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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

#401

Post by cultofmetatron »

Cayde-6 wrote: post #320
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.

I can confirm, we ”analyzed” the color of the curtains in some novel I now forget. I believe they were, in fact, blue. The teacher was adamant details like that were always meaningful and certainly not just to paint a scene. It was far from the only instance of such “analysis”. What we actually learned from those lessons was that English/literature class was a waste of time and how to craft complete bullshit that sou…

> how to craft complete bullshit that sounds deep,

and now we have chatgpt to do that!

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

#402

Post by da_chicken »

dmazzoni wrote: post #340
lupire wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?

I wouldn't use the term "garbage prose", but I do agree that many books from the literary canon aren't the greatest choice to assign to kids. Steinbeck and Faulkner come to mind. I understand that they're important, influential, and well-written. But I just didn't relate to them. There was almost nothing about the main characters' challenges or desires that I could understand. My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S…

The Great Gatsby is the one that comes to my mind. How exactly is a modern high school student supposed to relate to any of the characters in this book? Even when I was reading it in school I kept stopping and questioning just what these characters even were. It felt like reading about aliens, totally disconnected from reality. I not only lacked the historical context, I didn't have enough social context to grasp the character motivations or actions.

The whole book was like the allegory of the cave.

Steinbeck is a close second, though. I had to read three of the man's books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath) and I don't think I enjoyed a single page of it. I remember finding a copy of The Pearl as an adult and being shocked it was less than 100 pages. We somehow extracted 18 weeks of discussion and essays and tests on that book. No wonder I hated it. We tortured every word of it.

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

#403

Post by yurishimo »

WaxProlix wrote: post #354
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…

You've almost certainly come across them by now, but his novels are fantastic. I started with The Martian Chronicles and then The Illustrated Man, but ended up loving Something Wicked This Way Comes and even Dandelion Wine. There's something about good fiction and youth that just went together so well -- maybe people who did a lot of, say, swimming in their formative years feel that way about "good swimming" and yout…

For me, fiction was a way to explore my thoughts and dreams indirectly as a kid. I’ve never been one much for introspection, but reading tickles something in that part of my brain to reflect on my life and sometimes relate what happens to a character to what I’m feeling/have felt. In a story, the author has to tell you how the character feels explicitly (usually) in addition to the normal story beats. Occasionally I would notice a mismatch between my own gut reactions and that of the character which would make me stop for a second and try to dissect what the differences were between my interpretation and that of the author.

Not to even mention that reading is a way to escape and explore without leaving the comfort of your own home.

The only downside I find currently is that reading new things is quite expensive and I haven’t found a great digital solution yet. My phone is too small but carrying a book or a reader tablet is not practical every day.

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

#404

Post by nickd2001 »

janalsncm wrote: post #219
nickd2001 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think Tolkein's "The Hobbit" would fit this description? Or CS Lewis Narnia series, one-offs like "The Secret Garden", Also Edith Nesbit, fantastic children's author, "The Railway children" probably her most famous. century old at least.

Sure, but then you’re just reinforcing the attitude that reading is just for stodgy old people rather than a way to understand the world as it is today.

You need a bit of both old and new surely? I'd argue, that great literature, whether for kids or adults, is timeless. Our daughter loved learning Greek legends for example in school. The challenge I think with modern stuff can be, finding the good stuff amongst the crp. Whereas classic stuff has stood the test of time, the crp has mostly fallen by the wayside.

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

#405

Post by bjornsing »

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…

Interesting. Having grown up in Sweden during the 80-ties and 90-ties I’m very familiar with this attitude. Here and back then it was almost policy to hold gifted students back, to promote “equality”. But I thought the US would have a higher tolerance for ability.

What do you think is the driving psychological force behind this attitude in US schools? In Sweden I’ve always thought it’s mainly a sort of crab mentality, semi-formalized in “the law of Jante”. But maybe there’s more to it, if it happens also in very individualistic cultures like the US?

Sometimes I get a feeling that many people in the “helping business” have trouble with self-sufficient people in general, perhaps because it conflicts with their self-image as “helpers”.

P.S. Homeschooling is illegal in Sweden.

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

#406

Post by goblin89 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #371
goblin89 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone seems to say children should go to libraries more. At 9, I didn’t need to go to a library—we just had bunch of books at home. Books are cheap, especially second hand. Some of our books were in fact from a library (my mom went, but I never did), so those would rotate. I suppose the fact that books were physical and I did not have something like TikTok on my phone when I was 9 helped me read whatever was lying…

> At 9, I didn’t need to go to a library—we just had bunch of books at home. Books are cheap, especially second hand. Some of our books were in fact from a library (my mom went, but I never did), so those would rotate. You know what isn't cheap in the 2020s? Space. My grandparents had a full-ass room just for books. I can't even fit my modest blu-ray collection in my apartment, they sit in storage along with my DVDs…

Your grandparents’ house must be huge. We never had a room just for books, not me, not my parents, not their parents. A family of 4 in 2 bedrooms, one living room. Shelves are not expensive and you’d be surprised, they can fit quite a lot of books. Over time some books were lent or given to libraries, others added.

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

#407

Post by goblin89 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #372
goblin89 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone seems to say children should go to libraries more. At 9, I didn’t need to go to a library—we just had bunch of books at home. Books are cheap, especially second hand. Some of our books were in fact from a library (my mom went, but I never did), so those would rotate. I suppose the fact that books were physical and I did not have something like TikTok on my phone when I was 9 helped me read whatever was lying…

I've become an avid reader of web novels when I found out about them as a teenager sometime before 2010. Idk, for me it completely removed the urge to get physical books. I've got a Kindle too at some point, but I felt the form factor was terrible for reading fiction. There is a reason why newspapers always put their publications into columns, because it makes for an extremely fast reading experience - which is great…

I never got into reading web-native writing, though sometimes I wish I did. I also don’t piecemeal publishing, even though I know many classics were published that way initially. On the contrary, I like to read for as long as I want, finishing a book is always frustrating.

Agreed, LLMs are an issue and will probably reduce the amount of written content published in the open (or at all).

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

#408

Post by TeMPOraL »

naasking wrote: post #191
bamboozled wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really had any homework, or I never did it. I never read for pleasure either. I don't think it's that, but I get your point. Too busy = no time for reading for fun

Not just no time, but making even otherwise fun things mandatory with a volume that's overwhelming can suck the fun out of it and/or make it seem dull.

The thread seem to be missing even stronger case, that was true for me: making otherwise fun things mandatory, period. The volume doesn't matter; that a book was assigned as mandatory at all deterred me from reading it. Same with homework, which I was spectacularly good at avoiding.

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

#409

Post by turing_complete »

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…

Not even recently published. There a lot of great children's classics.

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

#410

Post by throwaway2037 »

triceratops wrote: post #339
throwaway2037 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[W]ord of mouth" is probably mostly for girls. I never once had a boy tell me growing up that I needed to read a particular book. > I was the only kid in my class who read for pleasure. Nice humblebrag. Also, I find this hard to believe.

> Nice humblebrag. Also, I find this hard to believe. If they did, they didn't tell me about it. That might tell you how much the other kids talked to me. Not much of a brag now is it? :-D However, I have good reason to believe it. I went to the public library every weekend when I was in elementary school. I never, ever ran into anyone from my class there in all those years. If the other kids in my class at age 9 rea…

Many kids never visit the library except during school visits. They get books as gifts and read them at home.
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