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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

#281

Post by decremental »

mmooss wrote: post #263
theultdev wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent repeats precisely the disinformation of a political party. That shows reading comprehension and some communication skills. If this was an English class, it might get a B if the assignment was about disinformation techniques. But this is social science and we need to apply other cognitive skills, such as understanding empirical evidence, controls, and causal inference. Using those we could generate other hy…

[dead]

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

#282

Post by bitcurious »

eimrine wrote: post #137
epolanski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any job position requiring intelligence and nuance which unavoidably stems from informing yourself.

But the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism which eventually makes you not better candidate on the market but worse.

>But the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism

If anything, reading has made me recognize the cultural and historic universality of the problems folks attribute to capitalism.

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

#283

Post by eimrine »

bitcurious wrote: post #282
eimrine wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism which eventually makes you not better candidate on the market but worse.

>But the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism If anything, reading has made me recognize the cultural and historic universality of the problems folks attribute to capitalism.

Sorry, I meant reading books.

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

#284

Post by j_w »

apparent wrote: post #258
rayiner wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, reading scores are about how well you teach reading. In terms of NAEP 8th grade reading scores, New York, Georgia, Utah, Illinois, Rhode Island, and California cluster together in the top half, in that order: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/blog_na...

The linked chart says it's for "white students". How does it look when all students are included? ChatGPT shows different results (though these could of course be incorrect).

Much worse for the blue states with heavy immigrant/English second language populations, which is to be expected.

"White students" is likely just the cleanest set of "almost certainly English native and parents are English native speakers."

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

#285

Post by 1718627440 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #161
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, 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. Reading the expected books for school is very different from reading a lot privately at…

I do not live in the US, but this was my experience as well. Actually having read the book made my grades worse, because I now disagreed with the claims the teacher wanted to hear. I was always like: no, I have also read the book and no the author doesn't say that.

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

#286

Post by 1718627440 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #155
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 don't understand this. If kids are reading for enjoyment already, is assigning a book in school going to kill their love of reading? Or are we taking about kids who never read until school forced them to? From what I understand, if parents read to kids when they are little, they become readers who enjoy it.

> If kids are reading for enjoyment already, is assigning a book in school going to kill their love of reading?

Yes. (n=1)

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

#287

Post by 1718627440 »

watwut wrote: post #111
lm28469 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid we learn new words or learn words form the past... Why even bother with history right? It's just old stuff anyways let's focus on new stuff, what could these old things teach us anyways Meanwhile my grandma still knew how to speak Latin at 70+, which she learned in school as a teenager

I sometimes take pleasure at reading old language ... and still think that giving it to kids as introduction to reading is absurd. If they read 10 interesting books a year adding one like that to the mix or offer them the option is great. If they did not encountered interesting bool after agw of 7 when parents stopped reading them, no. And interesting books for kids are there. Plenty of them of all kind, including pu…

> and still think that giving it to kids as introduction to reading is absurd.

But that is not what is happening. Introduction to reading happens pre-school to class two, historic books come from say class 6 onwards.

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

#288

Post by 1718627440 »

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 think 4 IS early, but not that uncommon. 5-6 is typically without it being forced.

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

#289

Post by 1718627440 »

brightball wrote: post #21
adfm wrote: post #8

I’ve noticed some of these kids can’t tell time on analog clocks nor read cursive handwriting.

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…

> Analog clocks are interesting in that they exercise your brain when you read them. You have to do calculation

Interesting, for me it is the opposite. With a digital clock I need to do a division/comparison to know how much part of the day/hour has already passed. With an analog clock I can read a proportion directly.

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

#290

Post by 1718627440 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #245
Telaneo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to other people I've talked to. I'm the wrong person to ask this about, since I prefer digital time, so time is just a number to me. But Technology Connections made a video atleast talking about it,[1] so hopefully that get part of the point across. To him and plenty of other analogue-first people, time is a progress bar, or a chart, or something along those lines, and that's the natural way to perceive time, and…

Totally agree. I do the same. The only reason we have analog clocks is because digital ones were much harder to build. That time is of course over for good. It was a compromise imposed by limited technology.

Not really, analog clocks are readable over a much longer distance, because seeing an angle needs much less information, than parsing glyphs.
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