quote:Originally posted by Christine: Because their parents don't read to them. If parents do not read to kids at a young age, then they rarely learn to love reading. This is why I started reading to my kids in-utero and continue to read to them every day.
Or perhaps the kids who are genetically predisposed to enjoy reading when they grow up are more likely to have parents whose similar genetic makeup causes them to read to them when they're young.
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So would the premise of this thread imply that reading Hamlet will make you smarter, but watching a performance of it will make you dumber?
By that logic, is it better for a music afficionado to spend all their time studying sheet music without ever wasting their time listening to people play it?
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Except studies have shown that if a non-relative reads to them, or if the parents are encouraged to read in spite of a lack of a predilection to do so, similar results are achieved.
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Can you point me toward some of those studies, rivka?
I seem to remember seeing some studies that implied the opposite conclusion, but I don't have them on hand so I'm open to the possibility of being proven wrong.
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Also, studies have also shown that a *same sex* parent reading to a child, especially a father reading to son, greatly improves the odds of the child becoming a reader.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: The better question would be, "Why do five-sixths of people have IQs below 115", and behold, the question has answered itself. (Taking 15 as the standard deviation.) Thinking is an activity only enjoyed by those who are good at it, much like any other activity; to get enjoyment from reading requires some thinking about the ideas presented.
You are presuming a normal distribution of IQs.
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IQ tests are designed to have normal distributions, and graded on a curve so that they do; hence IQ is normally distributed by construction. This is not an assumption about intelligence, it is a fact about IQ tests.
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Fair enough. I guess we each remember seeing opposite things.
I'll see if I can dig anything up later when I get a moment. I trust if you run across anything you won't forget me. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I've heard that some place called "Hatrack" is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I've never been able to find it though, given that I can't read.
So you're still wandering around trying to find Docking Bay 92?
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I remember hearing a statistic once on the number of people who hadn't read a single book in the previous year. I just can't imagine what being that person must be like.
I enjoy TV, so I'm not anti-TV, but that it cuts down on concentration is not something I doubt. I once was in a position- newly moved to a foreign country- where I only had access to the local stations which were horrible and which I didn't understand anyway. In that 1 1/2 years I reached a depth of concentration in my reading that I hadn't known since the last time I'd been without a TV, which was in college.
It's much like physical exercise, IMO. The occasional workout will help some, but if your workouts are frequent and sustained there is a synergistic effect. After an hour or maybe even half-hour of reading, your mind switches to a different level, and if you can keep going you'll get more out of the second hour than you did the first. Then in between those reading sessions, it's like your brain is in conversation with what you've read, whereas if that reading time is more scattered, this doesn't happen as much. So it's not just the rote hours you devote to reading vs. something else, it's the cumulative effect as well.
I've been tempted to become a reading monk one of these days. But my pop-culture-devoted husband would not be happy.
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GinaG -- it sounds like your beef isn't with TV, but with anything that takes time away from reading.
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One of the things I learned in studying to be a teacher is that literacy isn't merely a matter of learning to read, it's a matter of understanding that written words convey meaning. Children whose parents read will look at a written word and ask:"What does that say?" Children whose parents don't read don't even realize that words say anything, so they don't ask, and won't learn without intervention. Elementary School librarians are trained to watch for kids who don't know what a book is, because it's a sign that they don't live in a literate environment. These kids need special help learning to recognize what it means for a book to "tell a story" because their parents don't read them stories. If kids aren't exposed to a print rich environment, they may learn to parrot phonemes without ever understanding what they read. Just because they can turn words from symbols on a page to sounds that come out of their mouth doesn't mean that they actually understand how to make meaning of what they read.
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There is a big problem in education with kids who can decode, but not comprehend. They can read the information outloud flawlessly, never missing a word and pronouncing everything perfectly but have no way of answering any questions about the material.
Why this happens, I'm not sure. But I have seen it in my student teaching first hand.
