Anybody else remember the scholastic book fairs in elementary school? That was a world event for us kids. I am so grateful to have grown up pre-internet pre-phone era. Good memories
I remember bookmobiles too. In the 60's, 70's and part of the 80's, there was an effort to TEACH, now it is keep the line moving, no time for testing and helping those that don't make the grade. The sad part is seeing the lower scores being accepted.
@@joemeAccepted? Lower scores and standards are encouraged. That way groups who spend time on activities other than academics don't stick out and look less educated than everyone else. We'll just gage schools on their athletic programs from now on.
As a College professor of 25+ years, its not just reading. TLDR is a real thing but I can't get them to watch a video tutorial I have made specifically for them. ME: "Did you watch the video I sent you? STUDENT: "I started it but then I was really busy this weekend" "Started it?' it was 6 mins long and giving you the exact answer to the thing you were struggling with. Its attention span. They'll read texts and Reddit posts by the thousands--because they are short. The internet has created a whole generation of kid who can't stay focused for more than a few mins.
As an adult, I’ve noticed my attention span is shot- I used to read novels easily but these days I’m struggling to get through one book- my iPhone demands my attention too much. Im addicted to Reddit and TH-cam
I have 5 kids, my youngest being 4 and she has a longer attention span. My 13 yr old just read the divine comedy out loud to me while i did the dishes all last week. Good thing I homeschooled from the start it sounds like they're already miles ahead and more than ready for college
I'm a 58-year-old guy and isn't a big part of the problem (elephant in room) DEI and affirmative action? If in the NFL, the best players don't advance, will the NFL be as good? It seems odd that students don't do the work in universities; don't they just fail and get let go after the first semester? How can an elite university student pass if they have the attitude to not bother doing the course work? I don't think it's the internet. The internet makes us smarter.
Profitable universities have NOTHING to do with reading. You don't go to college to learn how to read or get introduced to books. I'd collected over 500 books by the time I was a freshman in college. Colleges ARE forgoing traditional foundations of Western literature which is intellectual suicide.
Read "Brave New World" by Huxley, then the essay & lecture where he explains that it wasn't a prediction, but an explanation of how the current Anglo-American ruling aristocracy (which his family was a part of) intended to engineer society. "In the future, nobody will read Shakespeare - not because it wi'll be banned, but because we'll make them not want to". (I've paraphrased the gist of the quote from memory) Written in 1931.
Yes. Exactly. It's systemic. It's beyond just using the "wrong" method of teaching to read. On the contrary - It's the right method for the ends that they want to achieve. For most people, thinking about this is to scary and painful. So they deny the blatant reality.
If you actually understood read the book (which I don't think you have) it is about how a socialist society would look like not a Anglo-american aristocracy. I also summise that you haven't read the book because the quote you used isn't in it and paraphrasing something that doesn't exist is just making things up.
Maybe people don't want to read shakespeare because the language is outdated. Does thou use the word 'thou' when talking with 'thou' neighbors? I thou does not because thou doesn't.
Huxley was a scary read, especially in 8th grade. I think it made an impression on me with it's totally unnatural, yet sadly believable picture of the techno-scientific world of engineered people.
I appreciate the addition of your point of view. I wish I had said this in the video, but I think the order of causes I cited also mirrors their impact; whole language is a problem, but the excerpt-based curriculum is much worse, and then I suspect phones are the thing doing the most damage.
You did such a great job with your video. And there are a few things I wish I would've said in my own. Primarily, that I didn't intentionally mean to draw a strong comparison between public/private school, but used those experiences to illustrate that how education is executed is incredibly important.
phones seem to simply act as a catalyst for quicker decline rather than the cause of it. people have had these issues in the past and we didn't have phones. it's only sped up a process that was unintentionally put into motion decades before.
@@wmd40 yes, the phone gave people easy access, anywhere, any time, to distractions and other reasons not to read. it made things portable. in the past when you went places, the access/distractions were left behind.
While it may be a data point of one, I was very disappointed when San Jose Unified stopped paying for Accelerated Reader (gives kids points for compression tests for whole books.) Then in middle school they started demanding kids read “classics” that are at the 4th grade reading level but the content is over 100 years old and cringy to today (you beat the dog?) Anyhow my daughter had been a champion reader and the school system was determined to beat it out of her after she left elementary school. Some kids are the fastest runner - her identity was being a voracious reader until heavily discouraged by the school. (The shrinking library should have been a clue. It was clear what mattered to the school). Reading now has zero social value for adolescents - it literally doesn’t matter. Now my daughter is trying to transfer into SJSU and again, reading or her reading/essay SAT scores do not matter.
This happens with music too. I remember growing up and we would listen to whole albums or sometimes even double albums (e.g., Quadrophenia). Now it seems like most music is very short and aimed at getting into some TikTok video. My perception is that young people today don't have the patience to listen to an 80 minute mini-opera about a young mod named Jimmy. In my public high school, we read Moby Dick, Huck Finn, and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time among many other great books. Heck, as a senior, I was even allowed to assign a one day seminar on a book and I picked Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
One of my favorite memories is from my 7th Grade English class in the 70s. During the last 10 minutes of every class, our very diminutive teacher would hop up on her table-desk and read a novel aloud to the whole class. She would always ask us to put our heads down and close our eyes to better listen to the novel. I loved it and looked forward to it every day.
