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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

#391

Post by Grimblewald »

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…

As an adult who does a gargantuan amount of reading for a living - while work is busy i cannot fathom reading for fun but during breaks I start up again. To me this is all quite sensible and a bit bit of support for the argument we need to slow everything down a bit. Fix work-life balance accross the board.

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

#392

Post by red_admiral »

DavidPiper wrote: post #384

> “I’m hoping that the tent expands. I’ve always kind of hated it when there’s only one tentpole, like Harry Potter or whatever. I want there to be more tentpoles with room for more people underneath.” There already are? Deltora Quest, The Old Kingdom, The Chronicles of Narnia, Goosebumps, Percy Jackson, Keys to the Kingdom, Artemis Fowl, Tamora Pierce, David Eddings, Robin Hobb (depending on reading level and expect…

If you're trying to get kids to read books, those are all great choices. If you're trying to make money, few of those have the option for making a whole new franchise with merch and films and theme parks and video games. (They sort of managed that with Tolkien and the LotR films, though.)

And that's before we get into the whole politics angle. I'm with Freddie deBoer here, who said: if you want your art to change the world, you first of all have to make GOOD art.

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

#393

Post by freilanzer »

knallfrosch wrote: post #387
Modified3019 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing is the mandated reading comes with punishment attached. One goes into it knowing that they’ll have to puke out some key points, contort bullshit into an intro-body-conclusion format, or worse, overanalyze it for “meaning”. Early in high school among other things I had to read was “The Veldt”. Of course I hated dealing with it like everything else. I couldn’t have even told you who the author was a few w…

>>overanalyze it for “meaning”.<< I doubt overanalyzing actually happens. But pupils, including younger me, just don't understand how much more work and thought have gone into the legends they are reading. Yes, it's a 500 page tome. No, neither the blooming flower nor its color on page 356, line 38 are "random" and them symbolizing the meaning of life isn't "bullshit." Yes, a work like this happens only once a decade…

> No, neither the blooming flower nor its color on page 356, line 38 are "random" and them symbolizing the meaning of life isn't "bullshit."

I firmly believe that most of this stuff in schools is massive over-analysis and that most authors, whose works are analysed in this way, have not planned all of this ridiculous nonsense we had to invent on the spot during a test. And that's exactly what we did - assign meaning to any meaningless detail and somehow connect it to the character or plot. The curtain is blue? It must signify the protagonists deep longing for love.

In short, 99% of it is indeed overanalysed bullshit.

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

#394

Post by codemusings »

akira2501 wrote: post #114
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…

> Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy. At 9 I had no idea how to go into a massive thing like a library and make a selection for myself. "Word of mouth" made a lot of choices for me when I was young.

Well my school did trips to the local library so that everyone could acquire their paper card for borrowing books. The process of borrowing and the different sections in the library were explained by the librarian and at least in my mind that helped a great deal to seek out books on my own.

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

#395

Post by lelanthran »

lostlogin wrote: post #104
tigen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the case, they literally are not allowed to have (any) books in the classroom? Can you be specific as to the mechanism here? Do you yourself have any link to any evidence? You (the article) are making the claim.

I think the argument is quite subtle. There is a lot of book banning occurring and the rate seems to be increasing fast (see links below). There are penalties in some jurisdictions and zero teachers want to face the kind of shit that has gone on with parents and politicians, churches and local body meetings. So rather than search out each book they have and keep track of its status, then recheck a few weeks later, ju…

> So rather than search out each book they have and keep track of its status, then recheck a few weeks later,

This sounds like nonsense.

Sure, they may have to do this for books that are close to crossing the line, or they could simply leave out any controversial book.

Does that mean that the school library won't have some books? Well, yes, but they already don't stock "every book ever written".

My school, back in the 80s, did not keep Nabakov's Lolita. The public library had it, though.

School's aren't there to "teach the controversy". I said it back when the controversy not being taught was Intelligent Design, I stand by it in 202x when the controversy not being taught is LGBT.

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

#396

Post by prawn »

btilly wrote: post #291
nytesky wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out elementary and middle schools have a no to low homework policy. By high school the most they assign to non AP courses is 15 min per class. Only assignment is reading 30 min a night, any book they want (including graphic novels). Yet that does not foster a love of reading. I had a ton of homework, but still read a book a week (though I did not do sports, only band, so had way more time than most mainstream student…

Our? Where? My kids had far more than that.

My 9 and 11 year olds have no real homework (primary school in Australia) which seems to be public school policy for this age group. Rarely, it's 10 minutes on one night in a week; they often ask for homework and are enthusiastic if given worksheets. They read for literally hours a day.