They have a lot of trouble making inferences, predicting, analyzing, and reading "between the lines" so to speak. I've had kids in honors, Pre-AP classes exhibit major problems with making inferences.
I taught Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" to them, and found myself having to go back and re-read sections out loud with them and even pull kids up to help me "act out" the scene because they didn't grasp the action from the words on the page. Now, "Masque" is not a very difficult piece to understand, IMO.
Maybe an over-reliance on phonics instruction, which teaches the "sounding out" of words and causes kids to think the sound is more important than the meaning? Maybe too many empty vocab lessons in the primary grades that teach them words are things to be defined in isolation rather than understood as part of a living, breathing language? I don't know. We're doing something wrong in the education community, though...because I've seen way, way too many of these kids that read very well yet understand what they read very poorly.
If they read outside class, on their own, however, they do much better. I'm so glad all my kids love reading. Whether it's genetic, because I read to them, because they see ME reading all the time, I don't know and I don't care. I'm just glad they do.
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I don't really "have a beef" about anything. I suppose I presume that the more you can read, the better. No doubt this is because I always have a stack of books waiting.
Belle: Phonics seem to get a bad rap. I learned to read using phonics, and it didn't scar me, but then I had an older brother and parents who read to me a lot. I have to squint when I see my young nephew bringing home papers on which spelling mistakes haven't been corrected, on the theory that fluency is more important for young children than accuracy. He seems to be doing well regardless, so it seems a variety of strategies can "work." If I had to guess, the oral storytelling from an early age makes a difference. I'm glad we'll be raising our children in a church which chants its stories every week.
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I'm not down on phonics, I love phonics. What is best is a blend - phonics for early word decoding skills and then building on fluency. Neither method works best in isolation. Both are necessary, it's hard to be fluent without word decoding skills and decoding skills alone are virtually useless for comprehension.
The only reason phonics get a bad rap from teachers is because we've seen the results of kids who can read out loud perfectly but have no comprehension skills whatsoever. I'm not blaming phonics solely for that, I think it's a myriad of factors that has produced students like my 10th graders that I taught this past semester. An over-reliance on phonics is probably part of the problem. Phonics themselves, though, are fine when part of a writing and reading program that incoporates everything necessary for children to become literate - that includes oral literacy, comprehension strategies, the ability to make inferences, the ability to construct sentences that are semantically sound, etc. Phonics can't be all of it. It can only be a part of a comprehensive program.
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I think phonics is great. It's how I'm teaching my 3-year-old right now. But it doesn't teach comprehension and I never thought anyone believed it did. It's a tool. Used to fix the right problem it is a very good tool.
I'm not sure what the answer with comprehension is. Once I was a TA in a COLLEGE LEVEL psychology class. I graded the homework as part of my job and it was amazing how little the students understood from their textbooks. The answers to homework problems would be direct quotes from the text, often taken out of context and misused. It seemed they skimmed the text for single relevant words and copied the text around it onto their homework -- poorly. It absolutely shocked me that they had gotten all the way through school with such a limited ability to comprehend material.
College is well beyond phonics though. Somewhere between 1st and 12th grade they should have learned comprehension, I would think...
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Do teachers not read to kids any more? We had daily silent reading 1st through 4th grade but Fridays it was replaced by the teacher reading out loud, in 5th and 6th we also had an hour of read-aloud a week, and once a week we went to the school library where, before we did our "library skills" and got to go choose books, yep, the library volunteers read aloud to us. We also had reading comprehension exercises as part of our LA program pretty much from K through sixth. And no classroom celebration of a special occasion or holiday(s) was complete without a read-aloud.
Was that not typical?
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quote: I dunno, what if they're watching the Discovery Channel instead of reading the same junk romance novels over and over?
*wearily* Do we always have to be so scornful of this particular genre?
