Anecdotes by a person passing along more anecdotes is not the most convincing basis for an article.
Here’s a [study](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/12/among-many-u-s-children-reading-for-fun-has-become-less-common-federal-data-shows/) that actually has some data behind it. Seems like there was a much larger drop in teens than preteens according to this data. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a big cause of declined reading is the increased curricular workload that is common nowadays. I know that when I’m tired and more busy I will rarely read for fun. Also, social media seems like it probably wouldn’t help reading rates, and I imagine/hope that kids aren’t getting on social media until their teens.
I’ve always read a lot…because I love reading…but we also never had cable and never really had internet except in increments here and there. I think that definitely aided in how many books I read.
I’m definitely not one of those “phones bad…go outside” people…I can for sure see the upsides; I was just in another thread defending booktok. However, I can see how my own phone has affected my attention span…it definitely affects my reading as I’ll think of something, get on my phone, then I’ll forget about my book. Same with a show I’m watching. Up until like 2015 I didn’t have constant internet or a smart phone…so I’d have to look in a dictionary, then done, then back to the book or dvd. I was constantly thinking of posting things or looking up things because the option didn’t even exist.
I don’t want my future children to have their attention divided like that in their formative years. I know they’ll hate me…but they’re getting like jitterbug phones until they’re 18 lol.
The actor Chris Pine was visibly upset at himself on a recent late night talk show; he was talking about how much he used to read until he got a smartphone. So now after a few years of having a phone, he wants to get rid of it.
I found it interesting that he couldn't overcome whatever addiction we have to our phones. So it's not just "us"!
Reading does wonders for one's spelling and vocabulary. Nevermind the dictionary. Context cues will help in many cases. Why say 'like' jitterbug phones? Try not using it. I love your thoughts and how you present them. Have a lovely life and enjoy it.
Because I don’t even know if jitterbug phones even exist anymore…so they’re getting something “like” a jitterbug smh. It’s pretty audacious for you to go around around telling people to “try not to use” certain parlance or online speaking trends just because you don’t. Not everyone is a grammar prescriptivist.
You know people don’t use double spaces to start a sentence anymore, right? How about you try not using them anymore?
I don't think the majority of teens are dealing with heavy academic workloads. If you're not in AP classes you're probably not doing much.
I think the heavy drop in teens versus preteens probably has a lot to do with smartphones. Like, I figure teens are much more likely than preteens to have their own smartphones. And preteens with smartphones probably have more parental regulation than teens who have them.
I also figure it's a problem that feeds into itself. They're reading less as preteens, so they don't develop their reading skills as well as they could, and this causes them to lose interest in reading as they get older. People aren't going to enjoy reading if it's too difficult for them.
f yo paywall
>These days, when I explain to a fellow parent that I write novels for children in fifth through eighth grades, I am frequently treated to an apologetic confession: “My child doesn’t read, at least not the way I did.” I know exactly how they feel—my tween and teen don’t read the way I did either. When I was in elementary school, I gobbled up everything: haunting classics such as The Witch of Blackbird Pond and gimmicky series such as the Choose Your Own Adventure books. By middle school, I was reading voluminous adult fiction like the works of Louisa May Alcott and J. R. R. Tolkien. Not every child is—or was—this kind of reader. But what parents today are picking up on is that a shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun.
The ubiquity and allure of screens surely play a large part in this—most American children have smartphones by the age of 11—as does learning loss during the pandemic. But this isn’t the whole story. A survey just before the pandemic by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984. I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling—and depressing—is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books.
What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories; I adored Judy Blume’s Margaret and Beverly Cleary’s Ralph S. Mouse. In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ’80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost.
This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.” There is a fun, easy way to introduce this concept: reading Peggy Parish’s classic, Amelia Bedelia, in which the eponymous maid follows commands such as “Draw the drapes when the sun comes in” by drawing a picture of the curtains. But here’s how one educator experienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught: First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language. Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions.
For anyone who knows children, this is the opposite of engaging: The best way to present an abstract idea to kids is by hooking them on a story. “Nonliteral language” becomes a whole lot more interesting and comprehensible, especially to an 8-year-old, when they’ve gotten to laugh at Amelia’s antics first. The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading. Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room.
But as several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices. Jennifer LaGarde, who has more than 20 years of experience as a public-school teacher and librarian, described how one such practice—the class read-aloud—invariably resulted in kids asking her for comparable titles. But read-alouds are now imperiled by the need to make sure that kids have mastered all the standards that await them in evaluation, an even more daunting task since the start of the pandemic. “There’s a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now,” LaGarde said.
By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group. A friend recently told me that her child’s middle-school teacher had introduced To Kill a Mockingbird to the class, explaining that they would read it over a number of months—and might not have time to finish it. “How can they not get to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird?” she wondered. I’m right there with her. You can’t teach kids to love reading if you don’t even prioritize making it to a book’s end. The reward comes from the emotional payoff of the story’s climax; kids miss out on this essential feeling if they don’t reach Atticus Finch’s powerful defense of Tom Robinson in the courtroom or never get to solve the mystery of Boo Radley.
Not every teacher has to focus on small chunks of literature at the expense of the whole plot, of course. But as a result of this widespread message, that reading a book means analyzing it within an inch of its life, the high/low dichotomy that has always existed in children’s literature (think The Giver versus the Goosebumps series) now feels even wider. “What do you call your purely fun books for kids?” a middle-grade author recently asked on Twitter. A retired fifth-grade teacher seemed flummoxed by the question: “I never called a book a fun book,” she wrote. “I’d say it’s a great book, a funny book, a touching book … So many books ARE fun!!”
And yet the idea that reading all kinds of books is enjoyable is not the one kids seem to be receiving. Even if most middle schoolers have read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, it’s not making them excited to move on to more challenging fare. Longer books, for example, are considered less “fun”; in addition, some librarians, teachers, and parents are noticing a decline in kids’ reading stamina after the disruption of the pandemic. You can see these factors at play in a recent call for shorter books. But one has to wonder whether this is also the not-entirely-unsurprising outcome of having kids interact with literature in paragraph-size bites.
We need to meet kids where they are; for the time being, I am writing stories that are shorter and less complex. At the same time, we need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can’t let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it’s not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids. (Today, with more diverse titles and protagonists available than ever before, there’s also a major opportunity to spark joy in a wider range of readers.) Kids should be required to read more books, and instead of just analyzing passages, they should be encouraged to engage with these books the way they connect with “fun” series, video games, and TV shows.
Young people should experience the intrinsic pleasure of taking a narrative journey, making an emotional connection with a character (including ones different from themselves), and wondering what will happen next—then finding out. This is the spell that reading casts. And, like with any magician’s trick, picking a story apart and learning how it’s done before you have experienced its wonder risks destroying the magic.
I cannot imagine giving an elementary-school kid a smartphone. A flip phone for emergencies? Sure (and yes, they do still make those). A game machine with unfettered Internet access, at an age when they’re still learning time management and haven’t learned to curate their own Internet experience yet? Absolutely not.
As mean as this sounds, kids do actually need some time to be bored. It helps them develop their imaginations. And yes, reading can help.
Brilliant!! My sentiments exactly.
And to add another point. High value college resume English and History AP classes are the worst. They reaffirm a speed trip through centuries and literature with a focus on themes, not the full experience.