I went to school at roughly that same time and I remember teachers reading aloud a chapter a day of a book to us. It wasn't for any test or any grade, simply for enrichment and enjoyment and to stimulate our little minds.
This reminds me of what my mom would do with me at home. From my time in grades 3 to 5 she would read appropriate aged books to me. She read constantly herself as well. Not only was it a great bonding experience but she instilled in me a love for reading! I'm 54 now and still cherish those memories and am so grateful to her!
As a high school student in the mid-1960s my honors history class was required to read "A Tale of Two Cities" while we were studying the French Revolution. There was nothing on our test about this novel and we did not discuss it in class. It had been assigned for enrichment purposes only. Yet everyone read the ENTIRE book. I know this because we talked about it outside of class. It was fun.
@@katherinedote2324 that is a good question. I believe educators are pandering to the "needs" of students. Students believe they do not need the humanities, so colleges do comply. They have no choice if they want to stay viable. So many colleges have gotten rid of their humanities departments. It is sad.
How much other homework did you have each day? When I was in high school in the 2010s, between sports, clubs, and homework, the only way I got my fun reading in was by neglecting my sleep and reading at 2am. I hear students get even more homework nowadays
I'm a 63 year old Black man. A lifelong voracious reader. Reading is one of the few addictions that doesn't harm self or others. Don't know if people can be forced to do it.😮
I'm a blackman also !!! The culture doesn't promote reading!!! Especially to blacks because that can come close to humanity!!! To provoke thought is a human ability only!!!
Unless you are me, and buy many many books because they are such loved, interesting, beautiful things to experience and read. 😂 RIP my wallet. (And my husbands wallet) 😂
This “snippet” approach to knowledge has worked its way into medical research. I’m not knocking the youth of our great country, but I have seen research teams being run by fresh graduates who refer to themselves as subject matter experts. Indeed, they are experts. They are experts at grabbing headlines and bits of abstracts that they weave into dynamic presentations and present with confidence. If you ask them questions about data or experimental design they will quip “I don’t see this as a concern”. It’s obvious they are not reading papers in total. I’ll admit, it is arduous and a time commitment to do so especially if one takes the time to read supporting references.
I don't know how this works in medical research, but in a lot of basic research disciplines, the lack of funding, the teaching/research loads PhD students take on, the publish or perish environment, etc. really make it so that there really is no time to be thorough. So often, the person most willing to be unscrupulous and the person who sounds the most confident often ends up getting ahead.
Jesus Christ! I’m an English teacher in Switzerland, and if I tried to get away with teaching only excerpts, I’d get fired! And that’s in a second language!
@@mutahmarriagecounselor2272 now you are just being mean. Being able to analyze a paragraph and pull salient information out of it for a regurgitative test is certainly 'a' skill. But being able to actually make it through a book- a full book- with the various complex and sustained chains of ideas within it, is a different thing altogether. That is apparently a skill that is being lost. And to have a functioning society, I think we need people that can think a bit longer term than sound-byte length.
@@mutahmarriagecounselor2272methinks it is you who needs to develop better reading comprehension: where exactly did he say (or even imply) that that was what you said?
Reading is and never was a mean to itself. I was curious and the only way to gain knowledge in my childhood were books. I had a wall of them to pick from. I was good in history as i read a book or most topic we had. This was fun and I wanted more. Once you read a few hundred books it becomes really easy like swimming, climbing, bicycle riding. The more you do it the easier it becomes. If I would have depended only on the reading one is obliged to because of school then I would reached this ease and joy.
Read "Brave New World" by Huxley, then the essay & lecture where he explains that it wasn't a prediction, but an explanation of how the current ruling aristocracy (which his family was a part of) intended to engineer society. "In the future, nobody will read Shakespeare - not because they'll be banned, but because we'll make them not want to".
@@GMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGM i am so shocked the new captain america movie is titled brave new world and no critic or anyone is talking about it! when i mentioned it on a film review channel the only response i got was that it was foolish of me to think hollywood writers had even thought to read that much less actually know about it beforehand, its just a catchy slogan. ARRRRGGHGHGHGH!