Any reading helps people to become better readers. Any reading helps them to encounter new words (building vocabulary) and ideas. Often the romance novels people consider the junkiest are historicals, and most of those that actually make it into print are well-researched. So maybe people reading the same junk romance novels over and over are learning mostly about the clothes and mores of upper-class Regency England--they're still adding to their database of knowledge. And those who are pleasure readers--no matter what the pleasure reading--are good role models for any kids that they have.
If we think that reading has value, and that we want people to be and become readers, then one of the best things we can do is value all reading. Reading is a complex thinking process, requiring decoding, making inferences, connecting to what is already known, making predictions, analyzing and storing new information--this all happens no matter how dumb we think the book or genre is.
And as for Sweet Valley High and other predictable series novels--they have a place in the development of a reader. If we're readers and we value books and reading, we certainly hope that readers will grow beyond the predictability of a series to appreciate works that are more complex--but when series novels are what they need, let's value that, too.
(The thinking involved in reading--at least some of it--can happen while watching TV, too. Depends on the show and the engagement of the viewer. It's not likely to expand vocabulary much, though.)
If you want to know more about how genres generally regarded as junky by serious readers can help people become better and habitual readers, I recommend research and books by Stephen Krashen.
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quote:Originally posted by Liz B: And as for Sweet Valley High and other predictable series novels--they have a place in the development of a reader. If we're readers and we value books and reading, we certainly hope that readers will grow beyond the predictability of a series to appreciate works that are more complex--but when series novels are what they need, let's value that, too.
I missed the Sweet Valley stuff -- I used to really enjoy these books as a young pre-teen. I don't see anything wrong with a child reading children's books, nor with a young adult reading young adult books. I often see this sort of thing looked down upon but I don't see why. I wasn't ready for sophisticated adult novels at the age of 11. I am now.
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Belle, I agree that comprehension is very important, in many cases as important as actual phonetic skills.
After all, what's the point in reading if we can't even recognize the inner beauty of what we're reading, can't understand the soul that lies behind it?
But part of your high schoolers response might lie not necessarily in a lack of comprehension, but rather in the format of the lesson itself.
I, myself, am currently an eleventh grader. Ever since I was young, I have always enjoyed reading a good deal, in part due to my family's emphasis on reading, in part due to a predilection I've always had for it myself.
I can pick up a book and be wholly absorbed into, and devoted to it for the entire duration of my reading and far afterward; I've always been one like that.
Yet, every time I've ever been asked to read a book in school as part of the curriculum [including analysis, dissection, discussion, etc.] I find myself completely bored, uninterested, and fully unable to do the work.
No matter how amazing or epic the authors were, ones highly considered greats, such as Shakespeare, Thoreau, Dickens, men and women from all genres but still revered, I cannot invest myself in the book in the slightest.
I always do well on the discussions, mainly because I enjoy introspection and thinking of things in great detail, but I can never read the book itself no matter how hard I try.
My grades duly suffered, despite the fact I consider myself generally intelligent.
The reason lay not in a lack of comprehension skills, but rather in a lack of interest. I feel the reason is that the dissection of minute words, phrases, themes, characters, on every page, every chapter, the way that the book is split into sections, that we are told to read the book at a very controlled pace and manner, for me this took all the beauty out of the experience.
I've always enjoyed reading at my own pace, whether that be a chapter a month or a book a night, and being absorbed into the experience within my own mind, a solitary yet beautiful experience.
I feel dissecting Shakespeare brings the beauty out of him, which is why I couldn't appreciate him until I saw some of his plays performed, an engrossing experience. I never worshipped Salinger, until I read him OUTSIDE of school.
To relate it simply...the way most schools try to FORCE students to see the beauty in works by dissecting it bit by bit, and overanalyzing it, is like artists trying to show the beauty of the human body by having doctors perform an autopsy, complete with medical breakdown, in front of you.
I don't know...this certainly isn't true for all people, and certainly not for all students, and there are several books in school I have enjoyed both reading and discussing, but I feel the experience has to be taken on more individually then forced.
You can lead a horse to water...
