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Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

nytimes.com

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Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#71

Post by andrekandre »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #15
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of school is a mix between providing childcare, and making sure most of society have a largely overlapping common upbringing experience. We hear that we encourage diversity - but only of superficial stuff like sexual orientation or skin color. We don't want people that think too differently. This is why I, despite my deep appreciation for the pursuit of knowledge and having spent a significant chunk of my…

It is awfully hard to get anyone, children or adults, to think at all

i was literally told this at $JOB once: we dont have time to think; just give us a framework to follow

it seems like thinking is a form of torture for some... but maybe its our work/lifestyle that makes it so.. idk

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#72

Post by bgbntty2 »

floren wrote: post #68
bgbntty2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think school ruined fiction books for me. I had to read long boring books about stories that didn't interest me, with useless sentences describing what the scene looked like or what someone had for dinner. Most of the stories and themes were outdated and didn't have enough context to make them understandable. Some books even used outdated words and phrases. Maybe if I wasn't forced to read a book in an outdated lan…

> Most of the stories and themes were outdated and didn't have enough context to make them understandable. Some books even used outdated words and phrases. no cap Mr Darcy ur parties are bussin fr fr

I should've used "archaic" instead of "outdated". As in, "incomprehensible to someone speaking proper modern $language". Without a dictionary, a normal student couldn't understand what was being said in many sentences throughout the book. Some books actually had a dictionary in the end, but not for all the archaic words and phrases.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#73

Post by brightball »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #53
msteffen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one? https://www.arrowsmith.ca/cip-arrowsmith-school

Just $6k to change your life by speed reading clocks for 3 hours a day for two months... Needless to say this trips my crank/cult smell meter.

That is the program, yes. I’m not trying to sell you on it, just sharing our experience.

I found out about it from one of my neighbors who has two children with dysgraphia who did the full time program for 3 years each. He tells everybody about it.

I toured that location when my son was going into 3rd grade and we ended up sending doing just the summer program after 7th grade. What I saw on the tour would have helped me when I was a kid and my sons brain seems to work just like mine.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#74

Post by scoofy »

tyleo wrote: post #40

Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.” It’s bizarre stuff to say. What would you have the education system do? Put iPads in front of kids all day?

Society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. The problem is that we aren’t raising all of the kids right. It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff.

We aren’t a nation of nerds, I doubt we ever were, but nerds really ought to create a support system for each other. I understand why people care so much about which school district they are in. It’s as much about a culture of curiosity as test scores.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#76

Post by jhanschoo »

tyleo wrote: post #40

Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.” It’s bizarre stuff to say. What would you have the education system do? Put iPads in front of kids all day?

Maybe literature is just a terrible medium for culture except for the relatively brief period in human history when they were extraordinarily cheap to produce and disseminate compared to other cultural products.

Edit: but insofar as media criticism in education is bound to the book rather than the dominant forms of the day, I think children are being done a disservice.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#79

Post by atmavatar »

scoofy wrote: post #74
tyleo wrote: post #40

Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.” It’s bizarre stuff to say. What would you have the education system do? Put iPads in front of kids all day?

Society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. The problem is that we aren’t raising all of the kids right. It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff. We aren’t a nation of nerds, I doubt we ever were, but nerds really ought to create a support system for each other. I understand why people…

> It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff.

Even that is multi-dimensional. Another big problem we have in the US is that there are groups of people who don't want their children to learn certain things that most well-educated people take for granted.

For example, it's pretty common to this day for some school districts around the country to skip over teaching evolution. It's also common to misrepresent the causes behind the civil war and gloss over the genocide of native populations.

Others could probably come up with additional examples.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#80

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

brightball wrote: post #73
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just $6k to change your life by speed reading clocks for 3 hours a day for two months... Needless to say this trips my crank/cult smell meter.

That is the program, yes. I’m not trying to sell you on it, just sharing our experience. I found out about it from one of my neighbors who has two children with dysgraphia who did the full time program for 3 years each. He tells everybody about it. I toured that location when my son was going into 3rd grade and we ended up sending doing just the summer program after 7th grade. What I saw on the tour would have helped…

If you threatened me with 3+ hours a day of speed reading clocks instead of a normal summer I'd probably double down on effort too. And probably not in a way that's healthy long term.
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