I read huge amounts as a kid but then lost the habit as an adult. It takes any number of habits and tricks to try and get it going again. Like someone upthread, I'm often fighting tiredness, and one trick that can work is prioritising reading in the morning and leaving news and social media for when I'm tired.

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

#397

Post by tomsmeding »

tpmoney wrote: post #334
lupire wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always complains about the "blue curtains". Did everyone but be ready the same book, or are you just repeating a meme? (for what purpose?) But I do analyze literature and study mathematical formulas in my free time, so maybe I'm built different. It's hard to say what school is doing in wrong when students aren't interested in study. Maybe the answer is to let the mom studious students leave school.

It's certainly possible that "blue curtains" specifically is a memetic reference that I've absorbed via osmosis, but the experience of having to analyze minute details to a ridiculous extent was very much a true one, regardless of the specifics of the example. I feel like the "blue curtains" problem with reading in schools is akin to the "shape -> rectangle -> square" problem that early OOP education has. It might be…

Disclaimer: I live in The Netherlands; perhaps the situation is different in the US. It would be great if it was.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on your wishes. I didn't necessarily have the same experiences, but that's mostly beside the point. But as a very junior university teacher:

> programing courses are broken [...] I think they would be better served in a lot of ways by having you write "real" code the hard way first, and then introducing the concepts that OOP (and other patterns) benefit from by showing how those things address the very real pain points the programers experienced.

There is no time. I want to teach what you say, and as a student I wanted to be taught what you say, but that takes more time, especially if you want to cater for the whole class — that "the hard way" programming is less efficient than doing it the right way, unsurprisingly, so it takes more time (not only that, you're asking them to do the same assignment twice, which is anathema — no time for that!), and the curriculum is already chock full.

> My personal opinions on the matter are: 1) "too much mandatory study".

Sure, but then you have even less time. You'll make the previous problem worse.

> 2) Related to that, recognize that education is highly individual and offer more tailored schooling.

Yes, everyone knows this would be good, but there is no money and there are no teachers. Skilled primary school and high school teachers are incredibly hard to find, and even if you'd find them, there is no money to pay for more teachers than we have now.

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

#398

Post by prawn »

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…

Read when you're fresh (set your alarm earlier and read before you get out of bed) rather than when you're tired at the end of the day. Use a habit tracking app (mine is Streaks on iOS). If tired, walking around the house while reading ticks off pages and steps. Read books you like; quit anything that you feel is a waste of time. Read while eating breakfast if it's not antisocial. Pick shorter books to get momentum (Old Man and the Sea, Into the Wild). Read on your phone, so it's always an option. Put your Books app prominently on the home screen and relegate social media apps out of view.

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

#399

Post by globular-toast »

gregjor wrote: post #347

My oldest daughter could read at age four. By second grade, in a Texas public school, she liked to read Nancy Drew mysteries on her own. One day she came home from school crying and told us she didn't want to go back -- she said she had got in trouble for reading her book. Her mom and I went to talk to the teacher. Our daughter had got "caught" reading a Nancy Drew book at her desk while the other kids -- many of who…

Your daughter did the right thing. I pray they didn't manage to squash her behaviour for good. I remember doing the same as her much later in school. I was reading Fight Club and had it in my bag. We had these sessions where we'd watch a pointless bullshit video for an hour about some common sense topic like "other people have different religions" or "don't stick your fingers in the plug socket". I just decided I'd had enough and turned around and quietly read my book instead. I didn't get into trouble but got some funny looks. I consider this a turning point for me. It's my life and it's ending one minute at a time!

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

#400

Post by cultofmetatron »

freilanzer wrote: post #393
knallfrosch wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>overanalyze it for “meaning”.<< I doubt overanalyzing actually happens. But pupils, including younger me, just don't understand how much more work and thought have gone into the legends they are reading. Yes, it's a 500 page tome. No, neither the blooming flower nor its color on page 356, line 38 are "random" and them symbolizing the meaning of life isn't "bullshit." Yes, a work like this happens only once a decade…

> No, neither the blooming flower nor its color on page 356, line 38 are "random" and them symbolizing the meaning of life isn't "bullshit." I firmly believe that most of this stuff in schools is massive over-analysis and that most authors, whose works are analysed in this way, have not planned all of this ridiculous nonsense we had to invent on the spot during a test. And that's exactly what we did - assign meaning…

> most authors, whose works are analysed in this way, have not planned all of this ridiculous nonsense we had to invent on the spot during a test.

you're absolutely right and they even doubled down on that https://www.oxfordhomeschooling.co.uk/blog/the-death-of-the-....

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