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Vyrus, I learned too late that I could be a little subversive- in a good way- in school and go further with it. Literature assignments I would devour, and that gave me time to go on to my own reading while going back and doing the assignments once the class had caught up. Critical analysis is tedious but also yields worthy skills- formal rhetoric, understanding story structure- you just have to think of it as something separate than how you naturally read.
The mechanical approach is applied too slavishly and to too many subjects, probably because teachers are teaching to the test. In math, too. I am now as an adult going back and teaching myself math the way I wished it had been taught to me from the beginning- learning things in historical context, in their theoretical framework, not just the rote memorization of formulas and methods.
When I look back on my own education, it is very frustrating to think that what I learned was often in spite of the system and not because of it.
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Of course they do. I know I keep harping on this, but the reason so many kids are having difficulty with school in the U.S. is that we try to educate every kids in the U.S. in the same way. Before 1973 we didn't expect to educate mentally retarded children much at all, and above that, we expected a normal distribution of grades, including failures.
As we push education further and further, we expect... and DEMAND that every child learn in the same way, and at the same level. "No Child Left Behind" is also "No Child Has Strengths and Weaknesses." Today we notice the illiterate children whereas in the past we just assumed that not every child will learn to read.
Literacy rates are still going up, but not as fast as we'd like. But what's more important in my book is that we need to learn to place value on the skills and talents that children DO have rather than the skills society wants them to have. A middle schooler that studies carpentry will learn the math they need to know for their job, and if you give them the chance, they may discover that they're better at math than they ever believed in elementary school. Likewise a middle schooler who studies cosmetology may discover that their clients talk about the great books they read, and learn to read later in life just in order to make conversation. Etc. There's no one path to a perfect education.
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Thanks for the advice, and I'll keep that in mind later in my high school career. Recently I have been in the stages of trying to go back and re-read the great literature I missed in class, and have been making an effort to pay attention more.
I do agree somewhat with both you Glenn Arnold, however I do differ with him in that I think that there are basic skills all children should learn.
Namely, reading, math, etc., although honestly I think we need a whole new approach to showing kids to appreciate the arts, in their many differed forms.
That is an entire subject altogether, however.
When did so many people stop seeing the beauty in the small things? Nir....
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quote:I'm not sure what the answer with comprehension is.
More reading.
We don't teach comprehension of verbal speech by asking questions. We teach comprehension by providing a lot of context. The same goes with film. Children manage to figure out visual stories simply by watching a lot of them. Reading is the most difficult of these tasks, but I am a firm believer that the best way of teaching comprehension in reading is to provide lots of reading of all kinds.
I think most of us learnt to comprehend reading by being read to by our parents. We got lots of vocabulary and we got to know the sentence structure of writing so when we went to read that level of books ourselves, we were prepared to read that kind of language and understand it.
In my experience, asking comprehension questions in great detail turns even eager children off reading.
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Throughout highschool I would wish there were a mandatory class hour of mandatory reading, of whatever you wanted to read, but reading nonetheless. Sometime's I'd be busy and not be reading as much as I'd like during School, or only reading my stuff for classes and I wanted a break to read what I liked. Also it appalled me how many people were woefully unread and generally dismissive toward the idea of reading at all.
Looking back from college now the idea that I was ever actually busy in highschool is laughable, though, and maybe dedicated school time for reading isn't the answer and more advertisement and cool stuff from libraries to encourage people to read good things.
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quote:I do agree somewhat with both you Glenn Arnold, however I do differ with him in that I think that there are basic skills all children should learn.
I'm not saying that there aren't basic skills that all children should learn, I'm saying that to expect all children to learn reading and math "on grade level," and to learn exactly the same math is unrealistic. Children learn at different rates and in different contexts.
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Why don't people read? Because they don't understand and were never taught the value of reading. Why should people read??
Middle and high school English seems designed to drive home the message that the point of reading is to analyze books like a literature professor would. Aside from the tiny percentage who actually do share the interests of literature professors, I don't see much reason to suspect the average person would see the value in that.