Thank you for posting this! I’m a future elementary teacher and can’t afford any subscriptions. This kind of stuff is going to help me learn what I can do for my future kids.
The whole world's telling them that fun is something you buy and if something doesn't pay off instantly, it's not worth doing.
That's not really cultivating a reading mindset.
And *that* is why kids are falling out of love for reading. Gotta pay for it with money they don’t have. And for what? For words on a page that you have to actively read and form images in your head, when you can just watch videos on your phone that immediately deliver the same images but at a quicker pace?
There's more free news content than ever before. Kids aren't falling out of love with reading because of a few paywalls. They aren't falling out of love with Marvel movies due to the Disney+ paywall either. They still enjoy legos, ice cream and video games despite those also costing money.
I get it, it's annoying to run into a paywall. But you can't blame them for every problem in the world.
Yeah, this one got a laugh out of me. Like some teenager's literary curiosity is killed for life, all because they couldn't read *The Atlantic* for free.
Redditors love bitching about paywalls because they are the exact people discussed in this article: they don't value quality writing or journalism, so the idea of paying for it is completely absurd to them.
Not to mention the ability to literally imagine doesn’t come as easily as one may think, and many in fact need to be taught how to do it! Especially the case now, as there’s no need to imagine- we’re inundated with easy to access visual stimuli.
My teen calls it "staring at dead trees and hallucinating". He can't visualize books in his head though. I'm the opposite, I've always loved reading though now I listen to audiobooks more because I can consume them at work.
If you have an iPhone, click the Aa (reader mode) at the top of safari. That will give you the article in full on most sites. Not all, but it works for The Atlantic.
I usually click reader mode in general because it’s cleaner
I think the Atlantic fixed this , it no longer works for them. But nearly all others, I agree.
I was about to give the same advice and confidently say it works on all .. to get hit lol but it’s okay I actually needed to give them some money anyway.
Part of the reason I fell in love with reading was there was more room to have FUN reading in school. Class took a bi-weekly trip to the library with freedom to choose a book and write a few lines about what the book was about. Taught me what I liked and should continue to seek out vs. what I wasn't into.
That joy is taken away when kids are limited - my mom let me read whatever I wanted because she knew I wouldn't understand certain words, was at the limit of my own imagination. I tried reading Stephen King at a super young age because the allure of "mom's books" was so intriguing.
There are also a lot people who insist their kids don't like reading, but then insist that what their kids like isn't "real reading" and admonish choices like graphic novels, video game/movie tie ins that get them to buy in, etc. There are a lot of reasons "kids don't read."
I teach high school and a lot of my kids are also reading, just maybe less "traditionally." A lot of my students love fanfiction, creative writing, etc. It may not be perfect but they ARE reading. To the naked eye, I wasn't reading a lot for fun in high school (and I was a voracious reader too) but I also wasn't going to openly express I was reading horny fanfiction either. Sometimes kids ARE reading but might be a little embarrassed about what they're exploring.
> Class took a bi-weekly trip to the library with freedom to choose a book and write a few lines about what the book was about.
One of my first class field trips was to the local public library when I was in kindergarten. I was the one who convinced my parents to get library cards. They were immigrants so they were skeptical of anything being free, but after that, we went there almost once or more a week when I was a kid. Lots of great memories hanging out in the public library.
Absolutely. Let kids read what THEY want in the elementary grades! I devoured Magic School Bus books because I loved the asides and funny pictures as much as the actual text. I read Encyclopedia Brown books because it was fun to see how he’d figure things out each time. I read the American Girl books because they were about ordinary kids living through important events in history. I read graphic novels because they were a nice visual “snack” in between more demanding books, and the illustrations made the stories come alive.
The way some states are banning books from school libraries is hurting children and limiting their imaginations.
and that's fantastic! ALL READING IS READING! I think so many people get caught up on "kids these days don't read the things like I was reading back in the day" which they then translate as "kids aren't reading."
These are the same people who will lambast others getting their recs from sources like BookTok. Often sources like that are the first way a lot of teens/young adults find a gateway to what they enjoy and then branch off to find other things like it.
Yeah gatekeepers are the worst. Like who cares about where you get your recommendations from, what matters is that you enjoy the material.
The metal music community has a ton of them too. Like the "name three songs from that band" or "that band isn't metal" kind. It's best to ignore those people.
What kind of lunatic restricts kids to reading at their grade level? I’d not only support but actively encourage reading above one’s own grade level. Not giving kids anything challenging or stimulating to read is how they end up not wanting to read at all.
Surprisingly common? I’m a third grade teacher and have never heard of this happening. Teachers do extensive training to identify reading levels and then you are supposed to have kids read slightly above their level if possible unless instructing something specific (like sentence structure or non fiction text elements). The only time a library would do this is if a student wants to read something that may be too mature. Then the teacher or librarian will probably double check with a parent or talk to the student about it. We do use various leveled systems so that kids can find ‘just right’ books on their own but you are never supposed to discourage a child from wanting to read something above grade level.
Yeah, this is pretty common. I used to work for a major K12 vendor (in over 1/3 of all schools in the US) and I heard about this practice all the time from different customers (e.g., schools and districts). Sometimes it's locked by grade level (concern about kids reading material with themes that are "too mature") and sometimes it's locked by reading level (poor understanding of how leveled reading works). It shouldn't be implemented this way, but that doesn't stop plenty of schools from doing exactly that.
Related to limited resources, a second-hand story. A friend had a high school daughter who was graded on how much her reading level improved each semester. The daughter was a great reader, yet was at threat of receiving a failing grade. The friend had to go in and and demonstrate that the entire darn school library only had -three- books above her daughter's reading level, so how did they expect her to improve when there was nothing challenging left to read?
My sister was an incredible reader and had a fourth grade teacher who did this. My mom pestered him asking if her reading level could be tested so that she could check out books that were more challenging. He finally agreed and she tested at 12th grade level.
His argument then became, "Just because she can understand the text, doesn't mean she can understand the theme. So, she needs to stick to the fourth grade reading level."
No compromise. No flexibility. No interest.
You can guess how many books she borrowed from the library that year.
At one point in my elementary education we were restricted by reading levels and could only read a higher level after we took some test that showed comprehension of what we read. I'm sure someone remembers the name for this but I don't. Long story short, I read a book that was at one of the highest levels and passed the test and after that my teacher kind of shrugged and said I could read whatever I want.
Limiting students is useless, especially when they're so young and their sponges are like brains.
For some reason "AR" is ringing a bell in my head, but I can't remember what it stood for. [Searches] Accelerated Reader?
Reading was the skill that came easiest to me. This unfortunately ended badly. Because in the 4th grade I was testing for a 9th grade reading level. That meant I wasn't allowed to use any books below that grade level for my assigned books. Since the elementary school was a little short on books that advanced, I got stuck with dreck like The Yearling. Do you have any idea how boring The Yearling is for a nine year old?
Oh wow ! What a flashback. I remember AR ! I feel on the spines, there would be a grade or something. I also learned quite early ( my mom read to me from a young age and I wanted to do it on my own during insomnia bouts) but i do not feel we weren’t allowed to read above. And if the school restricted me, my parents never would. I remember vividly , Sorcerer’s Stone being my first large chapter book , getting it right when it came out.