Thank you for this video. I wasn't surprised at all when I saw that famous article in _The Atlantic_. I'm a Classics teacher in a French a rather difficult middle-school on the outskirts of Paris and also adjunct at a Parisian University. Thankfully, in France, the official programme is relatively open and allows one to teach pretty much the way one wants (with the unfortunate consequence that your education will depend on whether you have a talented and knowlegeable teacher or not). Literature is still valued in France and you are supposed to teach entire texts. The students I have come from mostly problematic backgrounds and do not grow up in families that value reading, the arts in general or even education. But it is precisely because I have these kids that I place the bar high and make it my mission to teach them to enjoy literature, think hard, use language correctly and so on. Thankfully, France still has that snobbish obsession with being cultured, which means that a significant proportion of French society places value on "useless" stuff (the Humanities, literature, museums etc.). French high schools also have a compulsory philosophy course. We still learn to write long essays that are supposed to synthesise theory and reading of texts. Now, this may be done in a very French way, but even if I am unhappy with the format, standardised "fill the box" tests are hardly ever used. Mobile phones have been banned for a long time in the French education system. Now, if I take Greece, where I grew up and was educated, there are quite a few things that can be criticised, but teachers are still respected up to a degree ; Ancient Greek is one of the compulsory subjects (alas, taught in an uninteresting way), foreign language learning is expected. In other words, it does seem that the French and Greek system is, despite, its many problems, much richer, when it comes to the material covered, than the US system, which seems ghastly. As a European, also, this very American obsession with "useful" stuff that goes hand in hand with materialism and work-till-you-drop attitudes, can only be alien. I've also always found it strange that in American media (films) people who enjoy reading/History and Philosophy are portrayed as weird, whereas the uneducated worker who works non stop is portrayed as a role model. Says a lot about a culture, I think. Another thing that I have found strange is the American obsession with kids being extremely sensitive and breakable entities that should never be frustrated. This has reached Europe as well, but at some point kids here learn that not everything is fun, enjoyable or centred around them. I don't mean to say that the French or Greek educational system is perfect by any means : both have quite a few problems. For example, since the 90s the hours devoted to French have been reduced by a half : spelling & grammar were "bad" for a long time, and as a result, a very significant amount of French people don't know how to spell correctly and remedial French courses are becoming the norm in quite a few universities. It's precisely because of this situation that I categorically refuse to lower the bar with my students in that rather difficult school and I insist on reading "difficult" texts with them, teaching them all sorts of vocab they would never come across, and showing them that they can play with language and use it accordingly to the communication setting. At some point, countries will have to choose : either they go on underfunding education, lowering the bar & forcing teachers to teach in a way that produces idiots or they'll have to accept that teachers play a vital part in building societies and consequently need to be allowed to teach in a way that allows students to develop properly.
Thank you for sharing. There is no perfect education system. It seems, though, that some European countries have not lost the notion of what education means. It is refreshing.
"... I categorically refuse to lower the bar with my students in that rather difficult school and I insist on reading "difficult" texts with them, teaching them all sorts of vocab they would never come across, and showing them that they can play with language and use it accordingly to the communication setting... " That is the mark of a good teacher.
anti-intellectualism in the U.S. goes back to the 1600's. Just search on wikipedia. But you're right. One of the many problems is that being stupid and gullible is glorified. Having a brain can make you a social outcast. ------ In terms of schooling, too many kids start school not developmentally ready. Most never catch up. Also, more and more time is taken up by state tests.
Sorry to say, but the French system may be, overall, even worse than the American ones (and there are tens of thousands). That is IIRC. A French company conducts annual testing of students around the world. The test is called the PISA. Google it and check out the results by country. That said, both are still, likely, among the world's top 10%. When I last checked the results, US students scored higher in English reading than British kids. No sh*t.
Thanks for this. I am Australian and tend to revere French intellectualism and culture (from considerable exposure). The "practical" obsession of Anglosphere education is all about the class system: rich kids get music, sport, classics, high expectations and endless resources. Poor kids get the "three r's". Job training for shit jobs
Young people don’t read because schools killed their curiosity. I volunteer at a Title I school and the emphasis is teaching to THE TEST because that’s how schools are rated. Children are not allowed to satisfy their curiosity about a subject if it deviates from the plan. There’s no free time or library time to explore the fascinating world of books. The System beats the child down then complains that they’re beaten down.
I’ve taught college literature for 15 years, and this is the best connection I’ve seen re: the gap b/t K-12 and higher ed. The kids don’t have any exposure to complete stories or novels. Everything is excerpted-which is terrible bc the internet already removes context. I don’t know how this trend gets slowed, much less reversed, without a complete ban on phones in school and a total overhaul of testing regimes.
i remember when i read the entirety of martin luther king, jr.'s last book, where do we go from here: chaos or community? (not even for a class or anything, but for the purpose of a story i was writing that referenced the book in chapters 9-10.) that was the day when i was reminded that context is very important, b/c once i finished the last page after reading every single chapter in detail i came to the conclusion that politicians on both sides (not just conservatives) quote MLK out of context!
I read mostly non-fiction, but in my day we would read whole books. One result of people's not reading is that they constantly mix up homonyms like "rain', "reign'", and "rein". When you get all your English from television (or TH-cam videos!) this is inevitable.
They also mix up "there", "they're" and "their". Lack of punctuation, poor spelling and poor grammar are a pet hate. I refuse to read anything poorly written.
I actually stopped reading the Financial Times (a broadsheet that was/is supposed to represent the very best of writing & journalism) when a front-page piece mixed up 'illicit' with 'elicit'. Almost anywhere else, I'd have to let that pass - but that was when I lost patience for dropped standards overall.
The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain The reign in Spain falls mainly in the plane The rein in Spain falls mainly in the plain I really want to use mane instead of main , But manly doesn't work And plane works for wood and flight . Hope humour lands .