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Just kidding. It's because they lack imagination, they're too lazy to use said imagination, or they just lack patience. My two cents.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: Middle and high school English seems designed to drive home the message that the point of reading is to analyze books like a literature professor would. Aside from the tiny percentage who actually do share the interests of literature professors, I don't see much reason to suspect the average person would see the value in that.
That's the old chestnut that gets bandied about as if it is a meaningful or substantive observation of actual classrooms. I found my high school English courses exhilarating and interesting, but I'm just me. You can't write off the behavior of a society on the performance or percieved values of one small set of contributors to education. Whether or not a high school English teacher does or doesn't have success appealing to his students (mine did, and for most of their students as well), I think the root cause of that success or failure lies in the backgrounds of the individuals, and not the structure of the institutions. It's like OSC constantly lambasting and haranguing the academic culture because it made him feel excluded, when you can tell he is never stopping to think what kind of system would have been more inviting, and still accomplished some of the same goals. Maybe there isn't a system like that, because everyone's background is different, and so the system cannot and will not work for everyone. Consider, for a moment, what would actually convince a 16 year old lover of books that she shouldn't love books anymore. Is an overbearing English teacher going to do that? Seems to me that he would as likely have the opposite effect, invigorating the student in her love of the reading that SHE wants to do. It's not particularly shocking that OSC became a writer himself, when he reacted so passionately to the academic culture he was exposed to- it was motivating, because whether it had appealed to him or not, he was going to be a writer already. So he got an education too, just not the one he thought he'd get- and he did alright by it.
Our level of personal success is tied to so many things, and though we love to believe that these things are the most tangible, like a good teacher or a kind word, they're usually an accumulation of small unknowable effects. How many words did your parents speak to you as a child? How many encouraging vs. discouraging words? How many conversations, how many lectures? For everyone it's different, so how can we put 30 kids in a classroom and hope to find a formula that advances all of them as well as it advances the best students? We are not all equal, even if we are created equal.
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quote:There seems to be a nerdy stigma attached to reading. Why is this?
I think reading takes time and discipline, but there is a bigger payoff. We've got it in our heads that all our leisure time should be used in activities that are easy and entertaining, and reading good books isn't always the easiest thing to do or the most entertaining.
There are a lot of reasons why I think kids should play competitive sports or an instrument. But I think the biggest reason is because I think that those endeavors instill of a sense of discipline and sacrifice that's not tied to ease and entertainment; but rather, it's tied to the promotion of beauty and excellence.
quote:Consider, for a moment, what would actually convince a 16 year old lover of books that she shouldn't love books anymore. Is an overbearing English teacher going to do that?
I enjoyed reading when I was a child, then stopped reading for pleasure as school taught me reading was something you do for work and is not fun. No single teacher did it, but over time school did.
Incidently, I started reading for pleasure again after senior year - in part because of one particular teacher I had that year who was able to effectively express that it is possible to enjoy books for reasons other than to admire the technical skill of the author.
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NAh, I'm sorry. You've said that before and I don't buy it for a minute. I don't think you know why you read or don't read, and I think the experiences you leap to in your memory are probably not as important as you think. People are busy in High School, things change for lots of reasons, so you don't why you did what you did. The explanation: "my teachers made it feel like work," is already telling of your attitude to school, not your attitude to reading. And you kept reading after school, so obviously a lasting impression was not made. So why, in the end, are you even a victim of anything?
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Sorry, Orincoro, but Tres's experience -- exactly the way he tells it--is not unusual. Sure, there are lots of reasons why students stop reading for pleasure when they hit about 7th or 8th grade...but many former readers point to the fact that reading CHANGES when they leave elementary school. Instead of reading stories for enjoyment, they're mostly reading for information and to analyze.
When you add that change in with the fact that kids get busier and more social, then pleasure reading decreases sharply.
We English teachers need to ask ourselves what our long-term goals are. If we want to create a nation of readers, we've been going about it in very much the wrong way. (Not all teachers, obviously...note the last paragraph in Tres's post for an example.)
