Kois minimizes the use of screens as a factor. His 30% statistic seems low—it is three years old and covers nine-year-olds, while 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds are getting phones at much higher rates in middle school, where much of the reading decline is happening. Additionally, 8- and 9-year-olds are likely to have non-phone screens at home and in vehicles. The children who are more likely to get phones sooner are the ones who would have been the more prolific readers in the past, since screen adoption correlates with socioeconomic status, which in turn correlates with reading volume. Quite simply, it IS screens. More accurately, it is the algorithms running the screens, generating more dopamine, with which black text on white paper cannot compete. Screens are shortening attention spans and impairing thinking, which Jonathan Haidt proves beyond reasonable doubt in "The Anxious Generation," despite a campaign to discredit him by magical thinkers hoping to find ways to absolve themselves from the damage screens have done. I have had the honor and privilege to teach perhaps 400 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders during the past three years. My observational and analytical skills were honed over 35 years in journalism, politics, law, policy, pre-screen pervasiveness teaching, and data analysis before that. I guarantee you the answer for the decline in reading books is crystal clear: screens, screens, screens. (The answer, by the way, can't be to simply ban screens in certain situations. That alone won't bring back reading. The answer is probably to defeat frivolous algorithms with better algorithms, using AI, to provide even more "stimulation and solace" than books yielded when kids read them in the past. If families and schools do this right, the vast wasteland of algorithmic screen content can and will be replaced with "texts" -- interactive within guardrails -- that will get kids back to reading. For the first hint of optimism, see the Khanmigo version of GPT-4 and Sal Khan's new book about how AI can be used to play off of kids' natural curiosity. We don't know exactly what this might look like, but the history of better and healthier technology replacing worse and unhealthier technology is convincing. The important thing, as a former colleague once said, is not how that happens, but that it happens.)
I occasionally teach teachers about writing. In one session, during a break, someone proudly told me she just started as English department chair at her middle school. "Wow," I said. "So what novels are kids reading these days?"
"Well, we actually don't read novels -- not whole novels. We give them stories and sometimes selections from novels."
I was not a precocious leader as a child. But I learned to love reading in English classes with long lists of novels, most in the 200-page range but many 300 or 400 pages.
Yes, this has been shocking to me as the parent of a fourth grader. I remember my fourth grade involving the class reading the same chapter book over several weeks and discussing them together. (This was true both in the regular class, and in the gifted and talented class I was pulled out for.) There is nothing of the sort now, just short stories and excerpts (plus teacher read-alouds of "diverse", below grade level books related to whatever current heritage/pride month it is). Luckily my son is a voracious reader who often needs the lights turned off by fiat at night to get him to stop reading. But it is a struggle to find selections for him since the discovery of good books is entirely up to us and him. (One thing that helps is to just give him a large selection so that if one book doesn't speak to him, another one might.)
I read a lot as a kid, but I don’t remember liking any of the assigned reading. Truthfully, a lot of it was comic books, but I also read science fiction and Stephen King. Oh, and Judy Blume. I think I started reading more adult literature after I read The World According to Garp in junior or senior year.
I just remembered that I very much liked To Kill a Mockingbird, which was assigned in high school. I think that’s also when I read The Catcher in the Rye. Shakespeare never did anything for me until I saw it performed live.
My ideal way to teach Shakespeare is to have students read the play (and be confused), then to show a movie, then to read the play again. I did a variation on this when I taught Macbeth in a class at Chapman. We didn't read the play a second time, but we did continue to discuss it along with the movie and many students wrote papers on it. This is the movie version we watched: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2884018/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_macbeth
Years ago I watched Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. Halfway through I was like “the writing is really good!” Then I remembered it was written by the world greatest dramatist 😂
Some of my random observations as a substitute teacher:
Many adults, including teachers, don't enjoy reading so don't encourage reading for pleasure. Students are surprised when I ask them what they are reading or pick up a book from their classroom library and get excited about it.
Many middle grade students don't seem to have much "stamina." They hate any assignment that takes more than five minutes. They want them answers provided to them and will copy suggestions verbatim rather than use them as starting points for discussion and exploration.
They suffer from a lack of imagination. One of my favorite exercises is to brainstorm where their teacher might be, why s/he is absent. Most students are VERY literal and I have to open the door to wild flights of fancy:. "Was she captured by pirates?" "Is he a spy and on a secret mission?" Then I ask them to take one idea and write a story (length depending on grade). Even with the prep, many students struggle. This lack not only impacts language arts but math and science as the students only "see" what is front of them.
Maybe, hopefully, give them time? I know it took me a while to come around to enjoy reading for fun and pleasure. As a child of the 1980s and teen of the 1990s, there were plenty of alternatives to reading a book to provide entertainment, so I opted for those. Not that my friends and I didn’t read, and peer recommendations were shared among us, but reading was low on the priority list.
Thank you for your comment. This is a rare gleam of encouragement on the subject of kids’ declining reading. You may be right, as long as an incentive to read comes eventually.
Yes. There is no doubt about the decline among educators, scholars, or parents (I’m all three). What we can only speculate about is why the decline is happening and what to do about it.