I'm so glad I let my little girl borrow my old Kindle one day. She took off with that old thing like a rocket. Fast forward to today. She’s in elementary school and can easily read a chapter book (400-600 pages) a week. And asks me to take her to the library. Today she picked up 8 chapter books she wanted to keep her busy during Thanksgiving break. The moral of the story is to give your kid a Kindle Paperwhite. Not a tablet.
Your daughter is in elementary school and is already reading 400-600 pages a week? Sir, your daughter is of well above average intelligence. I pride myself of being a book worm and avid reader of novels when I was 17 thanks to my late parents' support. But in elementary school I was still at the level of heavily illustrated books of short stories. Make sure you support your daughter's education in every way possible, she has a bright future ahead of her.
@@mikethespike7579 Na, that's not exactly above average intelligence. Any child can read 400 - 600 page books if they're raised properly and read to by their parents as children. I was tested at the above the highest possible reading level my school system could score in 4th grade (12th+ grade plus/college level). If you can read at all in elementary school then it's not hard to read at a 12th grade level. The later Harry potter books were like 9th grade reading level apparently but millions of kids read Harry Potter in elementary school. I do understand that most kids can't do that but it's only because of how they were raised. If they were given the opportunity to read from a very young age then reading 500 page books in elementary school could easily be the average but most kids aren't read to or given books as children so most kids spend their entire lives struggling to read. Honestly, Harry Potter is the perfect book series to read to improve your ability because it starts out as a relatively low level childrens book but by book 4 and onward they become noticeably more difficult such as using a greater diversity of words. The amount of different words in a book is basically the only thing that determines it's reading level so if you can read confidently and actually look up words then the vast majority of books should be accessible to anyone at any age. It's only when you get books that are studied in college literature classes that it can become a struggle to understand what they mean for reasons other than not knowing a vocab word. Before that level the overwhelming majority of books are written so that anyone can understand them, as long as they can lookup any words they don't know. A book must be extremely complex to be difficult to understand even if you know every word in it. The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector comes to mind as an example of a book with simple words but extremely difficult to understand passages.
@@nomorenames5568 What you claim seems grossly exaggerated to me. I have never known an elementary school child to have the perseverance and intellectual capacity to read 600 pages and and follow the author's expositions. And that every week? There are such gifted children, but they are very few and far apart.
I appreciate your comments as an educator. Rigor in education is no longer a priority. A friend who is a teacher said most students have difficulty reading aloud. We remembered reading books in class where we read aloud taking turns up and down the row and students had to keep track in the book. That apparently is no longer the way reading is taught. There are also techniques for reading quickly (one way, is not to verbalize the words in your head) and I took a speed reading class in high school that was invaluable in college and law school. I was an academic librarian at a university and I saw so many students taking short cuts like reading only the abstract of an article but not the entire thing for their research, or asking me to find them 5 peered reviewed articles without they themselves doing the grunt work. Sorry, no go, we teach you how to find them, not hand them over. The philosophy is do the bare minimum to pass the test.
That's fascinating. I have my MLIS degree and wondered what modern challenges librarians face. I've heard from educators throughout the academic spectrum relay that students demanding the shortcut is a huge problem. That's not how life works. You must put in the work to gain the benefits. Thank you for sharing.
@Tensytheneedlesmith Hi! Can I ask how you train yourself not to ‘verbalize’ words in your head as you read? I no longer ‘mouth’ the words but I still hear them in my head. Thank you!
@@Drewsmodels It's partly based on a speed reading course which I took in high school. Basically, you scan text by tracking, initially with your finger, down the page. Our minds naturally insert the next word in a common phrase and the trick is not to sub-vocalize all the words as you are reading. It takes practice, but when I feel myself stopping and vocalizing each word in my head, then I start quickly scanning to avoid doing that. I don't do it as often when reading fiction, or non-fiction with difficult vocabulary, but when there is a lot of info dumping in a novel I start speed reading. When I was in college and then law school, the scanning technique was invaluable since I was able to skim, find keywords in the text quickly and then went back to focus on the crucial topic. I think speed reading has a bad rap these days, and maybe I've just read so much over the years and have a large vocabulary, that my speed has naturally increased, but I definitely think subvocalizing each word, which is how we first learn how to read, definitely drags the reading speed. Interestingly, I am bilingual and when I read in Spanish, I read much slower because I have to really focus on each word. So, in essence, the more you read the faster your get, ;-).
It is effective to use technology to find relevant articles and even pre-select them. This is done with google scholar and other ways. Do not get me wrong I own a few thousand books and read a lot more, but work on a deadline and pleasure are two different things. The only problem we have Today is a lack of reading. Unless you read a few hundred or better a thousand books you are on a different level. It is the difference of swimming as staying over water and swimming like a fish. It becomes natural.
