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Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

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Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#251

Post by TacticalCoder »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

> Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have.

Yeah. My nine years old goes to a school where there's no homework. She now reads a lot: kids at school all shares any cool book they read and then they all want to read it. Today she brought back a brick and started reading it. She devours book.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#252

Post by NegativeLatency »

bluerooibos wrote: post #99
gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

> rediscovered reading Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode. My brain somehow doesn't think reading is a good use of my time, so I've settled for audiobooks when falling asleep or on long drives. The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series, which ended just before I went to universi…

Find a nice local book store and go have a look around at what looks interesting to you.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#253

Post by imgabe »

They need to bring back the scholastic book fair! Or is that still a thing? We also had Pizza Hut giving us free pizza for reading books.

I read a lot as a kid, to the point where I got in trouble in class for reading a book instead of paying attention. I’m trying to think about why, but I don’t think it was any outside push. I don’t remember most of my peers reading so much.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#254

Post by 392 »

tsycho wrote: post #11
octobus2021 wrote: post #10

Don't know why this is on HN but anyways. My youngest will be 9 soon. Finding books for him is pain. I started trying more in the last few weeks, grabbing more or less random things from my local library (beginning chapter books, chapter books). Most of them are series, he liked a few (Galaxy Zack, Time Jumpers, Desmond Cole books), did not like others (Magic Tree House, something called Byte, Code Breakers, and real…

I agree, and have the same problem. What books did you end up liking for 9 year olds?

When I was that age I read basically nothing but Hardy Boys books. Also Alex Rider books and Harry Potter, all out of order.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#255

Post by Fnoord »

Anecdotal (from NL): I had access to a library end of 80s/90s. Everything mandatory wasn't fun, but had to be done. Providing a small, meaningful choice would've been more fun. Comics and non-fiction for kids was available, but if you did not like fiction then you are kind of hosed. I 'never' (esp in early youth) liked fiction because I could not easily imagine the story, or it just did not interest me. It wasn't real, so I couldn't see the point of it. My weakness for sure, but if I had access to more/better informational non-fiction I would've read it like the info sponge I was. And having fun while doing so.

I remember very well when I was about 8 or 9, I always lost the trail when we did group reading at school (each kid one sentence). And then I got punished for that. Also not very... let us say encouraging.

Nowadays, I'm still not much of a fiction sucker, but I've come to enjoy quite some fiction. Just not in time for high school, and even then I liked books which weren't for my age or my gender or whatever.

If my kids don't like certain fiction, I won't force it upon them. I want them to read, and will try with suggestions and what not but if they really do not like fiction, forcing it upon them won't help.

I just hope they won't waste their time on something as useless and nefarious as TikTok. One could argue that is the comics or TV series of the 21th century. Well, even if TikTok were harmless to health and a great application, comics or TV series didn't profile you for an authoritarian state.

EDIT:

> Yet, somehow, reading persists; more books are sold today than were sold before the pandemic

This does not mean, at all, that [all] these books are read. Terrible assumption.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#256

Post by gnicholas »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

Funny, my 4th grader has basically zero homework. She goes to a 'good' public school in Silicon Valley, for reference.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#257

Post by zikzak »

TylerE wrote: post #226
aatd86 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a singly linked list is actually one of the most important data structure I've found :). From there, one can modify it to implement tries. And then one can understand trees, arborescences etc. The rest is about algorithmic complexity (speed and size) which I never remember but that's easy to look it up. It's true that someone who does simple frontend engineering (for example) might not need to know too much abo…

Yes, but the most important lesson about data structures is to let someone smarter than me implement them, and just use the widely known, well documented, battled tested one.

Agreed. The things I look for most when hiring programmers (assuming they have a resume showing they have the skills) are attention to detail, empathy, and ability to communicate without feeling like I'm arguing all the time or pulling teeth.

Empathy tends to win here: you need to understand why people are using the software and how they are using it to make good decisions.

Communication tends to be better with people that have empathy.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#258

Post by zikzak »

gnicholas wrote: post #256
gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

Funny, my 4th grader has basically zero homework. She goes to a 'good' public school in Silicon Valley, for reference.

Same, but in our case he's doing it all in class. The kids that can't get it done or choose other activities are taking it home.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#259

Post by nytesky »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

Out elementary and middle schools have a no to low homework policy. By high school the most they assign to non AP courses is 15 min per class.

Only assignment is reading 30 min a night, any book they want (including graphic novels). Yet that does not foster a love of reading.

I had a ton of homework, but still read a book a week (though I did not do sports, only band, so had way more time than most mainstream students in that regard).

My reading waned when I had kids, basically as working parents I am always too exhausted to read, I always doze off. So I can’t set a good example, which I wonder if that is part of the problem — my mom was always reading.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#260

Post by aleph_minus_one »

hehdhdjehehegwv wrote: post #203
triceratops wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. At 9 I randomly picked whatever looked interesting. If I liked it, I proceeded to read every single other thing by that author. There was no "word of mouth" because I was the only kid in my class who read for pleasure.

When I was that age my teacher had a thing where reading something like 3 books got you out of a lot of homework and your parent had to sign a paper listing what you read and you turned it in. As a kid who already hated school, and used reading as an escape from a pretty shit childhood, I was clocking in 5 books a week. The teacher first accused my parents of lying that I read that many books, because it quickly got…

> The teacher first accused my parents of lying that I read that many books, because it quickly got to double digits, but I was able to summarize all of them off the top of my head, so instead I was just forbidden from doing it altogether.

> Not sure what the lesson is there, lol.

Lessons learned:

a) Incentives matter (economy 101)

b) If a market offers possibilities for arbitrage, market participants will attempt to make use of them.

c) By market laws, arbitrage opportunities will close very fast, so in the long term, markets can be assumed to be arbitrage-free.

d) Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

e) Authorities (or those in power) will attempt to cheat you. Don't trust them.

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