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Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

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

#191

Post by amitav1 »

eimrine wrote: post #138
squigz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take apart the distractions per se, how is it possible to read book for a kid in 2025 at all? Literally buy books? What about ereaders? Install adblockers and de-shittify your OS? I don't have the problems you seem to have, and I'm on Windows.

Paper books are too hard to sell after you have read it. Ereaders can not render PDF/DJVU with formulas. My reading list has nothing able to be read from that kind of devices. Installing some more proprietary code will not lead to "deshittifying" some existing proprietary code. You just add 1 guy more of your dependances. You even can not do this once for whole life of the device. So many time perfect for reading goe…

I don't know about other areas, but the school to which I go in Southwestern Ontario still has a library, as does every other school to which I have been.

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

#192

Post by techblueberry »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #189
techblueberry wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a very common sort of misanthropic attitude I see littered around the web. You know how they say - like in making music - in order to break the rules you have understand them? I don’t like the take directly, but as a person who makes music, what I realize, and I think this is what they meant, it if you don’t study music, most people are likely to naturally slide into the most simplistic forms of it,…

> copying all the self-defined independent thinkers At this point I can no longer put effort into responding to you. You think that my conception of "thinking for myself" is "listening to people who claim they think for themselves, and repeat what they say"? You know the HN principle of "assume the most generous interpretation"? This is the opposite. Anyway, FYI, you sound like you're trying to deradicalize an andrew…

You didn’t give me a lot to go on. I think it was the most generous interpretation from what was available. Give me more! What drives you? How am I so off base?

This is genuinely a philosophical question I am deeply interested in, what is individual thought?

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

#193

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

techblueberry wrote: post #192
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> copying all the self-defined independent thinkers At this point I can no longer put effort into responding to you. You think that my conception of "thinking for myself" is "listening to people who claim they think for themselves, and repeat what they say"? You know the HN principle of "assume the most generous interpretation"? This is the opposite. Anyway, FYI, you sound like you're trying to deradicalize an andrew…

You didn’t give me a lot to go on. I think it was the most generous interpretation from what was available. Give me more! What drives you? How am I so off base? This is genuinely a philosophical question I am deeply interested in, what is individual thought?

Why do you care so much about me? Re-reading our conversation, you were the one that asked "do you think you're an independent thinker", as if hoping for a yes so that you can then attack it. All I said is schools are mostly childcare.

If you care, go check my comment history and ask about something specific.

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

#194

Post by techjamie »

apparent wrote: post #186

They're axing honors classes in our high schools so they can mix all the kids together for equity. But because some of the students can't read very well (even in 10th grade), they have to read the books aloud during class, since it would be inequitable to require the kids to read on their own at home. Not surprisingly, when you're rate-limited by read-aloud speed, you can't get through that many books and excerpts ar…

Probably has to do with the method for teaching reading being terrible for several years, depending on if the school dropped phonics.

I saw some stuff about literacy dropping because they went from teaching to sound out words, to, as I understand it, basically just showing the word and teaching how it's said, hoping kids would naturally pick up the rules. This did not have good outcomes, and last I checked, there was a movement of schools going back to phonics.

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

#195

Post by sixtram »

When I started high school in the early '90s, there was a compulsory summer reading list of 10–12 books, each ranging from 300–800 pages. Then we had to write essays about them. This was just our summer homework before the new school year started. I didn't enjoy it at all; at the same time, I read lots of easy fiction, sometimes several hundred pages a day.

My six year old (who is still in kindergarten) reads about 70–100 pages per week of books aimed at eight to nine year olds.

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

#196

Post by theultdev »

apparent wrote: post #184
spicyusername wrote: post #115

I never understand where these anecdotes come from. I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, read full books all the time and have since they were quite young. The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class, and the kids you'd expect from the homes you'd expect read plenty. So whatever the problem is, if there eve…

> I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading I would not assume this, given that the states with the highest literacy rates are mostly rural and at least half red (NH, MN, ND, VT, SD, NE).

Break that down further and you'll see it's blue cities in those red states that have the highest illiteracy rates. Same with crime. Kind of goes hand in hand. Education in blue cities needs to be fixed.

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

#197

Post by quasigod »

People rarely read whole books anymore. I know very few adults in my life who read books, lots of people are put off by reading in school and never give it a try in their adult life.

I think the biggest offender is summer reading assignments. I never knew a single person that actually read their book, and being expected to spend time during break reading for a school assignment definitely creates a negative association.

I loved reading as a child, up until high school. Once I graduated, it took years before I enjoyed it again.

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

#198

Post by techblueberry »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #193
techblueberry wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t give me a lot to go on. I think it was the most generous interpretation from what was available. Give me more! What drives you? How am I so off base? This is genuinely a philosophical question I am deeply interested in, what is individual thought?

Why do you care so much about me? Re-reading our conversation, you were the one that asked "do you think you're an independent thinker", as if hoping for a yes so that you can then attack it. All I said is schools are mostly childcare. If you care, go check my comment history and ask about something specific.

Do you think independent thought and deep thought are correlated or uncorrelated? When you say most people copy their perspectives do you think that’s bad?

A lot of the thinkers I’ve been interested in lately seem to deeply embed their thoughts in a tradition, so I’ve been thinking that in order to have better thinking I should copy more.

> why do you care so much about me?

Sad question, but what is life but a series of attempts to connect to other people. Having a discourse makes it real. Tell me I’m wrong! Maybe having independent thoughts has real value. Usually “think different” is about as deep as an apple ad.

Yes yes, I started this as a bit of a gotcha, I have a bias against people who proclaim to be independent thinkers, and decry others as sheep (“copiers”), but I would love to be wrong!

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

#199

Post by Aerroon »

quasigod wrote: post #197

People rarely read whole books anymore. I know very few adults in my life who read books, lots of people are put off by reading in school and never give it a try in their adult life. I think the biggest offender is summer reading assignments. I never knew a single person that actually read their book, and being expected to spend time during break reading for a school assignment definitely creates a negative associati…

The same thing happened to me.

Required reading in school killed my interest in reading. When I graduated I was very happy that I wouldn't have to read books ever again.

It took me about 5 years or so until anime and manga got me to try another fiction book. That eventually led to reading more books. But when school was done I really did think that I wasn't going to touch a (fiction) book again.

---

It makes me wonder if kids in the future will have "required reading" where they have to play certain old video games. Will that make them hate video games?

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

#200

Post by Throaway198712 »

eimrine wrote: post #84
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…

> Being forced to read and memorize poetry was the absolute shit. Yes and no. I used to start reading at 4 years old, but I forcedly used to memorize some rhymes at 3 years old. Most folk don't believe it is possible to read so early (though Eliezer Yudkowsky has reported about similar age). But my point is - how would I learn reading so early without that poetry? I don't really like poetry exactly as rest of the fic…

I also learned to read at 3. I actually remember the switch from illiterate to literate, as I remember realizing that just by looking at road signs I would automatically read them. I told my sister, who couldn't read yet, that there was a downside, as you could never look at language without reading it ever again!
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