My son goes to Chicago Public Schools, so, one of the biggest public school systems in the country and also one that gets a lot of negative press. He goes to our neighborhood school, (so not one of CPS's selective enrollment schools that your kid has to test into). I couldn't be happier with how reading has been taught. They use phonics. The teachers have read novels to his class every year since Kindergarten. Now he's in 3rd grade and they just finished The Witches by Roald Dahl (which the kids LOVED). Basically, I'm just trying to provide an example to show that it isn't necessarily a public vs. private thing. Public schools certainly have a different kind of pressure when it comes to standardized testing, but that doesn't mean there aren't amazing public schools and principals out there who do everything in their power to focus on what kids really need. Great video - thanks for sharing your take!
Thank you! And absolutely! I hope I didn’t too heavily imply this is a public school thing because it’s not. I’ve met and taught very smart students in public school. Also, most schools vary widely depending on the teacher, principal, district, and state. And my oldest son went to public school for two years. We were really happy with the education he received. I happened to switch to teaching private school and brought my boys along with me. Several states have implemented a “no cell phone policy” in their schools which I think is great step in the right direction. Thank you for your wonderful comment.
I went to public school and I remember “The Book Mobile,” our local library on wheels would come to our elementary school every Monday and we got to check out at 5 books 📚. A week. It’s where we all got our first library card. We also learned to read Phonetically. I believe when they stopped teaching to read that way they killed the drive to read in a lot of children. I I happy to hear some children are getting the experience the joys of reading like I did. I read and could not imagine life without books 📚.
I am dyslexic, and phonics is the way that people should learn to read unfortunately. Education gets trapped in new fads, and many schools adopt them. I'm really glad to hear that you're school. It's using phonics. We have known how to teach reading and mathematics for thousands of years. It's insane that we're still coming up with.Cookie.Waze to teach them
I teach middle school. This is the first year where I've had students who cannot read "a chapter book" because they only read graphic adaptations/novels.
@@negative6442 just means you were good or had a good school. Even back in 2006 3rd graders weren't reading at a grade level. Had 9 year olds reading see spot run for reading time instead of reading more age-appropriate books. 20% of graduating students are functionally illiterate.
@@robertblume2951 I think this is one of those things that varies from state to state. I went to a fairly decent middle school here in New York and did reading, and my mother who worked at one of the worse schools for a number of years said they did as well. You're right though, I'm in college now and I find it painful when my classmates stumble over their words and struggling to read words that aren't particularly difficult. Makes me wonder what some of these people are doing on their phones all day if they can hardly read.
I’m a high school English teacher in Virginia. We teach whole novels but it’s a struggle to get students to read. The first VDOE standard is building reading stamina so I think there is a shift back to teaching whole books. I agree with your comments about cell phones. Our public school is following new state laws that cell phones must be “off and away.” I have noticed a big difference between last year (cell phone policy up to teachers’ discretion) and this year (no cell phones at all - hooray).
I'm surprised that so many schools just gave up on keeping smartphones off and away during class. Back in my day (yes, I'm saying that in a cranky old man voice) if they even saw the outline of a cell phone in your pocket, the principal would lock it in their drawer and you could pick it up at the end of the day. And that was in the early 2000s, when cell phones could make phone calls and MAYBE send text messages if you had the latest and greatest model. I'm frustrated that a lot of schools now issue take-home laptops to every student. I know there were probably good intentions to this, and maybe it has some benefit for kids who don't have a computer or Internet access at home, but I think it's damaging the quality of education on the whole. Kids just punch all their math problems into Desmos and all their writing assignments into ChatGPT, and they learn absolutely nothing as a result.
@StacyBullock-o4g Parents failed their kids as the parents did not read to the kids, they do not read themselves and are a bad role model and they do not have books at home kids can read. The school can not replace failed parents.
i grew up with this "excerpt reading" method, the result : i read my first novel at the age of 28, i have been reading ever since and can't understand why i didn't start earlier
I remember getting praised at work because I solved a computer problem they had for a few weeks. the instructions for solving it were three paragraphs, all I did was read the text on screen and do those things. So even though people are being taught on excerpts, they still aren’t good at reading comprehension, because three paragraphs shouldn’t be too much for anyone.
Who remembers enrichment programs in schools? It was required that we read several books a semester, dependent on age and grade. We also had workbooks, worked at our own pace, in class. I grew up in a very rural, small school, back in the 1980's. Enrichment involved reading several books a semester, 1 big project for the year and taking a field trip. We may have been considered "country bumpkins" but we were immersed into language, speech and ideas outside of our small town life.
And older kids were paired with younger kids and they had to help them learn to read for 1 hour a week at my school in Canada. This is In addition to the hour of reading homework 4-7 books. I always got 7 books I needed the extra help with my ADHD and learning disability. I proudly have a reading room and 4 bookshelves almost completely filled with books I have read.
And there is even less pleasure in not having enough time to read as you are struggling through a mountain of work that, at times, is not humanly doable by one single person without burning yourself out.
I agree about the stamina and weird teaching methods, but I gotta say - I grew up on phonics teaching, and I loved reading when I was young (still do), but I wouldn't have been able to read a novel a week on any kind of regular basis either, just cos there are other things you need or want to do with that time.
