when I went to school, I was treated like my sexuality didn't exist. I probably can't do anything about late-stage capitalism, climate change, or the fact that ChatGPT is going to take all our jerbs, but I can at least advocate for LGBTQ+ youth to have a slightly less shitty time in Florida's public school system. Because like my sig says, someday we all stop playing our roles and end up back in the box. The only thing that remains is our impact on the world we leave behind. I'd prefer to leave it better than I found it.
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I can at least advocate for LGBTQ+ youth to have a slightly less shitty time in Florida's public school system.
Can you explain in more detail what this means in practice?
Re:Don't forget Florida (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you explain in more detail what this means in practice?
It's been a very long time since I was in school, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a few decades out-of-date. Here's what I'd propose:
In elementary grades, LGBTQ+ topics should not be part of the curriculum and it should be handled in an age-appropriate manner if a student brings up that they have two moms, two dads, went to Disney with their gay uncle and his husband over summer vacation, etc. An appropriate response would be something along the lines of "Some people have a family like that, it's normal, now let's get back to our math work." A teacher shouldn't have to fear losing their job for that.
In middle school, age appropriate LGBTQ+ topics* should be part of the normal sex-ed curriculum (which parents have always been able to opt their kids out of anyway). Additionally, counseling should be available to students who feel they're being bullied or are at risk from abuse because of their sexuality. Age appropriate resources for LGBTQ+ youth should be available from the school library.
In high school, the only main issue is making sure social activities (such as the prom, etc.) are inclusive of LGBTQ+ youth. At this point you're really just kidding yourself as a parent if you think your kids aren't already fully aware of the world around them.
The problem with the way the laws are presently worded in Florida is that everything I just wrote, which to me seems pretty reasonable (since it's basically just giving LGBTQ+ youth parity with their straight peers), could be interpreted as running afoul of the law. Mostly because Florida has still yet to define the whole "age appropriate" parameters and instead prefers to keep it open-ended, so they can use a "we know it when we see it" approach to allow for selective enforcement.
* I'd leave coming up with an appropriate curriculum to people who actually work in education.
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Since the school systems are full of so many groomers, FL's ...
How else is Matt Gaetz going to find new dates?
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For starters: there is no Queer Theory. Either you are or are not. If you can not decide: then you are queer. That is wha the word means.
The rest of your post is utter nonsense. So "liberals", or did you write "libertians"? Are for pedophilic child rape, ah ha ...
Did not know that. Thanx for your insight.
Hm, joust out of curiosity: did you read at least one book of the authors you mentioned?
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For starters: there is no Queer Theory. Either you are or are not. If you can not decide: then you are queer.
When normal people talk to a 10 year old that hasn't figured out who they're attracted to yet, they think "they haven't finished going through puberty yet." When a Queer theorist talks to the same kid, they think "obviously they're queer." Fundamentally, this is what the big divide in America on this issue is all about.
Re:Decades old movement to manipulate your childre (Score:4, Insightful)
When normal people talk ...
When you start with this phrase, you're the problem.
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On the topic of reading, there are information resources which are accessible by reading, such as Wikipedia, which people could potentially use to learn about, for example, Queer Theory [wikipedia.org].
Re:Decades old movement to manipulate your childre (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read some of Gender Queer to see what all the fuss is about and I'd agree it's not appropriate for preadolescent children, and it's probably not appropriate for most adolescents merely by virtue of not being applicable to most of them. I'd draw the line that it certainly isn't appropriate as part of any officially sanctioned curriculum, but it should be available to check out to adolescents who wish to do so of their own volition.
Furthermore, I don't know what tolerance is like on the younger end of the Gen-Z world, but when I went to school there was no way in hell that I'd have checked out a book called "Gender Queer" with all my classmates staring at me. Chances are that if your adolescent is already sure enough of themselves that they're wanting to read that kind of book, you've already got a LGBTQ+ kid and the issue you're faced with is whether or not to be a loving parent to the kid you have, not the kid you wish they were. The book didn't make your kid queer, you already had a queer kid.
Ironically, my adolescence coincided with roughly the tail end of the dial-up BBS era, so I overcame the lack of any sort of gay representation in my school's books/media by discovering a BBS that actually had genuine hardcore gay pornography. If I had an inclination to be straight it certainly would've been a lot easier just to watch late night Cinemax or ask one of my friends to borrow a Hustler/Playboy mag.