Since my main long-term goal is in fact to create life-long readers and writers, it has a tremendous impact on how I organize my classroom and curriculum. I wouldn't expect to be able to help kids develop as pleasure readers if my class were organized only around literary analysis.
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Liz, your explanation is still different from Tres's. I'm completely credulous of the idea that English teachers may not accomplish their goals of encouraging reading for a variety of reasons. However, I don't think that English teachers really have much of a negative effect on reading patterns- I think those other factors you mentioned are vastly more important. Besides, the mind of a child and that of an adolescent are different. Most children like to read once they know how, because they get so much out of the experience; their minds are like sponges that seek out new material all the time, and reading is stimulating. By the time students get to adolescence, this drive slows down, and other reward mechanisms either kick in, or don't. I think it has to do with family life more than anything, and I'm very skeptical of the idea that a teach could have such a profound effect on reading patterns. I think it's social, it's in the family, and it's in the mind of the student.
It's not as if the motivations for reading are supposed to stay static anyway- we are not supposed to read wholly for pleasure, and expecting the education system to totally maintain that attitude to reading is pointless. Students need the skills they learn in school, including fruitful analysis of written works, in order to function as communicative adults in our society. But I'm not at all convinced that the introduction of this aspect of reading has a deleterious effect, or that it is even avoidable, or should be avoided. I ask again, and the question is quite simple: what student who comes from a background which encourages reading and the enjoyment of books would be put off completely from reading by her experiences with a teacher, or with a new application of her skills? Would you, in the end, deny that the changing nature of a person's mind and consciousness could be partly responsible for a shift in attitude, or do you leave the responsibility for a change (which I do not acknowledge as negative or even unnecessary), solely and completely on the shoulders of a person who asks that student to apply her thinking in a new way? How does the discovery of new skills close doors on students' enjoyment of knowledge? Every time someone makes this backwards argument, I can never get over that basic question. How can all the potential and all the tools be there in a student's mind, and the a teacher could just shut that off, inadvertently, but trying to teach something new? I just don't buy it, at all, given the myriad factors that come into play for a high schooler.
It's an ungainly comparison, but does the introduction of a new language in a high school setting discourage students from speaking English, just because the use of a language has been made into something academic? Will talking remind them of this, and be less enjoyable? Perhaps it's better that students be exposed to new ways of thinking about what they read. I'm not particularly sorry for Tres, or anyone else who suddenly found that their old modes of thought or expression were no longer satisfying when they learned about something new. It's rather strong evidence that the teaching is actually working, and that tastes are maturing. Why exactly should that be avoided?
This all reminds me rather strongly of Genesis- the ennui of human existence boils down to the fact that as we learn about new things, the pursuits of our old lives become unsatisfying. We are not static creatures. Boo Hoo.
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quote:I ask again, and the question is quite simple: what student who comes from a background which encourages reading and the enjoyment of books would be put off completely from reading by her experiences with a teacher, or with a new application of her skills?
Yes, but when given an example of such a student, you refused to believe it.
You can not believe my explanation if you want, and you could write off the experiences of others who say they felt the same way, and you could not feel sorry particularly sorry for anyone who doesn't appreciate the academic approach to reading taught in schools, but the bottom line still is that people aren't reading - and if the goal is to get people to read, something is not working.
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Tres, you have absolutely no evidence for the assertion that "people aren't reading." Literacy in the United States is very, very high. One could also argue that "cultural literacy," (for which there are many definitions, but I use it broadly to include a knowledge of an appreciation for our common culture of art) a value which is very difficult to determine, may be higher than it has ever been in human history.
So you have an anecdote with no insight (you yourself argue that you were put off reading, even though you *do* now read and enjoy reading), and you have a generalization with no evidence. What do you actually have? Where is the baseline for "things working?" Why should things be the way you want them to be? You give me no reason to suppose that you know any of this.
