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Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

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Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#311

Post by thatguy0900 »

originalvichy wrote: post #276
kuerbel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what they are doing on the device, 100%. When I was a kid I got a GameBoy, one of those old red ones, played tetris or Mario Land for an hour and after that it was boring and I did something else. Got an N64 which was already way more engaging, but even then after an hour or two I was done. It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrol…

This sort of analysis can help find a healthy level of gaming or computer use. I spent hours reading Microsoft’s offline encyclopedia on the family PC, and playing games like Age of Empires which taught me history on the side. Take control of what your kids play, and you can help them find more beneficial uses of electronics which is not an endless loop of bite sized low quality entertainment! :)

I think at the minumim you should be avoiding any games studios that hire behavioral psychologists and optimize for addiction loops. So most every triple A game is immediately out

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#313

Post by NickC25 »

larrik wrote: post #33

It's worse than this. I have kids in school. Our school system is one of the top in Connecticut, which is the quintessential "school" state (if any rich kid on TV goes away to school, it's probably to CT). These kids (all of them, not mine) can't really read. Not like when I was young. (I'm not even old! I graduated in the 2000's!) They certainly can't write. They have no stamina to do an essay or a test like when I…

fellow Fairfield County native here. Likely around the same age as you. I went to a great public school (I was a terrible student, crippling ADHD but that's another story for another day) in the southern half of the county. I'll let you guess which one. Also spent a few years in another of the top districts (west of the capital, again, easy to guess ;P) before making the move south.

It's NOT the schools. They are well funded and as you say, pretty helpless because teachers, even younger ones, just aren't able to deal with kids whose parents shoved a smartphone into their hands at age 3.

It's NOT the parents - in order to keep up with the jonses in those towns, you have to work like a dog and most likely, both parents are in high stress demanding environments in order to make enough to live there. I was fortunate that my dad did quite well for our family, but there's no way I could raise a kid in that environment.

It's the fucking devices, and the drive to put tech everywhere in the classroom. When I was a kid we had a single Mac in the classroom (besides the teacher's computer), mainly to dick around with Oregon Trail, Math Blaster, or some typing app. We wanted to play games? We went outside and played sports, or stayed inside and played games like scrabble or chess.

In high school we had to do genuine research 15-20+ page papers as early as Sophomore year. There was zero Wikipedia, much less ChatGPT or Claude.

Of course, a book, which requires attention, effort, and has no distractions, is not going to capture the attention and imagination of someone who has had the world and all of its distractions at their fingertips since they gained consciousness, and weren't made to socialize without devices.

And no, we cannot allow people to pass to the next grade without mastering the skills required of their current grade. This needs to be completely iron clad and not up for debate. I was nearly held back 3-4 times. I am an idiot. I was miles ahead of where elementary school and middle school kids are today. I don't care if a wealthy Ivy grad and his management consultant wife donate a bunch of money to make sure their kid can pass - if their kid can't read or write, their kid can't pass.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#314

Post by NickC25 »

drob518 wrote: post #286
helterskelter wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read an Economist article a few years ago that mentioned a literature professor at Columbia who said that most his undergrad freshmen students have never read a book cover to cover. Of those that have, their favorites were young adult fiction. Most of his students couldn't even focus on a single sonnet. Apparently kids nowadays are having difficulty focusing on individual sentences, and a lot of them are just effec…

Yep, it’s a crisis. We’re raising kids that are illiterate and frankly just dumb. You ever watch those YouTube videos where they interview college kids (who were actually accepted to a college!) and they can’t correctly answer who fought in the US Civil War and other basic knowledge questions? They don’t know the difference between continents and countries (e.g. Europe and a country within Europe). They can’t tell yo…

Worse yet, these people can vote.

And are completely susceptible to disinformation/misinformation campaigns.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#315

Post by hylaride »

kuerbel wrote: post #256
zhivota wrote: post #115

We recently had some behavior issues with our kids - they didn't want to do activities outside the house, they hated reading, they hated anything that required even the slightest discomfort or effort. We decided to cut device usage way down - they get 1 hour in the morning to play whatever games they want on computer, tablet, console. Then they get 1 hour before bed to watch TV. The rest of the day, no devices. We ar…

It depends on what they are doing on the device, 100%. When I was a kid I got a GameBoy, one of those old red ones, played tetris or Mario Land for an hour and after that it was boring and I did something else. Got an N64 which was already way more engaging, but even then after an hour or two I was done. It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrol…

With real-time telemetry and feedback, companies now know what keeps people "engaged" and "hooked". It's god-awful for brains that are still developing.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#316

Post by NickC25 »

kakacik wrote: post #193
dyauspitr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop technology entirely and start failing them. You’ll never find an Asian school taking mercy on their kids.