Bullshit disinformation (Score:2)
This is bullshit misinformation.
I have multiple volumes by Foucault and de Beauvoir on my shelf, and I've never encountered even the slightest whiff of any such topic. I mean, the word "queer" doesn't even appear anywhere on de Beauvoir's Wikipedia page. (I'm not LGTBQ myself, I have their works for other subjects.)
Cite or STFU.
Guilty as charged (Score:3)
I admit, I don't read books for fun, or not fun as defined by others. I read technical manuals and discussions on how to solve problems. Do I like reading for readings sake? No. And I bet a lot of other people are the same even though others would be freaked out that we don't enjoy reading the collective works of >.
As Scotty said: "This will give me time to catch up on my technical journals!"
The onion headline (Score:4, Insightful)
"Harry Potter movie introduces children to the joy of not reading"
It used to be in ancient times one actually read science journals. Editors put relevant articles next to each other. And since you had no way to view these online--you had to physically go to the library and hold the printed volume-- scanning through bound volumes for articles to read was natural. Now we just search for things and only get exactly what we searched for and not the serendipitous find
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Very good point. Some of the best minds were stimulated by a happenstance find.
Re: The onion headline (Score:2)
The Harry Potter movies were an inspiration to my children to read the books.
They loved comparing the book to the movie and identifying where the director screwed thongs up, made a good decision, and knowing what filled in the gaps.
As much as my boys loved video games and movies, Iâ(TM)d find them curled up on the couch or in their room reading.
While I donâ(TM)t agree with a lot of things my ex instilled in their minds, teaching them to embrace reading isnâ(TM)t one of them.
All three boys are
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Is that some kind of S&M activity?
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Harry Potter movie introduces children to the joy of not reading
Expecto Illiteratos !
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Few people read as much as they say they did, And many if the read did not really engage with the book or remember much of it. I read a lot, but only remember a few of the books.
One this that is true and schools will have to adjust to this, is the novel is over. The need to publish in any long form is over. For those
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Not just American kids (Score:4, Informative)
TV, video games, mobile devices.
Next question?
Re:Not just American kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't have to read the article to know the answer to this question. I have a 10 year old, and she'll only read something after she's used up her tablet time for the day. Books simply can't compete with the immediate satisfaction that she gets from watching YouTube or playing Roblox.
If I didn't set a time limit on the tablet, I doubt that she would be doing any reading at all. That thing is like digital crack for young minds with short attention spans.
Re:Not just American kids (Score:5, Interesting)
Books simply can't compete with the immediate satisfaction that she gets from watching YouTube or playing Roblox.
Also, for about 3% of the population, books simply never will be as entertaining as watching a video/movie because they don't have the ability to imagine the scenes in their mind [cnbc.com]. Some people literally have a lesser experience reading books, so it isn't always necessarily that newer forms of media are a distraction.
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This is neat but the 3% of the population can hardly explain a double-digit decrease that is being observed.
Re: Not just American kids (Score:2)
Nah, thatâ(TM)s not it. I loved reading as a kid and I only recently figure out that I have near complete aphantasia. I read less now as an adult because there are so many other things to do and my attention span is a bit shot. That said, I still manage to read at least a dozen books a year. It helps having someone to read books WITH, and so I have a couple reading partners. But yeah, aphantasia doesnâ(TM)t really slow me down, I just canâ(TM)t visualize the spaces that people are in or what
too much assessment? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit.
The article says itself that the percentages have been falling since 1984.
You can't blame No Child Left Behind (2001) for that.
I'm a huge reader, my wife isn't. We've raised 4 kids since the 1990s, two turned out to be big readers, two did not...So I'd say we were running to average.
But we read to our kids constantly. We encouraged reading for fun. My kids saw me reading and enjoying it myself.
We were shocked by the shitty, shitty approach our local school used to teach kids reading that was in no way like the way we'd learned. Instead of letters-> sounds--> words-> meaning, they were using some new "modern" trendy teaching paradigm that basically just kept exposing kids to words expecting 'eventually' they'd figure it out for themselves.
I'd say today kids are learning to read despite shitty American teaching methods, not because of them.