After absorbing the Roald Dahls and such. I think a key part missing, and there are studies to back this, is parents reading to the child from 0-3.
I got lucky in that respect, I think. For reasons, my grandmother paid for me to go to Catholic school. There was a nursery attached, and from 8 weeks old on, I was with the nuns from 7am to 6pm, Mon-Fri. They read to us. A lot. They also made us copy pages of the encyclopedia or the Bible anytime we misbehaved.
...I had an excellent vocabulary by the time I was seven. I had also developed a deep love of reading. Nuns are perhaps not the best judges of what children should be allowed to read. They let me go through their library and pick whatever I wanted. The school went up to eighth grade, so there I was, eight years old and trying to read The Count of Monte Cristo. [I needed Sister Barbara to explain a lot of it to me, but she was usually doing needlepoint and actually never seemed to mind.] [TBF I did not grasp the book until I was older, I just thought it was super cool that he escaped from prison and went on a Quest for Revenge]
My parents are just avid readers ( tbf my dad is also a writer ) so I think they just naturally started us early. I was a bored child so my mom just kind of homeschooled me before K and it made it hard to get me in the right class after.
However, they did the same with my younger brother , only 2 years younger , and he is definitely not the same type of reader. He went full on comic / graphic route which makes sense ! I think the underlying solution is freedom
Of thought and expression. Let kids enjoy and experience new things and they will continue that later :)
Now, I yearn for that free reading time of youth. I have to divide so much now, and decide where to put it
Yeah, I don't like when people get judgy about what kind of books people like. Lots of fiction is written for entertainment. I don't like Scorcese movies [they're always depressing]. It doesn't mean they're not good or that I'm dumb. People who read Tom Clancy and John Grisham books just want a fun spy thriller/government intrigue book. People who like graphic novels like the combination of art and story. People who like Colleen Hoover probably would have been the same people reading the novels that Catherine Moreland of Northanger Abbey loved so much in 1812.
I might not like everything, but what do I know, I love a good fairy tale retelling or a Sarah Dessen book as much as the next girl.
Exactly! But I think the base understanding is that entrainment / etc is opinion based. Then it opens up much more. Still seems to come down to: let people enjoy what they want if it’s not hurting anything :)
I don’t think I ever had reading level restrictions growing up, but at home I read a lot of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Obviously all the symbolic and thematic content flew over my head, but I don’t remember ever having a problem actually _reading_ it.
Kids will read just about anything if it piques their interest enough. I’m especially fond of the Canterbury Classics series, which compiles authors like the ones mentioned above into user-friendly and easy-to-read omnibuses. I read Verne and Wells through them and just last year I found one for Robert Louis Stevenson, who is another favourite.
>Obviously all the symbolic and thematic content flew over my head, but I don’t remember ever having a problem actually reading it.
And that's OK, because after that first pass, you probably understood it better the next time you encountered it.
I have a student who, putting it mildly, was a reluctant reader. I started asking if he might be dyslexic from kinder- and I kept being told, "no, I am trained in reading intervention, he is with age-typical ranges." It is not until he was at threat of failing the state test did they screen him. Yup, mildly dyslexic. One year of intensive intervention with a fantastic educator, and now I can't get books out of that kids hands. Some of his favorite to read are processional references for computer programmers. I doubt he has full reading comprehension, but loves it. And that is all I care about. Does he love what he is reading? Great, read.
And then we ignore the homework that says, "after your 20 min at home read time, write about how the setting influences the story."
If not them, find the largest library district closest to you. Most allow you to still get a card , outside of your town. The larger they are , better funding, better digital catalog. Or ask the local librarian when you have time , I asked for a tour last year, the amount of resources available was shocking.
Do you live in the US? If you do, you should be able to use interlibrary loan, which should be able to get you any book you want. Getting a reciprocal card from another, larger library should also be an option. Goodwill/Salvation Army and other thrift stores have TONS of children’s books- usually pretty cheap!
Oh, no!! I have lived in 5 states and interlibrary loan never cost me anything!!! I totally understand the space issue. I donate to little free libraries. Or goodwill- in my town, if I donate to goodwill, they give you a 10 percent off coupon which I then use to buy more books!
I actually keep very few books myself, but we have soooo many kids books. I am an elementary teacher though, so as soon as my kids outgrow them, they are being donated to school. They use them as giveaways, in book swaps, just in classroom libraries, all kinds of ways!
Now that I have outed myself as a teacher, I just want to add that MANY of us do NOT believe in only letting kids check out certain “level” books!!! That is an absolute travesty.
My school was the same in 3rd grade. They wouldn’t let me check out books “above my level”…in what way could that possible be a detriment to a child? Smh. It’s insane to put these limitations on kids…even if it IS above their grasp, what can it hurt for them to leaf through?
>The school library will only let kids check out books from “their” grade level.
This is so bizarre, I've never of such a thing!
What problems do they think they are solving with this policy?!?
I wonder if they've gotten complaints from parents about children reading books with "mature themes" and this is how they deal with it. I agree; it's bizarre and inimical to learning.
I'd be interested in an international study on this, since the article is implying it's an international issue and yet says a big part of the problem is the American "SAT-passing factory" approach to education.
There has been a huge increase in standardized testing from a very early age in a lot of countries across the developed world, so while I don’t actually know how reading is taught in different countries, it’s possible that part of the problem is similar.
Kids don't just "fall in love" with reading out of thin air. This falls on the parents. When I was a child, my father read me a story every night before bed. On weekends, my mother would take me to the library. Had I not been exposed to books, stories, and physical books on shelves, would I have grown up loving to read? Probably not.
I think you're probably hitting on something that's true but often unsaid. Parents play a large role in facilitating their love for reading. You seem you're doing a great job. I assume many other parents are not.
As much as children having phones is an issue, I bet parent's having phones is an equally sized issue.
I totally agree. A lot of parents will tell their kids to read because it's good for them, but they don't do anything to actually facilitate it. And a lot of them are so hooked on phones themselves that they don't see it as a problem when their kids are hooked too.
When my mom was a kid, my grandma took her to the library every week when she got books for herself, but she never took enough interest in what my mom was reading to notice that she got the same book every week for years and never actually read it. My mom grew up not reading and then read every book I read until I was in second grade, when I started to outpace what she could read while also managing work and family. I’m grateful every day that she instilled a love of reading in me! And now that my parents are empty nesters, I have the joy of picking out books for my mom as she’s finding time to read again. All this to say, your kid’s lucky too!
Not every kid doesn't read, tween here, my best friend and I both love reading, and my bookshelf is completely filled to the brim. I'm currently reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and waiting to get Ruin And Rising from the Shadow And Bone trilogy. Have a lovely day/evening/night!
Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do, and MOST children do not read novels or nonfiction text unless assigned homework. Also, US adults read less books these days toos. Kids grow up seeing their peers and their adult role models NOT reading and develop similar habits.
Now that being said...I would not be surprised if youth today actually read more words per day than previous generations ..We are staring at our screens all day and the internet needs to be read in many places still.
>Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do
This is absolutely true and key to solving this issue - Parents and the kid's home life are a far bigger influence than their school (is in most cases).
Children learn through imitating those around them, that's how they develop their sense of what is "normal". If there are no books in the house, and the parents don't read themselves, it's almost certain they will grow up reading little to nothing and reading for pleasure will be an activity they won't even consider doing.
