What happened to reading? Part 1
Like many parts of our educational system, reading is truly in an unhealthy place.
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
I have three kids in different grades (elementary, middle, and high school), and I'm worried about something: none of them enjoy reading, they aren't pushed to read, and they aren't very good at it, but they all have A’s in reading and English. When I was in school, reading was taken more seriously, and we were encouraged to read for fun. I don't see much of that anymore. What happened to reading?
It’s a great question with a complex answer that will take a few weeks to explain. Let’s start with an overview of the problem.
Your impressions are valid, and data backs it up.
2023 NAEP national testing of 13-year-olds showed a seven-point decline in reading ability compared to just 10 years ago. Meanwhile, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 14 percent of kids that age frequently read for pleasure — a nearly 50 percent drop in the last decade. On the other side, 31 percent almost never read — a nine-point increase in the same time span and a fourfold increase from 1984.
The decrease in reading isn’t simply the result of lax parenting and social media; it’s also coming from changes inside the classroom. The National Council for Teachers of English raised eyebrows when it recently stated that “the time has come to decenter book reading” as paramount to English education.
I can affirm that decentering is in full revolutionary mode. Book reading is being overthrown by skill-based instruction, with special emphasis on the abilities needed to succeed on standardized testing — things like finding the main idea and drawing inferences.
Standardized testing has also transformed the raw material used for exercising these skills. Reading selections now skew toward brief passages, ephemeral informational texts, non-text media, and an assortment of other unsophisticated material.
Even when traditional books and reading selections are used, instructional practices have veered away from enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding. The new path is toward dull dissection. Imagine being “taught” Jane Eyre by using a highlighter to identify quotes supporting the main idea or annotating passages related to the theme.
Not only are such tactics failing to raise the test scores from which they sprouted, but they’re also reducing the number of kids who read for pleasure. Thus we stagger toward a horizon where people either can’t or won’t read. Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor referred to that looming possibility by calling today’s youth a “generation trending toward post-literacy.”
Post-literate would accurately describe the trends. American eighth graders’ scores on the International Computer and Information Literacy Study assessment dropped 37 points from 2018 to 2023. A 2023 Scholastic report showed that children’s “reading enjoyment, frequency, and perceived importance continue to decline with age, with marked declines by age 9 that do not rebound.” NAEP data indicates that over 60 percent of high school seniors scored below the proficient level in reading achievement while 27 percent scored below the basic level.
An article by Rose Horowitch in the November issue of The Atlantic ignited a firestorm in the world of reading instruction by publicly exposing what most English teachers privately already knew: “Many students no longer arrive at college — even at highly selective, elite colleges — prepared to read books.”
Horowitch cites college instructors’ experiences with students who seem “bewildered” by the idea of reading multiple books. One struggling student told her professor that she had never been required to read an entire book at her public high school. She was assigned “excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.” The professor assessed the growing problem by saying: “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.”
Horowitch summarizes the concern this way: “To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.” I’ll add that it helps for being a reader beyond college, too.
Like many parts of our educational system, reading is truly in an unhealthy place. Join me over the next few weeks as we discuss what’s going wrong.
Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.
Thank goodness my grandchildren, ages 21 to 2 love reading. The older ones read to the youngest 2.
As a Teacher Librarian, I have many students that love to read for pleasure. They do like to self select though. That said, some English teachers encourage this and some just have things they require students to read. With the current political book banning, we are further diminishing student choices.