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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

#431

Post by mikk14 »

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…

Is it so hard to accept the fact that an author might not be completely 100% conscious of all the things influencing them when creating a work of art? That some choices they made because they just felt right in the moment come from somewhere else? And that someone else can see this happening from an external perspective and propose that way of reading the text that the author didn't think about?

At the same time, is it monstrous to put forward the option that you, as an audience member, are not a passive brainless drone, but you are collaborating in creating the meaning of what you experience? That your inner life and meaning and interpretation stemming from being exposed to art are actually interesting and worth talking about?

Why do we have to live in a world where we assume words written on a page or colors dripped on a canvas have a single truly objective interpretation? Why do we have to beat with a stick on the head of someone telling them "no, you're enjoying this work in the wrong way because the author said so"?

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

#432

Post by nicbou »

xandrius wrote: post #218
nicbou wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be phones? I could read right now, but instead I'm on my nth round of the Hacker News front page. Reading competes against instant gratification, and it doesn't win as often as I'd like it to. Reading requires discipline when scrolling is an option.

Isn't HN mainly text? Aren't you reading?

Sort of. I think and exchange ideas, but I also scavenge mindlessly. I skim the comments, content myself with headlines. It's a far departure from sitting down with a single topic for a while.

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

#433

Post by leokennis »

Modified3019 wrote: post #344
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…

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…

I loved the approach my “high school” (in The Netherlands) took around 2002: you had to pick a few books from a list of books the teacher read. Then read those books and have a 30 minute “free format” discussion with the teacher about them. She’d ask for shared themes between the books, or differences in the way the stories were told, what it showed about the approach or background of the authors etc. Basically a teacher-student one-time book club.

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

#434

Post by red_admiral »

DavidPiper wrote: post #429
red_admiral wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess those are the things I find unusual about the article. They think they've figured out "why kids don't read", but all they've discovered is "we're not making as much money as we'd like", and maybe this demographic is a problem because "THE LUCRATIVE TEENAGE MARKET" could falter in a few years. I'm not sure that 9-year-olds care about "Good Art", they just care about the things they're exposed to - and there's…

> I'm not sure that 9-year-olds care about "Good Art", they just care about the things they're exposed to

This is more anecdote than research, but from several authors who told stories to children successfully - Tolkien, Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), Richard Adams (of Watership Down fame) - kids can certainly tell an _engaging_ story from a boring one, and kids of all age can turn their noses up at an overly preachy story.

I believe Adams says in his foreword that his girls begged him to write the story down because "it's so much better than some of the other books you read us".

Tolkien and Lewis disagreed on whether Narnia was too in-your-face preachy, but the Narnia series is certainly among the popular examples of children's literature out there.

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

#435

Post by leokennis »

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…

Indeed. To me, a lot of stuff like this (the kind and color of a blooming flower) is basically a way for the author to create or maintain an atmosphere/background to the book. Mentioning flowers a lot makes it clear this is not an action packed plot driven thriller. Mentioning military ranks and insider jargon and abbreviations paints a military atmosphere.

Basically a lot of words are “set pieces”. Very important for the general atmosphere but not overflowing with meaning and significance per se.

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

#436

Post by vitus »

pasc1878 wrote: post #374
sovnwnt wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's "garbage prose" but I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and found it impossible to form a mental image from the text in some parts. I'm still struggling to understand what "Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail." means.

Look at what happened in 2008 with banks collapsing - by having runs upon them. This is being done via postal withdrawals here. This isn't obscure.

Or more recently, the run on SVB last year where everyone started panicking that the bank was no longer able to hold its deposits, just because it announced that it had taken action to generate something like $40 billion in liquidity. And then the next day alone, customers withdrew $42 billion.

All of this was much worse during the Great Depression, before we had FDIC insurance guaranteeing deposits up to a certain threshold. If you've ever seen It's a Wonderful Life, it depicts a bank run during that era as George Bailey is about to go off on his honeymoon. (I remember my 6th grade history teacher describing this as we watched that movie around the holiday season.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...