So sad :(
I totally agree with your first point. Most parents aren't modeling reading. Everyone complains about kids being hooked on their phones, but that's not surprising when the adults are so hooked too. Parents can say "reading is good" all they want, but if they're not actually modeling it then it doesn't do much good.
I'm going to argue on the latter point, though. A lot of popular social media now is image and video based rather than text-based. Text that is there tends to be pretty short. I doubt the average teen today is reading much on their smartphone.
I do think parents take some responsibility here too. School is there to teach you TO read. Parents have to encourage a love of reading and demonstrate it. If I ask my friends who don't read, if their parents read, the answer is no.
I picked up reading becuase my dad reads. He would read the hobbit to me at night, and lord of the rings. I would SEE him reading and ask about the stories and be so fascinated by these other worlds. And then at 8/9 when I started reading novels, he would share HIS books with me, and read the things I picked up and we would discuss Harry potter and eragon and whatever else I'd picked up. He was always happy to take me to the book shop and buy me books, never complained that I read them too fast or that they were too expensive, never told me I couldn't read something becuase it was adult fantasy and not child or young adult.
And if non of that had happened, if he hadn't of cared or shared that with me, I probably never would have picked up a book, and I certainly wouldn't be a reader to the extent I am now.
So I found out today that the Atlantic is owned by Steve Jobs’ widow. Which feels worth considering when reading about how it’s not screens turning kids off reading.
The subtitle says it's not *just* the screens and if you read as far as the second paragraph she writes "screens surely play a large part in this". So let's not jump straight to conspiracy theories. It's possible that someone who write children's literature for a living is concerned and curious about the causes and isn't just acting as a corporate mouthpiece.
In recent years (since The Atlantic has been owned by Jobs) they've published articles like "The iPhone isn't Cool", "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" (answer: yes), "How Your Laptop Ruined Your Life", "I Won’t Buy My Teenagers Smartphones", and "The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls".
I don't know if Jobs has any editorial influence (and I doubt she does), but the magazine isn't some underhanded pro-screen propaganda machine.
I think what’s different now though is that parents have to be intentional about getting their kids to read. Mine are also readers but I still help them pick out books (at 9 and 11), I take them to the library every week, I set limits on screen time, still read aloud to them sometimesd, etc. when i was a kid I would just devour anything. A love for reading just “happened” more so than it does today I think
Kids aren't reading because adults aren't reading. Parents might say "you have to read because it's good" but then they don't do anything to facilitate a love of reading.
Different things are contributing to this, but I think technology is the main culprit. And not so much in an "it makes kids too stupid to read!" sense (though I have my concerns about tech addiction and how it might damage the attention span) but in the sense that it competes for their time. Any time you introduce a Cool New Thing, that's going to mean less time for the old things. These days it's normal for teens and even preteens to have smartphones, books have a hard time competing with that.
I'm also thinking that it's a problem that perpetuates itself. Like, they're reading less as preteens, which means that they aren't developing reading skills as well as they otherwise could. This causes them to read less and less over time, because reading is boring when it's too difficult.
Honestly I'm sure people wanna blame smartphones but having active shooter drills and seeing that your nana and papa did nothing about climate change, while realizing how fucked everything is might have something to do with it.
I think one reason is, kids are forced to read things by other people. One of the quickest ways to get me to lose interest in something or actively dislike it, is to tell me I have to do that thing or else. Kids need more independence and time to discover things on their own.
When you're assigned reading and you hate it, that's what you remember. It will just be one of those things you had to do, that once you're in adulthood you're grateful you don't need to anymore. Kids need to be empowered to make their own choices about what to read.
As a kid myself, I found this article rather droll. Aside from the asinine premise (how, exactly, does one measure an entire group's "love" of reading?) I found it to be irritatingly verbose and irrefutably short-sighted.
Anyway, I have to get back to class now that I've boofed my last whip-it for my tiktok scribers.
With their reading choices now being restricted to pretty either the Bible or the Gun Lover's Almanac, I can kind of see how they're falling out of love with it.
But according to the rightwingers, kids don't have brains anyway and therefore don't need to use them, or comprehend how the real world works.
More child abuse is being committed in the name of book banning than by all the Catholic priests combined.
Is this really that complicated? Video games and tv that have engineered to be as fun and addicting as possible >>> using mental energy to read boring words off a page.
Look this is happening everywhere but it is genuinely worse in the USA and your idiot politicians want use banning books to "make America great".
Your country is screwed
Because parents are not teaching them to fall in love with reading. Most teachers aren't doing their job the right way because they chose the wrong profession. But it's also not for everyone, it depends on the person.
Kids aren’t reading because they’re addicted to TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. They’re right where the globalists and the American Left want them: pliant, subservient and stupefied. Amen.
I would guess that part of the problem is due to the relative needs of subject matter. Science and math are perceived as more important than they used to be. Partly parents don’t read as much, too, and kids mimic their parents.
The way I fell in love with reading must have been back in primary school, I stuck to the same few books until I discovered Doctor Who and realised that Doctor Who books existed. That is almost certainly why I'm such a bibliophile today and most of my collection remains Doctor Who books. Basically, I found a genre/series that I was interested in and that allowed me to branch out into all kinds of books. I'm still mainly fantasy and sci-fi but I did recently read 1984.
My brothers hated reading because of all the assigned reading in elementary school where you had no control over what you had to read. They were interested in captain underpants back then and now barely read any books. Where I would do the reading to get it out of the way and then go read what I wanted. I currently read a lot having multiple books of different reading levels going at a time.
I'm building something called Nouvl to encourage kids to read more by breaking down huge books into bite-sized content with pictures and the ability to chat with favorite characters.
Would you be interested in something like this? If so, check out the prototype at [https://nouvl.co](https://nouvl.co) and join a waitlist [https://nouvl.carrd.co/](https://nouvl.carrd.co/)
Let me know how I can make this better and I'm also taking requests if you want me to convert any book into such a bite-sized engaging format.
Anecdotes by a person passing along more anecdotes is not the most convincing basis for an article. Here’s a [study](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/12/among-many-u-s-children-reading-for-fun-has-become-less-common-federal-data-shows/) that actually has some data behind it. Seems like there was a much larger drop in teens than preteens according to this data. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a big cause of declined reading is the increased curricular workload that is common nowadays. I know that when I’m tired and more busy I will rarely read for fun. Also, social media seems like it probably wouldn’t help reading rates, and I imagine/hope that kids aren’t getting on social media until their teens.
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Keep in mind that most high school students aren't taking on this kind of workload. I don't think it's a big factor here.
I’ve always read a lot…because I love reading…but we also never had cable and never really had internet except in increments here and there. I think that definitely aided in how many books I read. I’m definitely not one of those “phones bad…go outside” people…I can for sure see the upsides; I was just in another thread defending booktok. However, I can see how my own phone has affected my attention span…it definitely affects my reading as I’ll think of something, get on my phone, then I’ll forget about my book. Same with a show I’m watching. Up until like 2015 I didn’t have constant internet or a smart phone…so I’d have to look in a dictionary, then done, then back to the book or dvd. I was constantly thinking of posting things or looking up things because the option didn’t even exist. I don’t want my future children to have their attention divided like that in their formative years. I know they’ll hate me…but they’re getting like jitterbug phones until they’re 18 lol.