When I was in middle school, I finished reading a book every 2 days. I wasn’t rushing or trying to meet some goal. It just happened because I liked reading. There’s definitely enough time to read 1 book per week and have time to do other things
@MrGrimlocke deep read assigned novels for your lit class? And do all your other reading for your other classes? I guess you're a faster reader than I was.
I would agree. I grew up reading (am 55). I was read to as a small child, read to as a school-aged student, studied plays and poetry in English at High School, have read for 1.5 hours today already, but Ithink a novel.a week is too much, especially with classes and assignments and sleep required.
There are multiple factors here. Nowadays, everyone goes to college. It isn't just for the really smart people. To do almost any job, they want a BA. So the university feels that it has to pass everyone. This leads to teaching to the bottom. In middle school and high school teachers are discouraged from giving any homework at all. This leads to five minute assignemts, and the students spend the rest of the time twiddling their thumbs. The experience would be so much more improved if teachers could give out a list of optional assignments. If a teacher said, you can write optional essays, and I will give you feedback, it won't count against your grade, but I want you to grow in your writing skills, it would be a tremendous benefit. Teachers could also provide a list of optional books to read.
Bravo. Great video. Most of the problem, as you said, seems to be the lack of attention-span development. Electronic media is so overwhelmingly overstimulating that the quiet pace of reading leaves many people jumping out of their seats. A closed-eyes, decaying sound wave meditation -- such as listening to a gong strike sound, resonate and decay, is a very good way to begin focusing attention. Even short classroom meditations have been shown to greatly increase children's attention span and concentration level. It is also a technique that can mitigate symptoms of mild ADHD.
This is not surprising to me as I have observed that many people struggle with pretty basic reading as adults, but it’s a tad surprising because (like you) my experience was being taught phonics as a homeschooled kid and I always read whole books to learn. Glad that schools are slowly changing this! I think cell phone policies need to happen everywhere
The UK adopted phonics back in 2006, but suffers the same reading issues at universities today as the US. I do agree that focusing on tests does not teach students about life.
But to be fair, most teachers in the US come from the least able-minded pool. Thus, testing-teaching sets up a reasonable low bar of accomplishment for these most average skilled “teachers college” graduates.
Well, some university teachers have complained but it is not as bad as it is in the USA. Is it ever? Students have replied that they feel they don't have enough time and I suspect distractions and a brain trained by the internet is to blame. However, for English literature in the UK pupils are required to read five or six entire books, plays or poetry anthologies.
Great discussion! I'm a homeschooling mom on my 22nd year and have seen a difference over the years in my kids' attention span, even here at home where time on devices is heavily regulated. They can be great tools for a lot of things, but they can't be the main thing. Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective on this!
In high school in the seventies, I was assigned to read The Grapes of Wrath over Christmas break. I am a procrastinator, but read it in a few days before the end of break, Loved the book and am so glad it was assigned. Fast forward to the 2000's and I was a high school teacher (not English) and we all were prohibited from assigning any school work over the holiday break.
It blows my mind that kids are not being read to. I went to school from the mid-eighties thru 1999, and I was read to, by my teachers, every day of my academic life. We also had time set aside every day for silent reading. Back then, it was called D.E.A.R. In middle school and high school, we always studied entire novels. This was very interesting.
late 90s/early 00s elementary school we had silent sustained reading time as well and were read to at different times. Sitting in a circle listening to our teacher read was the best part of my day (edit: I just remembered it was listed on the board as USSR, "uninterrupted sustained silent reading")
Blocking students from having phones on wouldn’t hurt safety. Each teacher could still maintain contact with the office and the outside world via a cell phone.
I was a substitute teacher's aide for a few years. I was mostly in special education, but when I was in regular classrooms, I noticed that even when an excerpt of a novel was used, it was usually to teach a concept like primary vs. secondary sources, with no mention of how to get meaning from the text. Sometimes the passages used were beautiful, but no comment was made on the writing quality or the events in that scene, and how they could relate to the children's lives. I guess there was no time for such lessons. No wonder kids don't read if they don't have to. They don't know that reading has anything to do with finding meaningful life lessons, comfort, joy, etc. I guess I got lucky. I was in public schools in years when phonics was taught. Grandparents volunteered to read novels to us, and teachers had us read novels to learn to write small papers on them. I guess that was allowed back then. Then I was homeschooled after fourth grade. My mom made sure I read a lot. When I got to college, I wasn't a good test taker at first, but my reading stamina was good. Cell phones weren't smart then. My reading stamina is not nearly as good now.
I enjoyed your video! I'm Brazilian, and I recently read a study showing that the majority of people in Brazil didn’t read a single book last year. This is very concerning! I'm 25 years old and love to read. This problem has always existed here, but it seems to be worse now. I hope we can change this in the future.
I read books because I enjoyed reading books. I even read aloud - think MacBeth with witchy voices. I even re-read books. I write books and have been known to investigate books and hunt up out of print, etc.
People have looked at me like I have three heads when I mention re-reading any book. I always tell them that a truly great book is worth re-reading. People re-watch movies and re-listen to songs... Why not re-read books? When you re-read a book every few years, the way it resonates with you can be very different. Maybe you didn't relate to some character the first time around, but the second or third time, you've gone through something similar to them and now find them deeply relatable. And there will always be SOME symbolism, allegory, or other literary device that you didn't catch when you first read it.
