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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

#471

Post by phone8675309 »

fransje26 wrote: post #419
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…

I was always astonished at how much my literature teachers could seemingly hallucinate at-will on a piece of text and come with some hidden meaning for every word, comma, or rime. I did not seem to be blessed with the accepted form of creativity for literature analysis, and, with every rebuttal, the pleasure of exploring those texts became less and less.. After many, many, many years, I'm slowly coming back to some o…

Literature Language Models

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

#472

Post by joe-collins »

tivert wrote: post #72
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…

> This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. 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. They need a library stocked with "books that kids will enjoy," recently published doesn't have anything to do with it. It's not like filling the school library…

Recent can be a generous time period, but it's not unimportant. When I was very young, I was able to enjoy the Hardy Boys and the Chronicles of Narnia, but even in the 90s, just forty years after the latter was written, they both felt very, very old. When I started finding more current writing, like Redwall or Animorphs, I never looked back.

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

#473

Post by phone8675309 »

everforward wrote: post #460
alpinisme wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 30 minutes really the amount of novel reading we find unacceptable these days? I’m not asking quite as snarkily as that sounds. Do you think the problem would be alleviated if the hours of class time were shorter and (maybe) handed over to a study hall period or even to just being sent home? In college I know the theory is supposed to be that one hour of class time equals two hours of homework (though that rarely…

Half an hour is fine, it’s really the cumulative volume. If a kid has 7 classes and each gives half an hour of homework, that’s 3.5 hours of homework. Add on the classes and they’re “working” 11.5 hours a day or 57.5 hours per week, every week. That would be concerning for adults, it’s well into burnout territory. Then we want to act surprised when kids don’t want to read on their own and only want to play video game…

I had AP classes in high school and a 20 hour a week part time job - easily 10 hours a day on the week days including homework and ongoing projects. So at 17 I was working 70 hours a week. College was more of the same - honors classes and projects.

I graduated college and was like "I only have to work 40 hours a week? What's the catch?"

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

#474

Post by phone8675309 »

emseetech wrote: post #246
bluerooibos wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

| Any tips? Here's a trick that helped me after a ten+ year hiatus and having my attention fried by social media: A lot of people who have lost their attention span to technology will find themselves reading but not absorbing, their mind wandering, until they realize they'd "read" 3 pages and don't remember what happened. So read slow and with purpose, but most importantly at the end of each page, ask yourself what y…

One of the things that helped me was to have an actual dialog with the book.

For non-fiction books, this means pushing back against claims that appear to be unsupported. When I read in a paper book I do so with a pen to make notes in it (I don't sell my books, and I obviously don't do this with library books), but ebooks just get marked up in my ebook reader and it's very nice. It's also good when reviewing a book because I can see all of my thoughts and questions and often can answer them by the end of the chapter/section/unit.

For fiction books, this ends up being a "what would I do there/what would an ordinary person do?" It's very helpful to try and place yourself in the character's shoes and see how you may have reacted differently or if you agree with the character understanding _why_ you agree with them.

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

#475

Post by phone8675309 »

teeray wrote: post #338
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…

I also went to a private college prep school, and the workload was practically abusive at times. I remember some days when I’d work on homework during class, get home, then continue working on homework clear until 3 or 4 AM. Then it was back up at 6 AM to go back to school. Some nights were light and I got to bed at 12p-1a. The weekends following the hard weeks were mostly nonexistent because I was unconscious for mo…

Surprise, surprise - when you work somebody 60-80 hours a week they don't find things fun when they get home and are just trying to recover.

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

#476

Post by nickd2001 »

monknomo wrote: post #467
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.

