I cannot thank you enough for forwarding this!!! 
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Glad you enjoyed the essay. I thought you would get a kick out of it!
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This trend is so tragically sad. I don’t know what I would’ve done without reading to our kids.
I think of how many times my kids read Harry Potter and then moved on to more substantial reads. (I had to buy three sets of HP books because they would fight over the one set.)
I have a niece who has two 7-year-old twin daughters. The homework assigned, to the parent, is to read to their child at least half an hour a day.
She refuses to read to her children because she said that “that is the responsibility of the teacher”!! (She is on public assistance).
Her parents never read aloud to her. She was the last of four children and I really don’t think they (Sis and husband) were capable readers. They were “too tired” from their jobs to read to their kids.
When I had to take care of them for a week, the first thing I did was get the 30 minutes in, and note it on the homework sheet- what was read, author, and how many minutes. They craved the read aloud! They begged me to read more than one book! I call it literacy starvation.
As a speech path I supported the literature curriculum for our shared language students with the teachers. Third grade is crucial for beginning to introduce novels!!
They assigned Charlotte’s Web. I had lesson plans where I copied the few illustrations and used those throughout the month-long study of the book. (Spinner games, study cards with characters, guessing games, etc.).
The kids LOVED showing what they had read! (“Which character wrote, “Some Pig”?)
Our kids on the spectrum learned about compassion and empathy.
I’m saddened that an employable skill is being lost, and atrophied from the brain.
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A response to the Atlantic article from one of the educators interviewed for it.
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Seems like the summary of that page is that the English literature canon is not interesting / relevant / “woke” enough for the current generation of high school and college students, and that is the main reason for lack of interest in reading full length books, rather than standardized testing or mobile phones.
I thought there was an interesting discussion of code switching, language dialects changing/moving languages constantly and newer translations of canon like The Odyssey being more accessible to students.
I also thought the idea that we as a culture pay lip service to reading being important was another idea that held water.
Obviously, ymmv.
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Definitely think that this is at the root of some of the reading reluctance.
For me, a good litmus test is what coming-of-age books schools are teaching in 9th grade English.
Catcher in the Rye? Sorry, but it’s just not relevant IMO and maybe not even deserving of its “classic” status. It doesn’t speak to today’s students.
Too many high schools rely on outdated curricula and that creates a barrier to student engagement. Both my kids had to read some stuff that was dry and boring to them (Shakespeare lol and Homer and metaphysical poetry…) but they also had some terrific deep reading experiences with books that really spoke to them. One kid spent a whole year with There, There by Tommy Orange and it was transformational. The other read In the Time of the Butterflies as their main coming-of-age text and it set her up to feel confident that important literature could in fact be for and by and about young women.
In high school and college, I loved reading Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, James Fenimore Cooper, John Steinbeck etc. as historical novels. I learned more about history, life in those times, than in history classes. When the English teacher started talking about all the -isms (romanticism etc.), I zoned out.
Well put, King George! For the most part, real linguistic obsession is as uncommon as mathematical obsession. (I’m a regional professor and a lifelong word maniac). Mainstream culture was never reading Fitzgerald. There are rare crossover authors like Hemingway who appeal to many readers of their time. But taking many courses in the close reading and theory of lit and language is just like taking upper-level math courses. Many will make it through; few will enjoy. Video games and social media are the pulp fiction of our time. Don’t expect your kid to be talented at everything—if they are quite gifted in math, being verbally gifted/inclined would be a rarity. It’s cool—that’s how the human mind works.
What I think is hilarious is that this article is yet another example of the “older” generation complaining about the “younger” one. As timeless as it is predictable. An article should be written about this human phenomenon repeating endlessly…
Yet the article shows little self-awareness in that the older generation CREATED the system that is making young people averse to reading.
Load kids up with 6 AP courses, 3 ECs, and volunteer activities…and then express surprise when they don’t spend the one hour free that they have in their day to read for pleasure? What?
Push grade inflation into the upper atmosphere and then whine if kids don’t actually do the reading (because you will just give them an A anyway)?
Push the value of starter homes to $500K in some parts of the country and charge $400K for a bachelors degree and then express shock that kids would see their education as being an economic means to an ends?
This behavior is an unfortunate symptom of larger societal problems. A better article would focus on those things.
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Had to point out that nobody has “pushed” the price of any home. It’s called a market. The cruddy little cape I raised my kids in recently sold (not by me) for three times what I paid for it. That means a buyer and a seller agreed on a price. Just like I did with the seller of my house back in the early 90’s.
All these doom and gloom stories about housing assumes that it’s a zero sum game. It’s not. Someone pays $500K for a house we all think should sell for 200K- but the owner of that house just realized a massive gain (especially if he bought it for 90 grand way back when).
I also laugh when I read about how scheduled/busy/maxxed out today’s HS kids are. In my neighborhood I see kids “hanging out” (that’s still a thing, even though they’re all looking at their phones sharing Tiktoks while they are hanging together), aimlessly driving around town if they are lucky enough to have their driver’s license and a parent willing to let them drive, etc. I.e. typical teenage pursuits. I don’t think every HS kid in America is too tightly scheduled by taking differential equations in sophomore year to have free time!
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Of course, it is one where existing homeowners go NIMBY about building more housing, because limiting building more housing creates a shortage when population grows, increasing the value of the houses that they own.
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Actually, lots of things affect markets.
I live in CA where, because of government policy, we simply have not built enough homes to keep up with demand. We also pile requirements onto housing which drives up costs.
You could argue that interest rates did not need to be as low as they were to generate economic growth and this gratuitously pushed up housing prices.
So prices are really, really high.
Just one example.
I would also add that your point about some people benefiting and others paying high prices in housing purchases actually makes my point. The seller of a house (the winner) is more likely to be older and the buyer (the one paying inflated prices) is more likely to be younger.
As far as kids being maxed out…the pendulum is always swinging and yet I cannot remember a time when kids were under this much pressure.
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Ugh. This article is too long and too wordy. Could someone please summarize it ? Thanks !
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Ok. That was funny.
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