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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

#311

Post by watwut »

lelanthran wrote: post #264
mattkrause wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Maybe things have really changed a lot since I was in school, but that was certainly not the type of questions that were asked of set works. The questions were asked such that, the more the student got into the book, the higher…

> Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as.

I always got As on these ... but the primary reason was that I was good at bullshitting. They are super easy when you are good at bullshitting. The trick is not to care that your answer sounds royally stupid. Then you will get A.

And all you need is to check those dialogs when writing the test. If you are expecting me to remember those dialogs, then we are back to the expectation that I basically memorized the book.

> Very hard questions (for those who got +90% on their English grades): In the story arc for $A it can be claimed that the author intended to mirror the arc for Cordelia from King Lear. Make an argument for or against this claim.

Again, I got As ... but they were solidly in the "kind of test that convinces you literature is stupid class" kind of questions. Unless there is some kind of actual interesting insight to be had, this question just shows how empty the whole exercise is.

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

#312

Post by Nasrudith »

idle_zealot wrote: post #37
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 wish schools didn’t force books onto children and make them think they hate reading for their whole lives The problem is that if you don't force them, they never actually become literate enough to discover that reading is fun later in life.

My experience was a self-admitted outlier but it started by being read to frequently as a small child, before school started. I could technically read for as long as I could remember but reading by myself was boring compared to being read to due to having a very short attention span then.

Start literacy young and the discovery of reading for fun will be easy and natural.

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

#313

Post by watwut »

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.

Yes, because it amounts to several hours long homework. Kids are more slower then adults at reading, so this can easily amount to 10 hours of additional homework which you do on top of usual homework.

So yes, if you spent 10 hours reading a book you don't care about this week, you don't feel like reading something else. You feel like you spent awful lot of time reading already and feel like reading is something like vacuum cleaning - duty but not something you do for fun.

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

#314

Post by watwut »

1718627440 wrote: post #287
watwut wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That is exactly what is happening. The pre-schooler do not really read books, that is an absurd claim. They puzzle out words and sentences. It takes so much effort, they loose attention one paragraph in and dont really recall what happened on the last page.

Giving historic books to grade 6 is exactly the absurd thing that will convince them books cant be fun. It will become totality of their reading and the idea that reading books could be fun will be lost on them entirely.

And unless the parents really went out of their way to introduce them to interesting books, to try again and again with different books, you are loosing them with that entirely. Because this will be the only book they read last 4 months which is "forever" at that age.

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

#315

Post by Cornbilly »

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?

> Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.”

That's pretty on-brand for HN though. This place enforces a very peculiar version of anti-intellectualism centered on empty-headed contrarianism.

They want to play devil's advocate but they aren't smart enough so all you get are dumb hot takes.

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

#316

Post by Cornbilly »

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…

Who is "they"?

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

#317

Post by lelanthran »

rayiner wrote: post #297
lelanthran wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that, even for smart people, the world is pretty hard to navigate with book learning. I’m reminded of the last president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, a professor at Hopkins with a PhD from Columbia who wrote a book called “Fixing Failed States.” Yet he was spectacularly unsuccessful at fixing the problems that were squarely within the field of his expertise. Outliers. You cannot come to conclusions…

I’m not talking about individual success i’m talking about societal success.

> I’m not talking about individual success i’m talking about societal success.

I don't know what that means.

Social mobility? Academic success corresponds quite strongly to that too.

Collective success? Groups who are academically successful also correlate quite well to various measures of success.

I mean, unless we reduce the scope of our samples to the outliers, and look at a non-representative sample, it's really quite hard to support the claim that "gut-feel" is at all valuable without high academic performance.

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

#318

Post by mmooss »

rayiner wrote: post #298
mmooss wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t actually help you to know that some indigenous population was decimated by the mining of the uranium that power’s the ship’s reactors. It does, because for people to survive and thrive, they need politics and institutions that don't kill them and that produce CO2 scrubbers. The politics and institutions turn out to be much harder than the scrubbers - few societies produce the latter, and it's generally t…

But the world’s most technologically advanced civilization was built by politics and institutions that killed and displaced the native Americans then glorified that effort in movies and television. The guys who built the moon rocket and silicon valley grew up playing cowboys and indians.

Nothing is pure. You are ignoring quite a lot, and quite a lot that distinguishes that society and its peers different from than the others, far less accomplished.

The question is not purity, but facing our own faults, personal and societal, do we give up and indulge them or do we keep our vision and confidence and keep improving?

So many push so hard against liberty and justice.

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

#319

Post by nitwit005 »

Cornbilly wrote: post #315
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?

> Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.” That's pretty on-brand for HN though. This place enforces a very peculiar version of anti-intellectualism centered on empty-headed contrarianism. They want to play devil's advocate but they aren't smart enough so all you get are dumb hot takes.

With "obvious" ideas like reading being good, you tend not to have people chiming in to say so. That creates a filter where you only get the contrarianism.

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

#320

Post by nitwit005 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #92

Plausibly some kids might still be reading entire novels worth of text online on the regular. Think of all the massive fanfic archives (Including original fics) Lots of fanfic authors have fans of their own, and those have got to be coming from somewhere. It doesn't need to be in dead tree format. It doesn't need to be famous authors. Just so long as they read! For long form original see eg: * The last angel https://…

> " 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.

People said all kinds of nonsense about comic books and cheap novels leading kids astray in the past. What actually happened is those kids ended up being slightly better readers.

That you don't like something doesn't mean it's actually harmful.

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