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Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

nbcnews.com

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Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#71

Post by throwawayAAUGGH »

an0malous wrote: post #54
larrik wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that "doing hard things" is required to be a successful adult. Meanwhile, the bar for what constitutes a "hard thing" is dropping fast.

I mean it’s obviously not just that otherwise we’d make every kid play the original Donkey Kong and call that a success

The original donkey kong is pretty difficult compared to some of the wide-audience games that have been coming out. As far as I can tell, if the audience of a particular franchise includes younger generations as a majority or near-majority, the difficulty plummets. I don't think "plummets" is even that sensational. See pokemon, kingdom hearts, mario games, final fantasy games. Some franchises and genres have survived but not all of them.

I might be missing some other reasons why this could be happening, like increases in game balance and coordination.

Play Mario Odyssey for an hour or two then play Super Mario Bros 1, 2, or 3 as one startling example.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#72

Post by ambicapter »

watwut wrote: post #61
larrik wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that "doing hard things" is required to be a successful adult. Meanwhile, the bar for what constitutes a "hard thing" is dropping fast.

When I used to read for pleasure, I did it because it was pleasurable. Not because it would be the hard thing. It was fun and easy. What this particular chain of thoughts shows is that adults don't read for pleasure either, they associate it with an uncomfortable hard thing one should to do "build character".

Everything is easy when you've done a lot of it, that's how the brain works.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#74

Post by darth_avocado »

damnesian wrote: post #2

The acceleration point for both age groups studied is 2012. What happened that year? The article doesn't try to answer this. Might be mentioned in the study I suppose.

So you need to look at complete data. This will give you that: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/2025/reading/scores-pe...

What you see is that before the anomaly year that was 2020, the scores were slightly lower as compared to 2012, but they were still not as low as early 2000s or before.

Another thing to notice is that the higher percentile performance largely remains flat but lower percentiles seem to be suffering from a drop.

While social media and phones could be a part of it, if they were the only factors, we wouldn’t see such a disparity between different percentiles. I suspect educational policy. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), no matter how controversial, coincided with the improvements in the scores. In 2012, a bunch of states were allowed to have more flexibility from NCLB. In 2015, it was replaced with Every Student Succeeds Act which allowed states to set their own standards. I think this was the single biggest contributor to the declining scores.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#75

Post by hgoel »

an0malous wrote: post #49
larrik wrote: post #33

It's worse than this. I have kids in school. Our school system is one of the top in Connecticut, which is the quintessential "school" state (if any rich kid on TV goes away to school, it's probably to CT). These kids (all of them, not mine) can't really read. Not like when I was young. (I'm not even old! I graduated in the 2000's!) They certainly can't write. They have no stamina to do an essay or a test like when I…

Devil’s advocate: what’s the point? Is it important to have reading and writing skills if everything can be transcribed through AI? Or maybe it’s not directly important, but the ability to hold your attention on something for 30-60 minutes is? Is reading the best medium for education, or something more like Kahn Academy videos? I also wonder how the Montessori schools are doing, since I believe they focus less on rot…

Reading/writing is a much more dense and navigable way of taking in and recording information than speech. Efficient use of AI requires being very good at reading quickly and having the comprehension skills to pick up on nuances that suggest a hole in the AI's work.

In a world where AI is empowering existing experts while risking junior hiring, the young should be aiming to be competitive with those experts, not aiming below even current juniors. If, as a human, you're just acting as a glorified harness around an LLM, you're more replaceable.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#76

Post by djeastm »

hirvi74 wrote: post #53

Why is reading for pleasure always placed on some sort of pedestal? I would argue that what is being consumed is more important than the medium of consumption. I am not trying to say there is little value in reading, but I have always found it odd that some forms of consumption are more coveted than others.

Quality of what's produced in that medium might be one thing. People reading for pleasure are usually reading works published by authors that have gone through some sort of filtering process for quality. Sure, it might be "trashy" novels relative to literature, but at least there's a floor to the quality level or else it just doesn't get published.

But with the advent of other forms of media, more easily produced and consumed, the quality of what is being consumed is lower than the quality of pleasure reading. Combine that with the firehose rate at which it's being consumed and pleasure reading seems better than it might once have.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#77

Post by lukewrites »

This is a result of living in homes where parents neither read to children nor model reading for pleasure.

Thanks to the various waves of “education reform”, there is less literature on offer and less time for pleasure reading. However, if you’re reading them exciting things at home (and telling them about the exciting stuff you’re reading), they will love to read.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#78

Post by hgoel »

watwut wrote: post #61
larrik wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that "doing hard things" is required to be a successful adult. Meanwhile, the bar for what constitutes a "hard thing" is dropping fast.

When I used to read for pleasure, I did it because it was pleasurable. Not because it would be the hard thing. It was fun and easy. What this particular chain of thoughts shows is that adults don't read for pleasure either, they associate it with an uncomfortable hard thing one should to do "build character".

This is conflating hard with unpleasant. A child just learning to read is going to find it hard to do, yet through adults pushing them to do the hard thing, they learn to read and sometimes begin to find it to be pleasurable. Building most skills is hard, yet that doesn't exclude taking pleasure in it. Many of us taught ourselves to code, the fact that we enjoyed it doesn't mean it wasn't also hard.

We've all learned the lesson that sometimes you have to struggle through something hard, to be able to access better pleasure.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#79

Post by ojbyrne »

garciasn wrote: post #40

I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading. My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not. Why is reading for fun something that's wor…

I’m 65. I’m pretty sure I heard plenty of snide “nose buried in a book” cracks when i was growing up.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#80

Post by pchristensen »

nemomarx wrote: post #38
JoshTriplett wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ask them how much they read as ebooks? Libby is very popular.

Is libby very popular among young school children? Based on surveys asking how often kids read per week I would figure ebook reading is also down. They don't usually ask about the format.

My kids use Libby very often.
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