What happened to reading? Part 4
Quality, complex reading selections for students are being dumbed down, chopped up, and crowded out.
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
What happened to reading?
We’re looking into the decline in reading skills and enthusiasm among America’s youth. A crucial factor contributing to the problem is the “dumbing down” of assigned texts.
To grow as readers, kids’ reading material must evolve in complexity as they age. Vocabulary, sentence structures, and plots should gradually become more sophisticated, matching or slightly exceeding the student's developmental level.
Think about an athlete who lifts the same weights every day or another who consistently lifts 20 lbs. below his capacity. Neither would effectively develop muscles for their sport. When schools assign reading in this manner, children fail to develop proficient reading skills.
Because curriculum architects target the lowest-performing students, text complexity has plummeted. Everyone is lifting the same weights as the weakest student in the room. The easiest way to illustrate this is to examine how required readings have changed over the years.
A typical eighth-grade reading list from 100 years ago covered challenging works that would have been considered “classics” even then. One 1908 list, for example, included Poe’s The Gold Bug, Kipling’s Captains Courageous, Longfellow’s Evangeline, and stories by Dickens, Irving, and Hawthorne.
Today’s basic reading anthology textbooks — so-called basal readers — lack those selections. To meet Common Core demands, they’re instead glutted with 21st-century informational texts.
Consider The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from the 1908 list as a sample. It’s a model of text complexity. Its first sentence is 79 words long, has five clauses, and uses vocabulary like “denominated,” “prudently,” “implored,” and “spacious.”
Most of today’s eighth-graders would give up on it. They’re capable of reading it, but they lack the developmental “muscle strength” to push through. They’d quit two paragraphs in, whining that it’s “too confusing.”
Mind you, Sleepy Hollow is not some archaic relic. It was still commonly published in middle school basals a mere decade ago — until Common Core condemned many such works to the guillotine. (Around the time reading scores began to decline, cough cough.)
Finding a comparable text in current basals is tough because they include so few short stories. Eventually I found The Woman Who Befriended Ghosts, first published in 2016. Its first sentences: “There was once a peculiar woman named Hildy. She had a high laughing voice and dark brown skin, and she could see ghosts.” (Last line: “And they lived happily ever after.” No kidding.) The text’s complexity makes Sleepy Hollow look like an alien encryption of the Vulgate Bible.
In fairness, there are still a few quality, complex texts hanging around the basals. The Odyssey’s dynamic narrative poetry sha inspired students for years, and it’s still there. Sort of.
Running over 12,000 lines, the poem is truly epic — too long to read in one course, so textbooks provide excerpts. My previous basal printed about 1,000 lines. The latest chops that in half.
That’s now standard practice. Long texts are out. Excerpts are in. Why read all of The Outsiders when a single chapter will do? Kids “relate” better to easily digestible excerpts over longer, sophisticated narratives — at an intellectual price, of course, but still.
It could be worse. Many schools are resorting to ultra-relatable comic book versions of works like The Odyssey. Soon, we may have Archie and Jughead Meet the Cyclops. As a collector, I won’t denounce comics, but let's not pretend they provide the same cognitive challenge as poetry.
Realistically, we can expect works like The Odyssey to disappear altogether. Schools are replacing them with less advanced, but more “accessible” texts — articles like “Is Survival Selfish?”, free verse like “Who Understands Me But Me?”, blog posts like “Making the Future Better, Together” and critiques like “Romeo Is a Dirtbag,” actual selections in a current ninth-grade basal.
Sure, these are isolated examples, but they’re representative of the rampant, rapid decline in text complexity. Quality, complex works are being systematically dumbed down, chopped up, and crowded out. The predictable result is rising boredom and plunging proficiency.
Children are losing interest and skill in reading because the weights are light and few are lifting them. Reversing the trend is a challenge worthy of Odysseus.
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 you for addressing this important topic. My boys attended public schools K-12 in Charleston. It was a challenge to find the best place to both support and challenge them. I found it important to do so at home. As parents, we read classics often and they became interested in what we were reading… I made them wait until age 12 to read Lord of the Flies ( too intense). When 12 came around they were excited to read it and loved it! The same for Orwells’ books and the Odyssey. Now they get a challenging book of interest to them every Christmas and return the favor by buying us one of the same - I received Anthony Bourdains travel book. A love of reading and an inquisitive mind is nurtured both at home and, ideally, in schools.