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Oh, I think literacy is really high. I think people read more now that at any time in our history. They just are not reading *books* so much. They're reading graphic novels, magazines, internet forums and blogs, and other things.
And they are reading books, actually. Maybe not what English teachers might want them to read, depending on the English teacher, of course. My 10th graders had ALL read Twilight it seemed like, even the boys.
They brought books with them to class...they were reading what they wanted to read, even if they weren't reading The Scarlet Letter. Now, I think there is a place for classical literature, and that teachers should attempt to stretch students' abilities and expose them to things they might not read on their own. But, I also firmly believe in encouraging whatever reading a student might want to do on their own, even if it is Stephenie Meyer's drivel. I try and encourage them to read other things, but if I have a 15 year old girl who only wants to read about vampires, then I will find books about vampires that I think are age-appropriate to recommend to her rather than telling her "Don't read that stuff." I'm happy she's reading.
At the same time, I'm going to encourage her to read the books assigned in class. I don't have a choice about it either, you know. In 10th grade, the Course of Study says I have to teach The Scarlet Letter. I can't substitute Ender's Game. I can encourage them to read things outside class and I have a little leeway in what we cover after the required novels are done, but the required novels are just that - required.
The tough part of a teacher's job, especially an English teacher who loves books and reading (and every one I've met does) is that we know the kids don't like all or even most of the literature we have to cover. We try very hard to make the learning experience useful and engaging. We also try to encourage reading in all its forms. None of us wants to turn a student off from reading. Our goal is the opposite. We have to work within the framework of our course of study and cover what we're required to in order to keep our jobs and build enthusiasm for reading and writing in our students. Not an easy task, but I don't think there is a more important job I could be doing. Good communication skills - the ability to read, comprehend, judge, evaluate, and synthesize information - are essential for success in life, whether that student moves directly into the workforce or goes to college. Even professions that twenty years ago didn't require that level of critical thinking and communication skills require them today. One cannot even work a construction trade anymore without knowing how to read contracts, make decisions based on what you read, communicate in writing with customers and understand how to navigate professional software.
I think it's pretty darn easy to see that the more reading a student does, the better writer they are, and the better they do in every class. I want my students reading, and I don't care so much about what it is. But they do need to read the things I assign to them. That's part of what I'm teaching them as well - that sometimes you have to tackle something you might not otherwise take on, and learn something from it.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Tres, you have absolutely no evidence for the assertion that "people aren't reading." Literacy in the United States is very, very high. One could also argue that "cultural literacy," (for which there are many definitions, but I use it broadly to include a knowledge of an appreciation for our common culture of art) a value which is very difficult to determine, may be higher than it has ever been in human history.
So you have an anecdote with no insight (you yourself argue that you were put off reading, even though you *do* now read and enjoy reading), and you have a generalization with no evidence. What do you actually have? Where is the baseline for "things working?" Why should things be the way you want them to be? You give me no reason to suppose that you know any of this.
quote: At the same time, I'm going to encourage her to read the books assigned in class. I don't have a choice about it either, you know. In 10th grade, the Course of Study says I have to teach The Scarlet Letter. I can't substitute Ender's Game. I can encourage them to read things outside class and I have a little leeway in what we cover after the required novels are done, but the required novels are just that - required.
Now, that is a problem. The Scarlet Letter is not a very appealing book. In my opinion, it is not a very good book, and not even Hawthorne's best work. There is a problem when all highschools have somehow been locked into reading Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Scarlet Letter, The Odyssey, etc, when they have little appeal to students. There are many better things for teenagers to read.
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One reason I don't read as much as I "should" is that I know I'll have plenty of time to read once we run low on energy sources and our electricity goes mostly out. I already own enough "great" books for that time. I'm being only partially facetious here.
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I try and encourage them to read other things, but if I have a 15 year old girl who only wants to read about vampires, then I will find books about vampires that I think are age-appropriate to recommend to her rather than telling her "Don't read that stuff." I'm happy she's reading. 