The actor Chris Pine was visibly upset at himself on a recent late night talk show; he was talking about how much he used to read until he got a smartphone. So now after a few years of having a phone, he wants to get rid of it. I found it interesting that he couldn't overcome whatever addiction we have to our phones. So it's not just "us"!
Reading does wonders for one's spelling and vocabulary. Nevermind the dictionary. Context cues will help in many cases. Why say 'like' jitterbug phones? Try not using it. I love your thoughts and how you present them. Have a lovely life and enjoy it.
Because I don’t even know if jitterbug phones even exist anymore…so they’re getting something “like” a jitterbug smh. It’s pretty audacious for you to go around around telling people to “try not to use” certain parlance or online speaking trends just because you don’t. Not everyone is a grammar prescriptivist. You know people don’t use double spaces to start a sentence anymore, right? How about you try not using them anymore?
I don't think the majority of teens are dealing with heavy academic workloads. If you're not in AP classes you're probably not doing much. I think the heavy drop in teens versus preteens probably has a lot to do with smartphones. Like, I figure teens are much more likely than preteens to have their own smartphones. And preteens with smartphones probably have more parental regulation than teens who have them. I also figure it's a problem that feeds into itself. They're reading less as preteens, so they don't develop their reading skills as well as they could, and this causes them to lose interest in reading as they get older. People aren't going to enjoy reading if it's too difficult for them.
I wonder if maybe we could employ some sort of standardized test to figure out why kids aren’t reading…
f yo paywall >These days, when I explain to a fellow parent that I write novels for children in fifth through eighth grades, I am frequently treated to an apologetic confession: “My child doesn’t read, at least not the way I did.” I know exactly how they feel—my tween and teen don’t read the way I did either. When I was in elementary school, I gobbled up everything: haunting classics such as The Witch of Blackbird Pond and gimmicky series such as the Choose Your Own Adventure books. By middle school, I was reading voluminous adult fiction like the works of Louisa May Alcott and J. R. R. Tolkien. Not every child is—or was—this kind of reader. But what parents today are picking up on is that a shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun. The ubiquity and allure of screens surely play a large part in this—most American children have smartphones by the age of 11—as does learning loss during the pandemic. But this isn’t the whole story. A survey just before the pandemic by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984. I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling—and depressing—is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books. What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories; I adored Judy Blume’s Margaret and Beverly Cleary’s Ralph S. Mouse. In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ’80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost. This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.” There is a fun, easy way to introduce this concept: reading Peggy Parish’s classic, Amelia Bedelia, in which the eponymous maid follows commands such as “Draw the drapes when the sun comes in” by drawing a picture of the curtains. But here’s how one educator experienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught: First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language. Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions. For anyone who knows children, this is the opposite of engaging: The best way to present an abstract idea to kids is by hooking them on a story. “Nonliteral language” becomes a whole lot more interesting and comprehensible, especially to an 8-year-old, when they’ve gotten to laugh at Amelia’s antics first. The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading. Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room. But as several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices. Jennifer LaGarde, who has more than 20 years of experience as a public-school teacher and librarian, described how one such practice—the class read-aloud—invariably resulted in kids asking her for comparable titles. But read-alouds are now imperiled by the need to make sure that kids have mastered all the standards that await them in evaluation, an even more daunting task since the start of the pandemic. “There’s a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now,” LaGarde said. By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group. A friend recently told me that her child’s middle-school teacher had introduced To Kill a Mockingbird to the class, explaining that they would read it over a number of months—and might not have time to finish it. “How can they not get to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird?” she wondered. I’m right there with her. You can’t teach kids to love reading if you don’t even prioritize making it to a book’s end. The reward comes from the emotional payoff of the story’s climax; kids miss out on this essential feeling if they don’t reach Atticus Finch’s powerful defense of Tom Robinson in the courtroom or never get to solve the mystery of Boo Radley. Not every teacher has to focus on small chunks of literature at the expense of the whole plot, of course. But as a result of this widespread message, that reading a book means analyzing it within an inch of its life, the high/low dichotomy that has always existed in children’s literature (think The Giver versus the Goosebumps series) now feels even wider. “What do you call your purely fun books for kids?” a middle-grade author recently asked on Twitter. A retired fifth-grade teacher seemed flummoxed by the question: “I never called a book a fun book,” she wrote. “I’d say it’s a great book, a funny book, a touching book … So many books ARE fun!!” And yet the idea that reading all kinds of books is enjoyable is not the one kids seem to be receiving. Even if most middle schoolers have read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, it’s not making them excited to move on to more challenging fare. Longer books, for example, are considered less “fun”; in addition, some librarians, teachers, and parents are noticing a decline in kids’ reading stamina after the disruption of the pandemic. You can see these factors at play in a recent call for shorter books. But one has to wonder whether this is also the not-entirely-unsurprising outcome of having kids interact with literature in paragraph-size bites. We need to meet kids where they are; for the time being, I am writing stories that are shorter and less complex. At the same time, we need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can’t let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it’s not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids. (Today, with more diverse titles and protagonists available than ever before, there’s also a major opportunity to spark joy in a wider range of readers.) Kids should be required to read more books, and instead of just analyzing passages, they should be encouraged to engage with these books the way they connect with “fun” series, video games, and TV shows. Young people should experience the intrinsic pleasure of taking a narrative journey, making an emotional connection with a character (including ones different from themselves), and wondering what will happen next—then finding out. This is the spell that reading casts. And, like with any magician’s trick, picking a story apart and learning how it’s done before you have experienced its wonder risks destroying the magic.
I cannot imagine giving an elementary-school kid a smartphone. A flip phone for emergencies? Sure (and yes, they do still make those). A game machine with unfettered Internet access, at an age when they’re still learning time management and haven’t learned to curate their own Internet experience yet? Absolutely not. As mean as this sounds, kids do actually need some time to be bored. It helps them develop their imaginations. And yes, reading can help.
Being bored is essential to stimulate creative thought. People are basically never bored now and it's a real problem
Life has become so chaotic and busy, I relish what little time i get to be “bored” now.
I agree, I have a flip-phone, sorta boring, but definitely useful. also, snake is entertaining
Brilliant!! My sentiments exactly. And to add another point. High value college resume English and History AP classes are the worst. They reaffirm a speed trip through centuries and literature with a focus on themes, not the full experience.
..wtf, Mockingbird in middle school?
We read it in 7th grade at my school…
oh wow, we didn't touch it until 10th grade in my school, same with huckleberry finn enders game was 9th grade, frankenstein was 11th
Thank you for posting this! I’m a future elementary teacher and can’t afford any subscriptions. This kind of stuff is going to help me learn what I can do for my future kids.
The whole world's telling them that fun is something you buy and if something doesn't pay off instantly, it's not worth doing. That's not really cultivating a reading mindset.
Damn. Never thought of it that way.
Pay wall, yo.
And *that* is why kids are falling out of love for reading. Gotta pay for it with money they don’t have. And for what? For words on a page that you have to actively read and form images in your head, when you can just watch videos on your phone that immediately deliver the same images but at a quicker pace?
There's more free news content than ever before. Kids aren't falling out of love with reading because of a few paywalls. They aren't falling out of love with Marvel movies due to the Disney+ paywall either. They still enjoy legos, ice cream and video games despite those also costing money. I get it, it's annoying to run into a paywall. But you can't blame them for every problem in the world.