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

#437

Post by RoyalHenOil »

mikk14 wrote: post #431
freilanzer wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Is it so hard to accept the fact that an author might not be completely 100% conscious of all the things influencing them when creating a work of art? That some choices they made because they just felt right in the moment come from somewhere else? And that someone else can see this happening from an external perspective and propose that way of reading the text that the author didn't think about? At the same time, is…

If such things influence works of fiction, they must surely influence works of nonfiction just as much, if not more so — yet I never had a schoolteacher ask me to analyze nonfiction writings anywhere close to the depth I had to analyze novels.

It wasn't until the tertiary level that I first analyzed science writings and related philosophy writings to a similar depth (albeit for a different purpose), and discovered to my delight how many of them are written with a beauty and a kind of humanity that verges on poetry. It moved me in ways that fiction never has, I think in part because of the purity and honesty of my discovery — so unlike the trudging hours I spent miming proundness in school until I could no longer recognize it.

I am truly glad that nonfiction analysis was neglected in school, because it otherwise would have been robbed of all its spirit and magic, too.

Why do we force students to analyze text in this manner at the cost of killing their love for recreational reading? So many children, who once loved story time best of all, grow up to hate books and poetry. Yet they still love the search for meaning in cinema and music which, as yet, still remain mostly beyond the killing touch of involuntary study.

Is it any wonder literary analysis feels fake to so many people?

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

#438

Post by sonicanatidae »

quirk wrote: post #297
feoren wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they're literally banning books ... like, that was a major platform issue very recently ... "why does everyone keep blaming the cannibals for all the half-eaten corpses lying around!?" ...

Keeping certain books out of school libraries for younger age kids is not a bad idea. Just like preventing children from watching porn is not a bad idea. Parenting is about finding a balance between protection and pushing their boundaries. Schools should be safe places to learn without having to worry about your kid coming home wanting to transition into an asexual raccoon or whatever the hell is trendy that year.

>Keeping certain books out of school libraries for younger age kids is not a bad idea.

Except, this isn't what's happening. FFS, it's happening in all libraries, not just the ones meant for the kiddies. You know this, yet paint a different picture, in support of your position.

>Just like preventing children from watching porn is not a bad idea.

Now we draw the false parallel between non-pornographic books and actual pr0n.

>Parenting is about finding a balance between protection and pushing their boundaries.

Now the feel-good statement, providing us all with a justification for their statements. THE KIDS! All of this is somehow aside from the fact that the parents and other children and the internet are much more influential than a book by Gloria Steinbeck, that makes racists uncomfortable.

> Schools should be safe places to learn without having to worry about your kid coming home wanting to transition into an asexual raccoon or whatever the hell is trendy that year.

Finally, we draw another parallel between 2 things that are completely unrelated, because we have no real justification for our point, just feels.

Well done?

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

#439

Post by btilly »

prawn wrote: post #396
btilly wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

At the same age in southern California, my kids had what was supposed to be 1-2 hours of homework a night. Which was made worse by ADHD. And, additionally, I had to teach my son basic skills that school failed to teach him. Like spelling and his times table.

It was a disaster.

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

#440

Post by allturtles »

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…

1) There's no way to have a set of readings that every Xth grader is going to enjoy. It's just impossible. There is a wide range of interests and predispositions and reading ability among people of the same age. It's obvious just from this sub-thread; everyone pipes up with a different set of books they disliked in school and they therefore think no one should have to read. I loved reading Julius Caeasar in high school and hated The Catcher in the Rye. I loved Dandelion Wine and hated Absalom, Absalom. Them's the breaks.

2) Part of the point of reading literature is to see things from a different perspective. i.e. to read things that are not necessarily "relatable", and thereby possibly expand your mind about the range of human experience. It's an opportunity to learn about history and learn about cultures other than your own.

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