Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#51

Post by john_strinlai »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #47
john_strinlai wrote: post #18

i'm sure generic 'screen time' is partly to blame, but i think the world is just moving fast and the education system (alongside everything else) is struggling to keep up. the constant stream of negative news, layoffs because of AI, etc. also aren't doing anything to motivate kids. many of my college students feel like they've already lost at life. between ai, the economy, job prospects, etc. i am sure high schoolers…

I'm not sure where you see velocity. The last major innovation in arethmetic was the introduction of zero when the hindu-arabic numeral system was adopted by medieval western societies. Likewise english grammar isn't exactly a hotbed of churn.

i'm confused by your reply, sorry. what part of my comment are you referring to?

if this is a response to "world is moving fast", i didn't mean "arithmetic is moving fast". i meant technology, the economy, geopolitics, etc. which inevitably changes the learning environment, the home environment, motivation, etc.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#52

Post by jihadjihad »

vonnik wrote: post #43

To be clear this trend starts really early, at least in grade school. I have a second grader and most of his friends have had iPads for years, play video games for hours per day at home. Those kids don’t like to read, and/or are reading slow. Their parents wonder why, and blame the school. You have to make books the most exciting thing in the house for most of the day. And you have to model the behavior of reading; i…

This is a hard truth many wish to deny. An article published every month decrying the poor habits or lack of good habits of children, with a not-so-subtle implication that it is the fault of the children themselves.

It is 100% true that "you have to model the behavior of X" to your kids, otherwise all bets are off and headlines like this should not be surprising in the least.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#53

Post by foldr »

bluGill wrote: post #45
hackyhacky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the purpose of school to make you do things that you'll enjoy?

That is one of the 3 purposes of school. The other two are to get a good job, and to make you a better citizen of the world... (there might be more, but those are the 3 I've come up with). Animal Farm tries to be the last, but the flaws in it mean I can't take it seriously and so it fails. Well maybe it soft of works because nearly everybody has read it, but again, the flaws are so bad I can't take anyone seriously w…

I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#54

Post by rzerowan »

zug_zug wrote: post #5

Well for whatever it's worth, I feel like I understand why. At least when I was in school, nobody really made a very persuasive case for why reading was important (which I think it is) and I'd routinely get assigned books like Animal Farm or whatever and be told like "Spend X hours reading this thing and learn some profound lesson about life." And I'd just be like, "What? This book cannot prove anything, other than o…

Funnily enough most takes on the book misunderstand the point that was being made (probably due to Death of the author) . In his unpublished preface and subsequent analysis the view by Orwell , who was had Trotskyist leanings, his main critique is that they weren’t communisty enough but sellouts to capitalist tendancies, hence the analysis

"Using Orwell's works to make generalised attacks on the left is problematic, even for the two novels championed thus - while Animal Farm is very clearly a deserved satire on the Soviet Union, its greatest criticism of the Russian leaders is that they sold out socialist principle to accommodate themselves with capitalist countries ("The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.");"[1]

Obviously once a work is in the public’s hands , interpretations may supersede even the authors original themes.Leaving it as a matter of interpretation/comprehension and generally accepted consensus. Incidentally a good measure of reading comprehension and analysis for the students studying he text.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1945/preface.htm

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#55

Post by bluGill »

foldr wrote: post #53
bluGill wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the 3 purposes of school. The other two are to get a good job, and to make you a better citizen of the world... (there might be more, but those are the 3 I've come up with). Animal Farm tries to be the last, but the flaws in it mean I can't take it seriously and so it fails. Well maybe it soft of works because nearly everybody has read it, but again, the flaws are so bad I can't take anyone seriously w…

I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.

The purpose was to make a statement about communism which in turn means it was intended to be the last.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#56

Post by hackyhacky »

bluGill wrote: post #55
foldr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.

The purpose was to make a statement about communism which in turn means it was intended to be the last.

> which in turn means it was intended to be the last.

That's a bold and misguided assertion of authorial intent.

Since you're a fan of the scientific method: you can please cite sources in support of your claim?

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#58

Post by foldr »

bluGill wrote: post #55
foldr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.

The purpose was to make a statement about communism which in turn means it was intended to be the last.

That's a non sequitur. But you see, this is the exactly kind of thing that a high school literature class could usefully dig into.

We know that Orwell was thinking of the Russian Revolution when he wrote the book. Many events in the story have obvious historical parallels to it.

On the other hand, Orwell was also a political journalist who wrote political essays. If his primary aim in writing the book was to make a specific critique of communism, why did he decide to express that critique as a work of fiction with talking animals? He would certainly have been aware that such a work is inherently open to wider interpretation.

Do you really think that a class of reasonably intelligent high school students couldn't find any moral in the story that's not inherently tied to communism? There are clearly all sorts of analogies that can be drawn between the story and historical or current events. And there are all sorts of conclusions you can draw. Maybe the animals should never have had a revolution in the first place; maybe they should have, but they went about it the wrong way, etc. etc.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#59

Post by [deleted] »

john_strinlai wrote: post #48
hackyhacky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the purpose of school to make you do things that you'll enjoy?

> Is the purpose of school to make you do things that you'll enjoy? ideally, yes, enjoyment should be one purpose of school. it's much easier to teach when students are enjoying learning. learning to engage with something that you don't enjoy is also important, though, and why i think some of "the classics" should still be required reading.

[deleted]

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#60

Post by sph »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #50
sph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to downvote you because I read your username as reply to OP’s comment. To add: at what point we stop dismissing the culture of our ancestors that we have lost as mere nostalgia? I hate how we cannot have a serious discussion about our modern culture without devolving to this cliché rebuttal. I guess I should keep praying for a coronal mass ejection to free us from our digital jails.

It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation. Everything that was considered fancy and high-culture when I was in my formative years is fancy and high-culture now and everything after that is slop and mind-rot. But it makes no difference: the older generations die and the newer ones take over either way, and what's acceptable or even high culture changes.

> It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation.

So this means that we have decided a priori that life can only improve in all aspects? That’s evidently absurd.

This is called a thought-terminating cliché. It’s as intellectually nuanced as putting your fingers in your ears and singing “la la I’m right”. It’s often used not because it is true, but because to prove otherwise is very hard and inherently subjective.

Post reply on HN