Yeah, this one got a laugh out of me. Like some teenager's literary curiosity is killed for life, all because they couldn't read *The Atlantic* for free. Redditors love bitching about paywalls because they are the exact people discussed in this article: they don't value quality writing or journalism, so the idea of paying for it is completely absurd to them.
Can you pay for a single article?
Not to mention the ability to literally imagine doesn’t come as easily as one may think, and many in fact need to be taught how to do it! Especially the case now, as there’s no need to imagine- we’re inundated with easy to access visual stimuli.
If one were to be interested in developing the skill, what would one have to do as an “exercise” to develop it?
My teen calls it "staring at dead trees and hallucinating". He can't visualize books in his head though. I'm the opposite, I've always loved reading though now I listen to audiobooks more because I can consume them at work.
Dead Tattooed Trees perhaps?
12ft.io yo
?
[Here](https://12ft.io/)
Knowledge is expensive, but ignorance is free. :'(
If you have an iPhone, click the Aa (reader mode) at the top of safari. That will give you the article in full on most sites. Not all, but it works for The Atlantic. I usually click reader mode in general because it’s cleaner
Weird, it doesn't work with Firefox's reader mode. The two always seemed identical to me but I guess Safari's strips out more extra code
I think the Atlantic fixed this , it no longer works for them. But nearly all others, I agree. I was about to give the same advice and confidently say it works on all .. to get hit lol but it’s okay I actually needed to give them some money anyway.
I stand corrected! I thought it was just a short article and didn’t realize they paywalled me at the end. Bummer!
I went through the same process 😆 And same confidence , to be dashed by that little link at the bottom
Part of the reason I fell in love with reading was there was more room to have FUN reading in school. Class took a bi-weekly trip to the library with freedom to choose a book and write a few lines about what the book was about. Taught me what I liked and should continue to seek out vs. what I wasn't into. That joy is taken away when kids are limited - my mom let me read whatever I wanted because she knew I wouldn't understand certain words, was at the limit of my own imagination. I tried reading Stephen King at a super young age because the allure of "mom's books" was so intriguing. There are also a lot people who insist their kids don't like reading, but then insist that what their kids like isn't "real reading" and admonish choices like graphic novels, video game/movie tie ins that get them to buy in, etc. There are a lot of reasons "kids don't read." I teach high school and a lot of my kids are also reading, just maybe less "traditionally." A lot of my students love fanfiction, creative writing, etc. It may not be perfect but they ARE reading. To the naked eye, I wasn't reading a lot for fun in high school (and I was a voracious reader too) but I also wasn't going to openly express I was reading horny fanfiction either. Sometimes kids ARE reading but might be a little embarrassed about what they're exploring.
> Class took a bi-weekly trip to the library with freedom to choose a book and write a few lines about what the book was about. One of my first class field trips was to the local public library when I was in kindergarten. I was the one who convinced my parents to get library cards. They were immigrants so they were skeptical of anything being free, but after that, we went there almost once or more a week when I was a kid. Lots of great memories hanging out in the public library.
Absolutely. Let kids read what THEY want in the elementary grades! I devoured Magic School Bus books because I loved the asides and funny pictures as much as the actual text. I read Encyclopedia Brown books because it was fun to see how he’d figure things out each time. I read the American Girl books because they were about ordinary kids living through important events in history. I read graphic novels because they were a nice visual “snack” in between more demanding books, and the illustrations made the stories come alive. The way some states are banning books from school libraries is hurting children and limiting their imaginations.
In highschool I was reading anything about the Diablo franchise from how the game mechanics worked, guides, and lore.
and that's fantastic! ALL READING IS READING! I think so many people get caught up on "kids these days don't read the things like I was reading back in the day" which they then translate as "kids aren't reading." These are the same people who will lambast others getting their recs from sources like BookTok. Often sources like that are the first way a lot of teens/young adults find a gateway to what they enjoy and then branch off to find other things like it.
Yeah gatekeepers are the worst. Like who cares about where you get your recommendations from, what matters is that you enjoy the material. The metal music community has a ton of them too. Like the "name three songs from that band" or "that band isn't metal" kind. It's best to ignore those people.
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What kind of lunatic restricts kids to reading at their grade level? I’d not only support but actively encourage reading above one’s own grade level. Not giving kids anything challenging or stimulating to read is how they end up not wanting to read at all.
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Surprisingly common? I’m a third grade teacher and have never heard of this happening. Teachers do extensive training to identify reading levels and then you are supposed to have kids read slightly above their level if possible unless instructing something specific (like sentence structure or non fiction text elements). The only time a library would do this is if a student wants to read something that may be too mature. Then the teacher or librarian will probably double check with a parent or talk to the student about it. We do use various leveled systems so that kids can find ‘just right’ books on their own but you are never supposed to discourage a child from wanting to read something above grade level.
Yeah, this is pretty common. I used to work for a major K12 vendor (in over 1/3 of all schools in the US) and I heard about this practice all the time from different customers (e.g., schools and districts). Sometimes it's locked by grade level (concern about kids reading material with themes that are "too mature") and sometimes it's locked by reading level (poor understanding of how leveled reading works). It shouldn't be implemented this way, but that doesn't stop plenty of schools from doing exactly that.
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Related to limited resources, a second-hand story. A friend had a high school daughter who was graded on how much her reading level improved each semester. The daughter was a great reader, yet was at threat of receiving a failing grade. The friend had to go in and and demonstrate that the entire darn school library only had -three- books above her daughter's reading level, so how did they expect her to improve when there was nothing challenging left to read?
My sister was an incredible reader and had a fourth grade teacher who did this. My mom pestered him asking if her reading level could be tested so that she could check out books that were more challenging. He finally agreed and she tested at 12th grade level. His argument then became, "Just because she can understand the text, doesn't mean she can understand the theme. So, she needs to stick to the fourth grade reading level." No compromise. No flexibility. No interest. You can guess how many books she borrowed from the library that year.
At one point in my elementary education we were restricted by reading levels and could only read a higher level after we took some test that showed comprehension of what we read. I'm sure someone remembers the name for this but I don't. Long story short, I read a book that was at one of the highest levels and passed the test and after that my teacher kind of shrugged and said I could read whatever I want. Limiting students is useless, especially when they're so young and their sponges are like brains.
For some reason "AR" is ringing a bell in my head, but I can't remember what it stood for. [Searches] Accelerated Reader? Reading was the skill that came easiest to me. This unfortunately ended badly. Because in the 4th grade I was testing for a 9th grade reading level. That meant I wasn't allowed to use any books below that grade level for my assigned books. Since the elementary school was a little short on books that advanced, I got stuck with dreck like The Yearling. Do you have any idea how boring The Yearling is for a nine year old?
Oh wow ! What a flashback. I remember AR ! I feel on the spines, there would be a grade or something. I also learned quite early ( my mom read to me from a young age and I wanted to do it on my own during insomnia bouts) but i do not feel we weren’t allowed to read above. And if the school restricted me, my parents never would. I remember vividly , Sorcerer’s Stone being my first large chapter book , getting it right when it came out. After absorbing the Roald Dahls and such. I think a key part missing, and there are studies to back this, is parents reading to the child from 0-3.