Thankfully, my students and children do everything I ask of them, swiftly and cheerfully. It's everyone else I worry about. ;-) You might enjoy Joel Miller on this subject. He tries to take a fresh approach to the reading data: https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/protesting-the-decline-of-reading
Kois minimizes the use of screens as a factor. His 30% statistic seems low—it is three years old and covers nine-year-olds, while 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds are getting phones at much higher rates in middle school, where much of the reading decline is happening. Additionally, 8- and 9-year-olds are likely to have non-phone screens at home and in vehicles. The children who are more likely to get phones sooner are the ones who would have been the more prolific readers in the past, since screen adoption correlates with socioeconomic status, which in turn correlates with reading volume. Quite simply, it IS screens. More accurately, it is the algorithms running the screens, generating more dopamine, with which black text on white paper cannot compete. Screens are shortening attention spans and impairing thinking, which Jonathan Haidt proves beyond reasonable doubt in "The Anxious Generation," despite a campaign to discredit him by magical thinkers hoping to find ways to absolve themselves from the damage screens have done. I have had the honor and privilege to teach perhaps 400 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders during the past three years. My observational and analytical skills were honed over 35 years in journalism, politics, law, policy, pre-screen pervasiveness teaching, and data analysis before that. I guarantee you the answer for the decline in reading books is crystal clear: screens, screens, screens. (The answer, by the way, can't be to simply ban screens in certain situations. That alone won't bring back reading. The answer is probably to defeat frivolous algorithms with better algorithms, using AI, to provide even more "stimulation and solace" than books yielded when kids read them in the past. If families and schools do this right, the vast wasteland of algorithmic screen content can and will be replaced with "texts" -- interactive within guardrails -- that will get kids back to reading. For the first hint of optimism, see the Khanmigo version of GPT-4 and Sal Khan's new book about how AI can be used to play off of kids' natural curiosity. We don't know exactly what this might look like, but the history of better and healthier technology replacing worse and unhealthier technology is convincing. The important thing, as a former colleague once said, is not how that happens, but that it happens.)
I occasionally teach teachers about writing. In one session, during a break, someone proudly told me she just started as English department chair at her middle school. "Wow," I said. "So what novels are kids reading these days?"
"Well, we actually don't read novels -- not whole novels. We give them stories and sometimes selections from novels."
I was not a precocious leader as a child. But I learned to love reading in English classes with long lists of novels, most in the 200-page range but many 300 or 400 pages.
Yes, this has been shocking to me as the parent of a fourth grader. I remember my fourth grade involving the class reading the same chapter book over several weeks and discussing them together. (This was true both in the regular class, and in the gifted and talented class I was pulled out for.) There is nothing of the sort now, just short stories and excerpts (plus teacher read-alouds of "diverse", below grade level books related to whatever current heritage/pride month it is). Luckily my son is a voracious reader who often needs the lights turned off by fiat at night to get him to stop reading. But it is a struggle to find selections for him since the discovery of good books is entirely up to us and him. (One thing that helps is to just give him a large selection so that if one book doesn't speak to him, another one might.)
I read a lot as a kid, but I don’t remember liking any of the assigned reading. Truthfully, a lot of it was comic books, but I also read science fiction and Stephen King. Oh, and Judy Blume. I think I started reading more adult literature after I read The World According to Garp in junior or senior year.
I just remembered that I very much liked To Kill a Mockingbird, which was assigned in high school. I think that’s also when I read The Catcher in the Rye. Shakespeare never did anything for me until I saw it performed live.
My ideal way to teach Shakespeare is to have students read the play (and be confused), then to show a movie, then to read the play again. I did a variation on this when I taught Macbeth in a class at Chapman. We didn't read the play a second time, but we did continue to discuss it along with the movie and many students wrote papers on it. This is the movie version we watched: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2884018/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_macbeth
Years ago I watched Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. Halfway through I was like “the writing is really good!” Then I remembered it was written by the world greatest dramatist 😂
Thanks for sharing @Virginia Postrel. I noticed you never mentioned smart phones or other tech devices like iPads as a reason for declines in reading.
There’s less dopamine synthesised and released in anticipation of reading and the act of reading vs tech immersion.
Turning to tech will become habitual behaviour over a short period of time due to this ‘dopamine-effect.’
So it’s unlikely reading will ever become as popular as it was in previous generations unless something radical shifts in our society.
So pleased I still love reading - and nothing can pull me away from a great book.
Some of my random observations as a substitute teacher:
Many adults, including teachers, don't enjoy reading so don't encourage reading for pleasure. Students are surprised when I ask them what they are reading or pick up a book from their classroom library and get excited about it.
Many middle grade students don't seem to have much "stamina." They hate any assignment that takes more than five minutes. They want them answers provided to them and will copy suggestions verbatim rather than use them as starting points for discussion and exploration.
They suffer from a lack of imagination. One of my favorite exercises is to brainstorm where their teacher might be, why s/he is absent. Most students are VERY literal and I have to open the door to wild flights of fancy:. "Was she captured by pirates?" "Is he a spy and on a secret mission?" Then I ask them to take one idea and write a story (length depending on grade). Even with the prep, many students struggle. This lack not only impacts language arts but math and science as the students only "see" what is front of them.
Four different fascinating things to think about in one post. Thanks, Virginia!
Maybe, hopefully, give them time? I know it took me a while to come around to enjoy reading for fun and pleasure. As a child of the 1980s and teen of the 1990s, there were plenty of alternatives to reading a book to provide entertainment, so I opted for those. Not that my friends and I didn’t read, and peer recommendations were shared among us, but reading was low on the priority list.
Thank you for your comment. This is a rare gleam of encouragement on the subject of kids’ declining reading. You may be right, as long as an incentive to read comes eventually.
They do?
Yes. There is no doubt about the decline among educators, scholars, or parents (I’m all three). What we can only speculate about is why the decline is happening and what to do about it.
Get them to read more. Works here.
Thankfully, my students and children do everything I ask of them, swiftly and cheerfully. It's everyone else I worry about. ;-) You might enjoy Joel Miller on this subject. He tries to take a fresh approach to the reading data: https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/protesting-the-decline-of-reading
I have read his take.