FOMO at its best, fuck their personalities and development and having happy childhood as base layer of personality for rest of their lives, its grades at all costs! Famously most of asian kids wear glasses from studying all the time, well we need up up that up! What if they overtake us in some rat race. Not the best parenting but some folks are like that and then it shows on kids, thats true.

>FOMO at its best, fuck their personalities and development and having happy childhood as base layer of personality for rest of their lives, its grades at all costs!

It's about making sure kids can read. It's about making sure our tax dollars are spent on making the next generation of people into functional adults.

I don't want the country spending billions on an education system that churns out adults who are genuinely illiterate and can't write.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#317

Post by MichaelDickens »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #296
reverius42 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Young adult" fiction is supposed to be for like 11-15 year olds. By high school I'd think you should be reading regular "adult" material. I think the curriculum generally agrees and assigns what we'd call adult literature in high school English.

Careful, if the YA fans could read, they'd be really upset at this.

What an odd insult to identify a group of people solely by the fact that they read (a particular subset of) books, and then say they can't read. The ability to read is one of the only things this group of people has in common!

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#318

Post by hylaride »

raddan wrote: post #97
garciasn wrote: post #40

I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading. My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not. Why is reading for fun something that's wor…

For what it’s worth I think people have always been this way. I used to read during recess when I was in middle school. I usually could not wait to get back to my books. But the other kids saw this as profoundly antisocial. I wasn’t being antisocial exactly; I was pretty shy and had a very active imagination. Amusingly, the school bullies misinterpreted my bookishness as weakness. That changed when I (accidentally) k…

It's funny how that works.

I (90s high schooler) was made fun of merely for being on the internet or being able to fix electronics. The early days of Facebook were amusing (when everybody was friending everybody), seeing the same people that bullied me spending hours on end playing FarmVille.

While I never physically fought back, but one of my friends (who had a LOT of success almost immediately after high school) did pass on of our tormentors working construction in the street and made eye contact...in his very expensive SLK Mercedes. Not to degenerate construction work, but there was a lot of satisfaction for him in that moment.

It still surprises me how the peking order in schools so poorly represents real life. A few years ago at a previous job, we had an HR woman who was almost certainly a "popular" kid in school, comment how much fun being around us "nerds" was.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#319

Post by hylaride »

softwaredoug wrote: post #182

The research shows sharpest declines at 13 years. We have a lot of infrastructure to support young readers. But not the the older readers. It’s not just screens. Teenagers are overscheduled compared to years past. My son’s purpose in high school seems to be to build a resume for a future college. OTOH I got into a decent college with mediocre grades and not even trying. He reads a lot - but it’s assigned reading. So…

What's worse is that in many areas kids are not allowed (or can't due to urban design) go out of the house on their own anymore. I would actually prefer my kid being out and getting into some trouble than waste around the house. I live in a walkable neighbourhood where kids seem to be out and about on their own around grade 5, so I hope it works out ok for my daughter.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#320

Post by kouteiheika »

kuerbel wrote: post #256
zhivota wrote: post #115

We recently had some behavior issues with our kids - they didn't want to do activities outside the house, they hated reading, they hated anything that required even the slightest discomfort or effort. We decided to cut device usage way down - they get 1 hour in the morning to play whatever games they want on computer, tablet, console. Then they get 1 hour before bed to watch TV. The rest of the day, no devices. We ar…

It depends on what they are doing on the device, 100%. When I was a kid I got a GameBoy, one of those old red ones, played tetris or Mario Land for an hour and after that it was boring and I did something else. Got an N64 which was already way more engaging, but even then after an hour or two I was done. It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrol…

> It just got worse the more sophisticated games became.

I feel like it got worse not because games became more sophisticated, but because they got dumber and require less and less brainpower.

I spent my childhood playing ridiculous amount of video games, probably same amount or more as kids nowadays do. I had literally hundreds of Playstation games back in the day. And I turned out fine. But the difference was that I was playing a ton of games that required you to put some thought into them, and weren't easy, and often were story-heavy (e.g. JRPGs in particular; being from a non English-speaking country that's how I actually learned English!).

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