I agree that learning thrIough phonics makes sense. One way of looking at this is thinking how you would learn another language with a different alphabet from your own (say, for instance, if your first language is English, which uses the Latin alphabet, and you want to learn Russian, which uses the Cylirric alphabet); you would want to know what sound each letter makes before thinking about reading and writing in the language. Also, about phones, I would say they are not "phones" anymore - the phonic element of these devices is secondary at best. These are now more like mobile telescreens.
Reading helps people develop critical skill thinking. Reading opens up people’s perspectives and help them see the world and a more mature, enlightened way. Reading all types of books such as history, different philosophies, literature, biographies, etc. helps people learn to see through propaganda, and it also develops empathy.
As I can see, you in the US face the same problems as we do with my students in Czechia, Central Europe. Cell phones sure are a detraction and the attnetion the student pays to the lesson without having his cell phone to hand is much deeper, that´s positive. Good luck! Ivan
Thats an issue in the US because (look it up) parents want their kids to have their phones with them 24/7 especially at school in case of school shootings
@@Orson2u Yep. Good ol' dumb phones offer nearly all of the benefits (communication in emergencies or less serious circumstances, like asking to go to a friend's house after school) while eliminating all of the bad things (social media addiction). I really wish it hadn't been normalized in our culture for kids to have a smartphone pretty much as soon as they have the motor functions to operate one.
Great video! Reading AND reading comprehension is so important and foundational to a child’s education. I love the insight you shared re: education system.
The field of epigenetics summarizes the human condition like this. We are converting the dominant informational stream from our environment into form, function and patterns of behavior. I read an article awhile back about our range of sensory awareness and how it has narrowed significantly. The example that I remember was our auditory range. We used to be able to make 350,000 auditory distinctions and now the average is 150,00. The article stated that this was true for all of the 5 senses. Given that sensory motor inference is cognitive inference we can infer that what allows a person to become a effective writer is the ability to convert their sensory motor experiences into a formal structure. Our range of perceptual awareness expands the possibilities of that conversion. Conversely the narrowing of our perceptual range constricts the possibilities of that conversion. This is all I have for now. Have a beautiful day everyone! 🌞
I'm almost sixty seven years old and thankful I grew up in an era before smartphones. At my school, I read William Golding, Lord of the Fies, John Steinbeck and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Earnest Hemingway. The Pearl. This fired up my curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I ended up reading almost all of the John Steinbeck novels and then I graduated to Theadore Dreiser. I went onto read Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Colins. I will be forever more grateful to the teachers who introduced me to these authors. I hear and read a lot about banned books week and books being removed from schools and libraries in America. That is alarming. In the UK nothing is perfect but banning books from libraries and schools is rare. Whenever I go out and especially when I have hospital appointment (of which are many) I always take a book with me knowing there might be a long wait in the waiting room. I'm a slow reader and manage to read a book a week.
No longer people, but "interaction - responsive" specialist AI modules, that also instantaneously share trends data (clicks, dwell time on a particular feed), and use this data to further, rapidly optimise their content delivery, since this content is used as a carrier to sell, either directly, or indirectly "via association".
Oh Lord Jesus hearing this hurts my Soul. I have two grown children who were required to read a book a week in school from grade school to middle school . Because book reports were required in high school they were still required to read. Flash forward One of my nieces was a teacher as well as her father and stories they would tell us were crazy about how the school system wanted them to teach. My niece no longer teaches, and before my brother in law died he was Principal at very nice high school and was changing things at his school. With him gone everything has gone back to “normal” as it were. Thank you for caring. I appreciate you 🎉🎉🎉❤
@ NO! I thank you for caring. Teachers are so special to me. I tell my son all the time, I will watch sports when teachers and nurses are paid the same money the athletes are. Teacher deserve it more because they shape young minds and know when they see a child who wants to learn and encourages them. Teaching encompasses so many professions, (teacher, social worker, nurse, Mom) all wrapped in the title of Teacher. I have already given all the important teacher I’ve ever had their flowers while they were alive. I am who I am today because I have had a lot of awesome teachers in my life. So once again Thank you for caring.
What a great conversation! 🙌🏼 I’ll never forget my third grade teacher reading aloud “A Wrinkle in Time” from cover to cover. I was completely engrossed. Children can’t enjoy an excerpt with no context to the story as a whole, all that’s left is analyzing. Two books, “The Read Aloud Family” and “The Enchanted Hour” really encouraged me to take ownership as a mother (and homeschooler) for reading aloud and I highly recommend to parents whether you homeschool or not! 😄
Maybe my experience also illustrates this. My dad got a scholarship at Yale when I was seven. My parents were told that we should not follow him until I had cracked the reading code. So I learned to read according to the phonic system. Then we moved to the US, and I was put into a totally English speaking classroom. I won’t deny that it was a bit stressful until I cracked the language code. I did that simultaneously with learning to read. The first book I read through was in English. It was a book I had borrowed in the class library.