This is why I ask beloved by whom and classic by what standard. Look, Narnia has witchcraft in it and depicts Christ as a lion. It's probably blasphemous (though, yes, I get that it is intended as a regular Christian allegory and is not supposed to be blasphemous). It is not universally loved in the evangelical community and is a possible target for a book ban. It's also got racially insensitive stereotypes depicted…

Interesting reply :) Some thoughts: (1) "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" contains in certain ways a re-telling of the Gospels in a way that speaks to children. But its a great story in itself, one can take or leave it's resemblance to the bible, its also enjoyed by atheists. I'd debate seeing it as blasphemy. Why would God object to the bible story being respun by an author who's themselves a Christian with such decent motives for writing? (2) Racial insensitive stereotypes- sure that's a problem in older books, some bad examples too in the highly entertaining "Just William" series, but these can be an opportunity to talk to children about what's appropriate to say , and how thinking has moved on in good ways. I'd support reprints of such books having extra text added to point out that some content would nowadays be considered racist or whatever (3) Hobbit being banned for witchcraft - to be honest, whoever is banning this is nuts IMHO. Should "Hansel and Gretel" be banned too then? You're probably gonna tell me it has been. Kids have enjoyed stories about witches for centuries. Who has the right to tell them that's not allowed? They know its fantasy. (4) I take your point about it being a PITA to look after a library as a school teacher, especially in the current climate particularly in USA. Maybe there needs to be a ban on bans? ;) Apart from restrictions due to age appropriateness, who is anyone to tell someone else what they're allowed to read? (5) "classic books adults think children ought to like" -its a fair point- I can imagine some adults might do that, sure, not all kids like classics. With our kids we just try to guarantee them access to the good stuff new and old, partly just take them to the library and see what they find. If one ever pushes a kid to read, or read a certain thing, they'll rightly push back. Not for adults to force them, just to provide them with quality stuff. I think the original article though was complaining of the market dropping out for content for 9-yr-olds, but really you'd want to read a mix of classics and modern though, right? Same as a symphony orchestra wouldn't play ONLY Beethoven or ONLY 21st century composers?

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

#477

Post by everforward »

BizarroLand wrote: post #469
everforward wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that standardized education does is guarantee that the majority of people will be somewhere findable within the middle of the bell curve of the social status quo. I’m not saying that we completely get rid of public education, just that we stop appending things to it and pretending they’re important. Nobody remembers most of this alleged common ground anyways. Go ask around what the 5th amendment says, or…

I still disagree with you. There are enormous flaws in public education, some of which you have addressed, but eliminating the study of history and english is going to do bupkis to address any of that. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, stated that living in a warbound society: "In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation…

The flaw in public education that I'm trying to address is its tendency to grow to occupy any potential free time, largely because children are powerless to prevent that.

> Taking away the seeds of the arts because they might not grow into more juice for the war machine is at best a shortsighted thought and at worst the hateful demands of a small and selfish person. They didn't benefit you, but others they do.

I haven't the faintest interest in taking away access to art or English or history. I don't generally believe in removing access to things. I am interested in not forcing a vulnerable and powerless group to donate their time to the cause of "keeping art/English/history alive" if they don't want to.

There is some subset of knowledge that is a practical requirement for being able to navigate society. People need to know enough English to communicate, enough math to make change, enough science to have a basic understanding of the world we exist in. Those are basically untouchable if we want society to continue functioning.

Art knowledge is not a necessity for living a normal life. A person can pursue an immense number of paths in their life without ever encountering a requirement to know things about art. It's honestly notable for someone to have encountered a situation where they needed or were aided by having taken art classes. Creative writing and the analysis of creative writing are much the same.

If hours in the day were limitless, or children stayed children for longer, I'd agree with you. Knowledge of art has value, as does creative writing and history; I firmly believe that all knowledge has some degree of value.

I do not agree in light of what we're putting children through. Something has to give, and it's either going to be the school workload or children's mental health. The teen suicide rate has nearly doubled since 2000, and I don't feel like playing a game of chicken with rising suicide rates to preserve art or ancient history or creative writing or like a dozen other things.