Then after that, they are losing their interest in long form reading because of the internet. I've seen the latter in myself when I've gone a long while without a book - the internet "blurb" style doesn't present information that, like a long book, requires the reader to hold multiple concepts simultaneously for long periods.
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Similar here. My parents (one reader, one not) had three kids, two readers, one not. My daughter had two parents who were both readers, she is a reader.
Cousins were readers if their parents read, mostly ignored books if their parents didn't read.
Re:too much assessment? (Score:4, Informative)
The article says itself that the percentages have been falling since 1984.
And in 1984 there was, like, four TV channels and no computers so kids did something else.
(and if you read too much you got called a 'bookworm' and parents used to try and send you outside to do something healthy)
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"And in 1984 there was, like, four TV channels and no computers"
Eh? Computers were around in the early '80s
In 1984 I had an Apple ][ and a C=64
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Eh, but I agree with the previous poster in principle. Sure there WERE computers etc (we had one) but in terms of general use and utility? They were hobby/niche devices, not the ubiquitous things everyone uses every day, like now.
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trendy teaching paradigm that basically just kept exposing kids to words expecting 'eventually' they'd figure it out for themselves.
That is actually how reading works. And I'm confident you learned it the same way, but simply forgot.
That trend is not modern. I learned like that over 50 years ago.
And the way you learn reading/writing has most certainly nothing to do with the question if you like reading a book, or not. Except the hours where so much hell for you that you simply: hate reading and/or writing
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That is actually how reading works. And I'm confident you learned it the same way, but simply forgot. That trend is not modern. I learned like that over 50 years ago.
No, that isn't how reading works. We haven't evolved to read (unlike talking) and many kids can't just "figure it out" by being immersed in it. It's a terrible method that leaves something like 30% of kids behind, who could be taught to read if only they used a more structured approach like synthetic phonics.
Look up "science of reading" - here's one [edresearch.edu.au] that also includes the citations to the studies if you want to go that far - there are many others.
And yes, the "whole word" and then "balanced literacy" have
Re:too much assessment? (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of letters-> sounds--> words-> meaning
That is "phonics."
they were using some new "modern" trendy teaching paradigm that basically just kept exposing kids to words expecting 'eventually' they'd figure it out for themselves.
That is "whole word" learning.
That "phonics vs. whole word" debate has become politicized, but the preponderance of the evidence is that phonics helps kids learn to read sooner and progress faster, although they later self-transition to "whole word" recognition.
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Ah - I see you have met "Balanced Literacy". And unfortunately it is not only a thing in the US.
Screens absolutely compete for attention, but the shitty reading methods means lots of kids **can't** read - not because they are unable, but because someone was sold a story on whole word literacy, so rather than focusing on teaching kids phonics (so they can sound out words they don't recognise) the learn to recite books by wrote, until the texts get too complicated, or the teachers don't have time to read them
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I'd agree. Schools are the best way to suck the fun out of reading. It just teaches reading wrong. Instead of showing how reading could be fun and exciting, it instead bores the student with text that is generally uninteresting and irrelevant to the person. I mean, most class reading is done with books that didn't interest me at all, and then you're going into depth and detail about it and basically making a boring book even more boring.
There's lots of interesting books out there, even books for kids that a
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The article says itself that the percentages have been falling since 1984.
You can't blame No Child Left Behind (2001) for that.
Actually, the article doesn't say that. It says, "the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984."
That is, the percentage now is lower than it was in 1984. That's only two data points. It doesn't say anything about what happened between 1984 and now. It could mean the percentage went up from 1984 until 2001 and then dropped. Or the percentage could have declined from 1984 until 2001 and then could have risen to another point less than it was
dependency on phones and software (Score:4, Insightful)
In all seriousness, we've become dependent on phones, in the most pernicious ways. The more they do, the less we have to do. People are lazy, so now, the idea of "doing things" is considered to be for "losers".
Look! I typed 3 words, and it wrote an essay for me. Why bother thinking anymore?
Public school drove it out of me long before (Score:3, Interesting)
In 7th and 8th grade I would devour books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and others. By high school I didn't read for recreation. What changed? I was forced in my spare time and as homework to read insipid stupid "classics" for a grade. Instead of reading adult level material about the end of the world (The Stand) I had to read sanitized books about some asshole that burns his hand in Revolutionary times, or some other dickhead and his goddamn dog. It made reading books such a chore that I only did it when required.