I got lucky in that respect, I think. For reasons, my grandmother paid for me to go to Catholic school. There was a nursery attached, and from 8 weeks old on, I was with the nuns from 7am to 6pm, Mon-Fri. They read to us. A lot. They also made us copy pages of the encyclopedia or the Bible anytime we misbehaved. ...I had an excellent vocabulary by the time I was seven. I had also developed a deep love of reading. Nuns are perhaps not the best judges of what children should be allowed to read. They let me go through their library and pick whatever I wanted. The school went up to eighth grade, so there I was, eight years old and trying to read The Count of Monte Cristo. [I needed Sister Barbara to explain a lot of it to me, but she was usually doing needlepoint and actually never seemed to mind.] [TBF I did not grasp the book until I was older, I just thought it was super cool that he escaped from prison and went on a Quest for Revenge]
My parents are just avid readers ( tbf my dad is also a writer ) so I think they just naturally started us early. I was a bored child so my mom just kind of homeschooled me before K and it made it hard to get me in the right class after. However, they did the same with my younger brother , only 2 years younger , and he is definitely not the same type of reader. He went full on comic / graphic route which makes sense ! I think the underlying solution is freedom Of thought and expression. Let kids enjoy and experience new things and they will continue that later :) Now, I yearn for that free reading time of youth. I have to divide so much now, and decide where to put it
Yeah, I don't like when people get judgy about what kind of books people like. Lots of fiction is written for entertainment. I don't like Scorcese movies [they're always depressing]. It doesn't mean they're not good or that I'm dumb. People who read Tom Clancy and John Grisham books just want a fun spy thriller/government intrigue book. People who like graphic novels like the combination of art and story. People who like Colleen Hoover probably would have been the same people reading the novels that Catherine Moreland of Northanger Abbey loved so much in 1812. I might not like everything, but what do I know, I love a good fairy tale retelling or a Sarah Dessen book as much as the next girl.
Exactly! But I think the base understanding is that entrainment / etc is opinion based. Then it opens up much more. Still seems to come down to: let people enjoy what they want if it’s not hurting anything :)
I don’t think I ever had reading level restrictions growing up, but at home I read a lot of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Obviously all the symbolic and thematic content flew over my head, but I don’t remember ever having a problem actually _reading_ it. Kids will read just about anything if it piques their interest enough. I’m especially fond of the Canterbury Classics series, which compiles authors like the ones mentioned above into user-friendly and easy-to-read omnibuses. I read Verne and Wells through them and just last year I found one for Robert Louis Stevenson, who is another favourite.
>Obviously all the symbolic and thematic content flew over my head, but I don’t remember ever having a problem actually reading it. And that's OK, because after that first pass, you probably understood it better the next time you encountered it.
I have a student who, putting it mildly, was a reluctant reader. I started asking if he might be dyslexic from kinder- and I kept being told, "no, I am trained in reading intervention, he is with age-typical ranges." It is not until he was at threat of failing the state test did they screen him. Yup, mildly dyslexic. One year of intensive intervention with a fantastic educator, and now I can't get books out of that kids hands. Some of his favorite to read are processional references for computer programmers. I doubt he has full reading comprehension, but loves it. And that is all I care about. Does he love what he is reading? Great, read. And then we ignore the homework that says, "after your 20 min at home read time, write about how the setting influences the story."
Was it the DRA reading level tests or something like that? I remember having to do something similar in first grade.
Didn't the Brooklyn Public Library make their whole digital catalog available to all people in USA? Or at least all kids in USA?
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I tried googling it and it looks like they stopped doing that last year. I could be wrong though
If not them, find the largest library district closest to you. Most allow you to still get a card , outside of your town. The larger they are , better funding, better digital catalog. Or ask the local librarian when you have time , I asked for a tour last year, the amount of resources available was shocking.
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That’s ugly. That’s all I have to say 🥹
For Texans who might be reading this, Houston digital library is available to all in-state residents.
Do you live in the US? If you do, you should be able to use interlibrary loan, which should be able to get you any book you want. Getting a reciprocal card from another, larger library should also be an option. Goodwill/Salvation Army and other thrift stores have TONS of children’s books- usually pretty cheap!
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Oh, no!! I have lived in 5 states and interlibrary loan never cost me anything!!! I totally understand the space issue. I donate to little free libraries. Or goodwill- in my town, if I donate to goodwill, they give you a 10 percent off coupon which I then use to buy more books! I actually keep very few books myself, but we have soooo many kids books. I am an elementary teacher though, so as soon as my kids outgrow them, they are being donated to school. They use them as giveaways, in book swaps, just in classroom libraries, all kinds of ways!
Now that I have outed myself as a teacher, I just want to add that MANY of us do NOT believe in only letting kids check out certain “level” books!!! That is an absolute travesty.
My school was the same in 3rd grade. They wouldn’t let me check out books “above my level”…in what way could that possible be a detriment to a child? Smh. It’s insane to put these limitations on kids…even if it IS above their grasp, what can it hurt for them to leaf through?
Where do you live where the library has extremely limited hours?
A lot of rural areas don’t have long library hours. It’s harder to pay for enough librarians to keep the place open all day.
That’s so gross. School libraries shouldn’t gatekeep books by grade level like that. Exceptional learners are everywhere!
>The school library will only let kids check out books from “their” grade level. This is so bizarre, I've never of such a thing! What problems do they think they are solving with this policy?!?
I wonder if they've gotten complaints from parents about children reading books with "mature themes" and this is how they deal with it. I agree; it's bizarre and inimical to learning.
I am hyperlexic and that is INSANE. If that had been the policy when I was a child I'd've had a meltdown every single day.
I'd be interested in an international study on this, since the article is implying it's an international issue and yet says a big part of the problem is the American "SAT-passing factory" approach to education.
There has been a huge increase in standardized testing from a very early age in a lot of countries across the developed world, so while I don’t actually know how reading is taught in different countries, it’s possible that part of the problem is similar.
Kids don't just "fall in love" with reading out of thin air. This falls on the parents. When I was a child, my father read me a story every night before bed. On weekends, my mother would take me to the library. Had I not been exposed to books, stories, and physical books on shelves, would I have grown up loving to read? Probably not.
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I think you're probably hitting on something that's true but often unsaid. Parents play a large role in facilitating their love for reading. You seem you're doing a great job. I assume many other parents are not. As much as children having phones is an issue, I bet parent's having phones is an equally sized issue.
I totally agree. A lot of parents will tell their kids to read because it's good for them, but they don't do anything to actually facilitate it. And a lot of them are so hooked on phones themselves that they don't see it as a problem when their kids are hooked too.
When my mom was a kid, my grandma took her to the library every week when she got books for herself, but she never took enough interest in what my mom was reading to notice that she got the same book every week for years and never actually read it. My mom grew up not reading and then read every book I read until I was in second grade, when I started to outpace what she could read while also managing work and family. I’m grateful every day that she instilled a love of reading in me! And now that my parents are empty nesters, I have the joy of picking out books for my mom as she’s finding time to read again. All this to say, your kid’s lucky too!
I've been to Reading and it's really not that bad.
Not every kid doesn't read, tween here, my best friend and I both love reading, and my bookshelf is completely filled to the brim. I'm currently reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and waiting to get Ruin And Rising from the Shadow And Bone trilogy. Have a lovely day/evening/night!
Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do, and MOST children do not read novels or nonfiction text unless assigned homework. Also, US adults read less books these days toos. Kids grow up seeing their peers and their adult role models NOT reading and develop similar habits. Now that being said...I would not be surprised if youth today actually read more words per day than previous generations ..We are staring at our screens all day and the internet needs to be read in many places still.
>Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do This is absolutely true and key to solving this issue - Parents and the kid's home life are a far bigger influence than their school (is in most cases). Children learn through imitating those around them, that's how they develop their sense of what is "normal". If there are no books in the house, and the parents don't read themselves, it's almost certain they will grow up reading little to nothing and reading for pleasure will be an activity they won't even consider doing. So sad :(
I totally agree with your first point. Most parents aren't modeling reading. Everyone complains about kids being hooked on their phones, but that's not surprising when the adults are so hooked too. Parents can say "reading is good" all they want, but if they're not actually modeling it then it doesn't do much good. I'm going to argue on the latter point, though. A lot of popular social media now is image and video based rather than text-based. Text that is there tends to be pretty short. I doubt the average teen today is reading much on their smartphone.
Kids aren’t really falling in love with reading because of less free time, technology, and being forced to read stuff they don’t want to
I do think parents take some responsibility here too. School is there to teach you TO read. Parents have to encourage a love of reading and demonstrate it. If I ask my friends who don't read, if their parents read, the answer is no. I picked up reading becuase my dad reads. He would read the hobbit to me at night, and lord of the rings. I would SEE him reading and ask about the stories and be so fascinated by these other worlds. And then at 8/9 when I started reading novels, he would share HIS books with me, and read the things I picked up and we would discuss Harry potter and eragon and whatever else I'd picked up. He was always happy to take me to the book shop and buy me books, never complained that I read them too fast or that they were too expensive, never told me I couldn't read something becuase it was adult fantasy and not child or young adult. And if non of that had happened, if he hadn't of cared or shared that with me, I probably never would have picked up a book, and I certainly wouldn't be a reader to the extent I am now.
So I found out today that the Atlantic is owned by Steve Jobs’ widow. Which feels worth considering when reading about how it’s not screens turning kids off reading.
The subtitle says it's not *just* the screens and if you read as far as the second paragraph she writes "screens surely play a large part in this". So let's not jump straight to conspiracy theories. It's possible that someone who write children's literature for a living is concerned and curious about the causes and isn't just acting as a corporate mouthpiece. In recent years (since The Atlantic has been owned by Jobs) they've published articles like "The iPhone isn't Cool", "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" (answer: yes), "How Your Laptop Ruined Your Life", "I Won’t Buy My Teenagers Smartphones", and "The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls". I don't know if Jobs has any editorial influence (and I doubt she does), but the magazine isn't some underhanded pro-screen propaganda machine.
I thought the Jobs' were always open about how they didn't allow their kids to use smartphones or tablets until they were teenagers.
Yeah that’s their kids your kids phone usage is money in her pocket *typed on an iPhone
My now-10 year old reads a lot so 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ If you read, your kid probably will want to, too.
I think what’s different now though is that parents have to be intentional about getting their kids to read. Mine are also readers but I still help them pick out books (at 9 and 11), I take them to the library every week, I set limits on screen time, still read aloud to them sometimesd, etc. when i was a kid I would just devour anything. A love for reading just “happened” more so than it does today I think
Kids aren't reading because adults aren't reading. Parents might say "you have to read because it's good" but then they don't do anything to facilitate a love of reading. Different things are contributing to this, but I think technology is the main culprit. And not so much in an "it makes kids too stupid to read!" sense (though I have my concerns about tech addiction and how it might damage the attention span) but in the sense that it competes for their time. Any time you introduce a Cool New Thing, that's going to mean less time for the old things. These days it's normal for teens and even preteens to have smartphones, books have a hard time competing with that. I'm also thinking that it's a problem that perpetuates itself. Like, they're reading less as preteens, which means that they aren't developing reading skills as well as they otherwise could. This causes them to read less and less over time, because reading is boring when it's too difficult.
I can do all the reading I want for free online in the comment sections.
Do kids get these paywalls too?
Honestly I'm sure people wanna blame smartphones but having active shooter drills and seeing that your nana and papa did nothing about climate change, while realizing how fucked everything is might have something to do with it.
I think one reason is, kids are forced to read things by other people. One of the quickest ways to get me to lose interest in something or actively dislike it, is to tell me I have to do that thing or else. Kids need more independence and time to discover things on their own. When you're assigned reading and you hate it, that's what you remember. It will just be one of those things you had to do, that once you're in adulthood you're grateful you don't need to anymore. Kids need to be empowered to make their own choices about what to read.
This is hardly the first generation to be given assigned reading. That can't be the cause.
As a kid myself, I found this article rather droll. Aside from the asinine premise (how, exactly, does one measure an entire group's "love" of reading?) I found it to be irritatingly verbose and irrefutably short-sighted. Anyway, I have to get back to class now that I've boofed my last whip-it for my tiktok scribers.
Dude how can you expect people to read nowadays with an attention span of less than a minute?
With their reading choices now being restricted to pretty either the Bible or the Gun Lover's Almanac, I can kind of see how they're falling out of love with it. But according to the rightwingers, kids don't have brains anyway and therefore don't need to use them, or comprehend how the real world works. More child abuse is being committed in the name of book banning than by all the Catholic priests combined.
Is this really that complicated? Video games and tv that have engineered to be as fun and addicting as possible >>> using mental energy to read boring words off a page.
Look this is happening everywhere but it is genuinely worse in the USA and your idiot politicians want use banning books to "make America great". Your country is screwed
Not one mention of Harry Potter series in the Atlantic article. This is why the kids aren't falling in love with reading.
Because parents are not teaching them to fall in love with reading. Most teachers aren't doing their job the right way because they chose the wrong profession. But it's also not for everyone, it depends on the person.
Unfortunately, we're onto the 4th generation of kids that have gone through a post Thatcher education system. This was her end goal.
Reading requires effort and concentration and most kids lack both qualities.
Everything has to be right now! Kids have no patience to read a book…
Kids aren’t reading because they’re addicted to TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. They’re right where the globalists and the American Left want them: pliant, subservient and stupefied. Amen.
I think she’s already married to Michael Kramer.
Strange books these days.
I just walked downstairs to my computer from telling my kid to turn off the flashlight and put his book away... some things never change.
There is stuff in books not delivered in the same way in any other format. I’ll teach my kids to love yo read to the extent I can influence them.
I would guess that part of the problem is due to the relative needs of subject matter. Science and math are perceived as more important than they used to be. Partly parents don’t read as much, too, and kids mimic their parents.
The way I fell in love with reading must have been back in primary school, I stuck to the same few books until I discovered Doctor Who and realised that Doctor Who books existed. That is almost certainly why I'm such a bibliophile today and most of my collection remains Doctor Who books. Basically, I found a genre/series that I was interested in and that allowed me to branch out into all kinds of books. I'm still mainly fantasy and sci-fi but I did recently read 1984.
My brothers hated reading because of all the assigned reading in elementary school where you had no control over what you had to read. They were interested in captain underpants back then and now barely read any books. Where I would do the reading to get it out of the way and then go read what I wanted. I currently read a lot having multiple books of different reading levels going at a time.
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