Give the kids back their free time and I'm sure a lot of them will gravitate towards art or creative writing naturally. They naturally appeal to a lot of kids and people, if we'd just give them the room to get there themselves instead of force-feeding them a list of Baroque artists to make flashcards out of.

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

#478

Post by tpmoney »

tomsmeding wrote: post #397
tpmoney wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Yeah, I have family and friends who are teachers, definitely aware that there's no time. Fundamentally the modern way we deal with education is broken. It's not even mostly the funding, but the way we try to measure it, package it and distill it and spread it around equally. The only way to do that is the same way McDonalds does, strip it down to the barest essentials done by rote , crammed into as small a time unit as possible with as little variation as possible. It works, but it has all the same problems.

Education as a whole needs a re-work in how we approach it, for many reasons but also to make time for this sort of careful nurturing; even if it means we don't cover as many things. We can no more teach all the children all the things in 18 years than we could have them listen to all the music ever produced in that same time. And to my mind then we'd be better served doing everything we can to nurture and encourage children's natural curiosity and desire to learn and do on the absolutely necessary of the things necessary that will quash that curiosity.

How do we do that? I don't know. I have thoughts, but there are certainly going to be no easy answers, and decades of bureaucracy and infrastructure around the current system will not go quietly even if we had the answers in the first place.

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

#479

Post by lmm »

theshrike79 wrote: post #378
lmm wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like committees....animes tend to have a visionary person who writes the core story and characters..... Funny, I've heard the exact opposite complaint a lot, that every anime in the last 20 years is made by committee and that's why the vast majority of anime are just slavish adaptations of already-successful manga, and even the few original anime projects that happen tend to be retreads of genre cliches.

"Last 20 years" is a pretty sweeping statement. Like there are no auteur anime since 2004?

That's the complaint I've heard; I suspect it's slightly exaggerated. But the last real auteur anime I can think of is 2002's Voices of a Distant Star, and Shinkai has followed up by retreading the same ground over and over (thematically at least) ever since.

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

#480

Post by BizarroLand »

everforward wrote: post #477
BizarroLand wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still disagree with you. There are enormous flaws in public education, some of which you have addressed, but eliminating the study of history and english is going to do bupkis to address any of that. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, stated that living in a warbound society: "In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation…

The flaw in public education that I'm trying to address is its tendency to grow to occupy any potential free time, largely because children are powerless to prevent that. > Taking away the seeds of the arts because they might not grow into more juice for the war machine is at best a shortsighted thought and at worst the hateful demands of a small and selfish person. They didn't benefit you, but others they do. I have…

It seems like you would be better served in a Montessori or similar education system.

I had a lot of issues with public education in my life. I don't regret the information I learned, no matter how trivial, but I do regret the time wasted, being a student who easily absorbed the entirety of the semesters knowledge for all non-stem classes by reading the book in the gap before classes started.

I would have appreciated being able to go further faster rather than wait for my classmates to make it to the starting line.

That being said, school isn't just about knowledge. We live in a society and we have to have a standard by which to relate to one another. Like it or not, our fellow humans are dark forests with gaping maws yearning to devour us, and we are the same to them.

Without some trauma bonding, some common fountain from which we draw our waters, we would willingly or not destroy one another until only our little clans remained.

Modern society has blinded us to the travails of our forefathers, where the people who live a few miles away might rise up and slay us if they have a bad harvest one year.

That we have come so far as to reduce the occasional rampages down to traumatic school experiences is quite amazing from a neutral third party viewpoint, even though it definitely doesn't feel that way from someone who has experienced it firsthand, but compared to being murdered and eaten by the person who happened to be my classmate, getting picked on and feeling some long term anger over the situation is vastly preferable to me.

All of that aside, we can do better. That much is obvious. We could do better easily if we could get everyone on the same page and standard, and make the standard "Maximally educated according to your individual ability" so that it would adapt to the learners potential rather than being concerned with the easier to manage yet still brobdingnagianly difficult standard of "minimally viable high school graduate".

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