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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

#211

Post by dybber »

Aerroon wrote: post #199
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 wonde…

In our local highschool (near Copenhagen, Denmark) they have scheduled reading time for all pupils while in school - weekly as part of their normal schoolday. That is, instead of normal class everyone needs to bring a book of their own choosing and read in it. No phones allowed during this time, so they can either read or stare out the window. The local library helps them find books of their own interest.

The idea is to get them find genres and books they like and find joy reading it, while not taking time out of their free time.

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

#212

Post by komali2 »

msteffen wrote: post #48
brightball wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analog clocks are interesting in that they exercise your brain when you read them. You have to do calculation (what is the number system for each hand), spatial reasoning (where is each hand) and categorization (what is each hand). There’s a program called Arrowsmith that has a summer program called the Cognitive Intensive Program. It’s basically 3-4 hours a day of speed reading analog clock for 7 weeks. You start ou…

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

I kinda rabbit holed on this and it seems to be a very lucrative scam

https://medium.com/myndplan/myndplan-9961a084f750

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

theultdev wrote: post #196
apparent wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mattkrause wrote: post #203
smelendez wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and remembered the details.

Those quizzes are part of the problem. It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket.

> get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket

This sounds like a bad quiz, unless the story was set in e.g. the American revolution.

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

#215

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

squigz wrote: post #180
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cherry picks the best of the best without comparing them with the other 99.9% of their contemporaries who were pulp authors. They and their literary output are forgotten for good reasons.

I don't think GP is cherrypicking anything; rather, illustrating how what is seen as slop one day may be seen as "great works" down the road.

Are you suggesting Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or Conan Doyle were considered slop during their own lifetimes? If not, my point stands.

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

#216

Post by charles_f »

The article seems to be centered around reading assignments. I was reading entire books often when I was in school, yet did my best to avoid reading assignments because they were so dull.

I don't know how they sourced respondents, anecdotally all my kids a reading books as I type that. They read much more than I did at their age; and their friends read as well. They'd probably spend all their time on snapshat or brawlstars, were they to have a say.

Isn't that the characteristic of each generation to feel like education of the next generation is decadent?

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

#217

Post by saltcured »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #151
RajT88 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too read ravenously as a kid. Strangely, in the 90's we were never assigned full books in English classes, just short stories or chapters.

I'm older than you (graduated high school in 1975). I read tons of sci-fi as a kid. I also don't remember reading any whole novels for English class. Maybe we did, but if so I have successfully blocked them out. I have been amazed at the number of houses I've been in over the years which didn't appear to contain a single book.

I graduated high school in '92 (S.F. Bay Area) and can recall several assigned books we read for class in either junior high or high school. I think there were more, but these are the ones I can recall easily today.

Pride and Prejudice. Last of the Mohicans. A Separate Peace. Tom Jones. Beowulf. Grendel. Crime and Punishment. Waiting for Godot. Tale of Two Cities.

Also, several Shakespeare plays, though I am no longer sure which were read when.

We also had other reading assignments where we chose our own books. The above were assigned to everyone.

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

#218

Post by expedition32 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #157
anon7000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s odd, I read ravenously as a kid/teen, as did my siblings. You need to read what you enjoy, and for it to not be forced. (For example, summer reading at the library gave out prizes kids cared about for reading books.) Plus, we didn’t have access to much digital media like TV/video games (though it was the early 2010s) because my parents were strict, so books were a solid source of entertainment.

It doesn’t happen anymore because of phones and the internet. Most people in the past read because they had nothing to do and they were willing to invest the time into a good book. You sacrifice a lot of energy in order to get enjoyment from a book. Now with the internet there’s an unlimited stream of zero investment snippets of entertainment. People naturally dive into that because it’s more rational in the short te…

Good point. I am old enough to have lived in a pre smartphone time. Hour long train rides would mean folks opened up a book or newspaper.

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

#219

Post by badwriter101 »

Aerroon wrote: post #206
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " massive fanfic archives " Ye gods, that's like saying that youth may not be willing to consume a nutritious, balanced diet but we should rejoice that they are at least consuming vast quantities of sugar and fat. With vanishingly rare exceptions, fanfic is crap in textual form, laden to bursting with literary sins both venal and mortal.

The usefulness of reading books is not about what factual information you can glean from them. They're about engaging the imagination and making you take hypothetical situations seriously. In that sense traditionally published works aren't going to offer all that much more than fanfiction.

> They're about engaging the imagination and making you take hypothetical situations seriously.

- that nudges readers in interesting (to society) or new (to the reader) directions. Or at least in not in actively harmful ways. Otherwise, OF, livestreaming, or whatever latest social media BS, etc. are king: purposefully designed to create parasocial relationships that trick you thinking you have chance to be noticed.

My main beef with most fan fiction is that in my experience, it unconsciously locks readers into an extremely rigid way of thinking. Of course, this varies from fandom to fandom but woe upon the budding writer who ships the wrong pair or violates the canon.

It mirrors religious dogma, but somehow even worse when compared to all the disputes in Christianity throughout the centuries. (Plus, there's at least a connection between Christianity to modern democracy.)

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

#220

Post by saltcured »

bgbntty2 wrote: post #59
stevewodil wrote: post #4

I don’t know if this matters much. When I was in school it was rare to actually read a book assignment anyways, and I’m sure with LLMs now it’s less. I’ve started to have a positive association with reading only in the last few years, I wish schools didn’t force books onto children and make them think they hate reading for their whole lives.

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…

As a native US English speaker, I enjoyed Shakespeare and even when we read Beowulf and some Chaucer in mildly transcribed and annotated Middle English. More than any history lesson, it developed in me a feeling for how, in spite of lots of technological and other societal change, the basic human condition is the same.

I imagine it would be interesting to read early texts in other proto languages too. Sadly, I'm not a polyglot and can't really access that experience first-hand.

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