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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

#211

Post by TylerE »

aatd86 wrote: post #194
naasking wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just no time, but making even otherwise fun things mandatory with a volume that's overwhelming can suck the fun out of it and/or make it seem dull.

Yup. I initially thought that it would be a good idea for me to major in Computer Science. For some reason I majored in Finance after a few years of electrical engineering courses. I don't think I'd be programming today if I had to be force fed programming assignments.

Computer Science is actually kinda of lousy for teaching the things most programmers can do. To the point where if I was hiring, I'd rather hire someone who's less experienced and self-taught, but with some sort of "interesting" background, where "interesting" is almost anything that teach's critical thinking about abstract concepts and how to articulate ideas. Could be anything from a Journalism degree to someone who spent a decade working their way up the ranks of a machine shop from operator to foreman.

I can tell you the last time I had to write a singly-linked list implementation though. October 17th, Nineteen Ninety Never.

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

#212

Post by dageshi »

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…

Yeah, don't read "worthy" stuff, or things to enlighten yourself, find your particular brand of entertaining trash and mindlessly consume it.

I recommend bad litrpg and progression fantasy personally. Mother of Learning is a good one to start, it's free on royalroad.com or available on Kindle.

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

#214

Post by janalsncm »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #85
janalsncm wrote: post #56

> Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back th…

> They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy. Sure. The next step is helping them making a decision on which book to read and provide a social environment for doing that. Libraries do not really do that and haven't done that even in the early 90s.

I am sorry your experience at libraries was so unfulfilling. To me, libraries opened up a world of knowledge. When I was a kid my mom would take my brother and I to the library and just let us loose. As a kid I could spend what felt like days looking at cool cutaway diagrams of castles or reading about how black holes worked. And at the end I took home 5 or 10 of the most interesting books. And it was all free!

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

#215

Post by AndrewDucker »

Detrytus wrote: post #137
inasio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the opposite way, at least from the point of view of absorbing information. I often have a hard time with podcasts and often youtube videos because I feel I could have read the info there in a few minutes vs watching/listening to something for much longer

On the other hand, reading a novel can take you a few days, but watching a movie based on the same novel takes 90 minutes.

And contains vastly less information while doing so.

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

#216

Post by xandrius »

allemagne wrote: post #166

There's no good reason to think it's not phones. The article kind of rejects this out of hand but I think it's mostly because that doesn't make for an article that touches on all the other topics the author wanted to write about. >It might be screens, but it’s not only screens. It’s not like kids are suddenly getting their own phones at age 9; recent survey data from Common Sense Media reveals that phone ownership ho…

I hated reading even before phones were "cool", I just didn't find it the best medium for me.

Now I still hate the act of reading but it's often eclipsed by the joy I get from acquiring new knowledge.

So no, it doesn't need to be phones.

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

#217

Post by SpaceManNabs »

nickd2001 wrote: post #207
monknomo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"widely beloved" by whom? "classic" in what sense?

I'd think Tolkein's "The Hobbit" would fit this description? Or CS Lewis Narnia series, one-offs like "The Secret Garden", Also Edith Nesbit, fantastic children's author, "The Railway children" probably her most famous. century old at least.

The Hobbit is banned by multiple school districts. It actually pissed off a lot of teachers too. It is books like that being banned that make teachers not want to have a library at all. It is really easy to have a banned book, and teachers do not have the time to source each book in their already existing libraries.

But I guess in their words:

> the teacher's goal is mainly to push up against someone's line, politically

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

#218

Post by xandrius »

nicbou wrote: post #200
allemagne wrote: post #166

There's no good reason to think it's not phones. The article kind of rejects this out of hand but I think it's mostly because that doesn't make for an article that touches on all the other topics the author wanted to write about. >It might be screens, but it’s not only screens. It’s not like kids are suddenly getting their own phones at age 9; recent survey data from Common Sense Media reveals that phone ownership ho…

Why wouldn't it be phones? I could read right now, but instead I'm on my nth round of the Hacker News front page. Reading competes against instant gratification, and it doesn't win as often as I'd like it to. Reading requires discipline when scrolling is an option.

Isn't HN mainly text? Aren't you reading?

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

#219

Post by janalsncm »

nickd2001 wrote: post #207
monknomo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"widely beloved" by whom? "classic" in what sense?

I'd think Tolkein's "The Hobbit" would fit this description? Or CS Lewis Narnia series, one-offs like "The Secret Garden", Also Edith Nesbit, fantastic children's author, "The Railway children" probably her most famous. century old at least.

Sure, but then you’re just reinforcing the attitude that reading is just for stodgy old people rather than a way to understand the world as it is today.

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

#220

Post by aatd86 »

TylerE wrote: post #211
aatd86 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I initially thought that it would be a good idea for me to major in Computer Science. For some reason I majored in Finance after a few years of electrical engineering courses. I don't think I'd be programming today if I had to be force fed programming assignments.

Computer Science is actually kinda of lousy for teaching the things most programmers can do. To the point where if I was hiring, I'd rather hire someone who's less experienced and self-taught, but with some sort of "interesting" background, where "interesting" is almost anything that teach's critical thinking about abstract concepts and how to articulate ideas. Could be anything from a Journalism degree to someone wh…

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 about that.

But for instance, it was just a couple weeks ago that I've realized a markov chain is just a bunch of linked lists (a DAG, Directed Acyclic Graph).

I've found Computer Science to be a very nice framework to think about the world.

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