This was the late 80's / early 90's.
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Wasn't there a part in there too where he didn't know if the ice was firm, so he tried to get the dog to test it out? And even the dog was all "Hell naw!"
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For what it's worth the "goddamn dog" part was Where the Red Fern grows.
I recall liking the Frost poem. Maybe because it didn't have a contived happy ending lol.
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Anyway, in contrast, in younger years our son quickly picked up Brandon Sanderson's "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librari
"Watch my kids for me." (Score:2)
One can spend a lifetime on the Internet alone (some of it is reading of course), not to mention the number of TV/movies and the video games can be played for a much longer time before being completed; and on-line play can even go indefinitely.
The libraries, in my opinion, aren't helping. One here ho
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I remember the frequent summer question we'd say, living in our distant suburb, "Mom, I'm sooo bored... what can I do?"
I did that precisely once. My mother told me to vacuum the house. I haven't been bored in almost 40 years, and it's likely I never will be again as long as I live.
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Unpopular opinion (Score:4, Funny)
Books are long winded and largely uninteresting. I have ADHD and I've always struggled to stay motivated enough to finish a book. It always seems like the author just kept adding long winded crap to artificially extend scenes or add useless information to get page numbers up.
I much prefer reading Wikipedia or other sources of dense information. For fiction I prefer a short story, TV, movies. Some books can capture my imagination, but most just seem to ramble on.
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It always seems like the author just kept adding long winded crap to artificially extend scenes or add useless information to get page numbers up.
They do, but not always. Shakespeare didn't. He's still worth reading.
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There's a fair point here, even if I don't have exactly the same experience.
As a fantasy reader, I've found that the golden age was pulp fantasy where the core works were short stories published in monthly pulp magazines. They're dense, snappy, and risk-taking. The problem is that as a publishing concern the industry found you needed a certain 200-300 page count to make it worthwhile binding and putting something on the shelf. So yes, writers commonly took popular short stories and bloated them up (or paste
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Demographics (Score:2)
It could be demographics. The US has gone from an overwhemingly European majority nation to one vastly more culturally and genetically diverse. It all depends on which cultures/ethnicities value education and reading.
The fruits of disinformation have ripened. (Score:2, Interesting)
The fruits of disinformation have ripened and are on full display in this thread.
These are very ugly times, uglier than I can remember in my 5 decades in this rock. I've never seen it this bad, the divide in the population, the way a full half of you have been successfuly re-programmed.
There's more to life than 10 second sound bites and cleverly edited footage of empty libraries and cleverly-steered interviews with a pee-determined agenda.
Maybe if you goons spent more time reading the books in question rat
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STEM (Score:4, Interesting)
I was just getting ready to rant , but instead, I'm going to sit back and watch society fall apart. I've announced my retirement for the end of this school year. I'm too wore out from trying to fix things at the local level, and I am not rich enough, nor am I in bed with the right publishers in order to be heard at the state level.
how can they read a book, if a page = a wall? (Score:2)
i.e. a wall of text = TLDR.
Anything over a sentence, and eyes glaze over.
Used to read Playboy (Score:4, Funny)
And then my friends dad bought some Hustler's
Lot less reading
Content delivery has simply changed. (Score:2)
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What reading is being done on tiktok, youtube or snapchat? Pretty sure those platforms are all videos. Also, reading text messages, while technically reading, is nothing compared to reading an actual book. Not like they are sitting around reading books on their phones. Sure, they could but we know better.
I would say the Internet and social media are a major reason for the reduction in reading. It's also shorted everyone's attention span and our ability to remember stuff. Instead, we just look everything up.
Why? (Score:2)
Socrates, on reading (Score:2)
"[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company
Kids still read all the time (Score:2)
Kids still read all the time. It isn't that they've stopped reading. However, what they read is on a screen and tends to be much shorter in length. For example, kids spend a lot of time with text and chat messages. They get news from apps. I'm not sure there's a problem with this situation. However, there are some ways in which the kids do need to adjust and broaden what they read. If the college and career expectations for these kids could be fulfilled based on their current modes of reading, then I