I can't say much to the current trend but 20 years ago reading in class was painful. Nothing was interesting, nothing was challenging, and when it was discussed in class it wasn't so much with a teacher as much as just the talking points of the curriculum. I loved reading as a kid. School stamped that out. It wasn't until my later 20's I got back into it.
I graduated a private high school in 83. We read lots of novels and books. Excerpts do you have a place in a reading curriculum, but it’s not the whole picture. Mind-boggling the novel reading would be discouraged.
Excerpt reading only was shocking to me as well at the time. And I can see now appreciate both - novels and excerpts, but, in my opinion, we need a mixture of both.
I currently teach high school English in NY. Year 24. I teach whole books still. In fact, I read each book cover to cover, without assigning even a single page for homework. I do assign an Independent Reading book once per quarter. These days, it's down to a small handful of students that actually read their books...many take 0's on the assessments. I'm not giving in though. When English teachers give up on reading, we are finally, once and for all....screwed. We need a return back to literacy more than almost anything else. Most countries in Europe, not to mention Asia, are still setting rigorous academic goals for their young citizens. Over here in the US, we've grown afraid to ask too much of our children for fear that they'll be mad at us, not to mention those damned smartphones and social media. What an ironic name huh? Smart phone. The phone is the only smart thing of late. I'll keep on fighting to inspire kids, but between you and me....I'm so over it.
As a current homeschooler (primarily with Charlotte Mason method -whole living books- though I do phonics specifically) I find this information heartbreaking, but as a state university elementary ed graduate I can 100% agree with your thoughts here. It's so sad that this is our current state. I had a conversation with a college graduate teaching high school literature in a private Christian school and I asked what her favorite book was to teach? She told me which text book "grade 10 textbook". 😭 She couldn't even tell me names of quality classic literature because she had graduated from the school she taught in and just didn't know!
Retired professor with 50+ years of experience in secondary school classrooms and university (undergrad through doctoral course programs). Students have been inherently lazy for years. Professors have buckled under to students' whining and administrators' demands to retain students in universities. Social promotion is the norm, as is grade inflation. I've seen graduate students unable to read at the 5th grade level, not understand what a thesis statement is, or lack vocabulary skills necessary for academic success. What's important for colleges and universities are two things: enrollment stats and open checkbooks. The rest is irrelevant. Affirmative action with the "flavor of the month club hiring" brought in people who had no experience teaching or being an administrator------and others had to carry them and do their work; what mattered was race, gender, ethnicity, religion or gender orientation. The education system is broken in this country, and we don't have to look far to see who's at fault: out of control and lazy students; parents who know nothing yet think they are all Einsteins; and a federal government that keeps spending boatloads of money on students who can't read, write or comprehend even the most basic of subject matter. What's the end result? Generations of apathetic individuals who see no value in education and who are uninformed about American history, current events, or public affairs. And that's just how the feds want students to grow up: to be educated dimwits incapable of critical thinking and can be easily swayed by politicians. That's what education is now all about in the US and has been for years.
The answer is simple children who are read to by their parents, encouraged to read on thier own, and are raised by literate people become readers themselves. If this does not happen by the third grade, it is unlikely the kids will ever be good readers no matter the educational system or the instructor.
True I am a curious person and I figured a way to knowledge without the middleman. My mom was reading to me and eliminating her as middle man gave me access to the really good stuff.
I agree 100% but we've already established that few kids in the future will grow up in a literate household. Future parents are in a world today where new technology is being allowed to crush our extended thought processes -- which were once the glory of civilization & the dividing line between man and beast. We will lose creative writing. Instead we'll have 'content creation' by committee and/or AI.
Hi Shelly!!!!! I love your videos! I’m sure you are very right in your viewpoint but I also wonder if time management is a big factor as well. College students are bombarded with extra campus activities that take up exorbitant amounts of time. Such has fraternities, clubs, volunteering, sports…. With all of these activities, a class load and probably working to keep up with living expenses, I can understand why a novel a week would be daunting. When do they have time?
Agreed on top of the course load. I remember each of my classes in college would have several assignments a week which felt like busy work on top of actually learning the material to pass the future exams. I read a good amount in my free time as a med student and I cannot imagine being able to read a book a week on top of all of that.
When I was at school in the 70s I recall our teacher reading the whole of books out loud to the class. Particularly recall for her 50th birthday she took us outside and we sat in a circle on our chairs and listened to her read Robinson Crusoe.
I learned through phonics (homeschooled), as well as playing video games. I played Final Fantasy VII and my brother read the game to me, and soon I was able to read it for myself with his help. By the time I was done with the game - I was probably around six years old - I could read it without help. I could read full adult novels by the time I was eight years old. (I distinctly remember reading Watership Down and Ender's Game at eight, with the entire Agatha Christie catalog not much later.) But now, I have lost much of my attention span and find it difficult to finish even a fiction book.
I was a Final Fantasy 6, Chronotrigger, Earthbound, and Illusion of Gaia kind of gamer when I was a kid. I guess they do require reading a lot of text. I was always a big reader too and also read above what was considered normal for my age/grade.
As a high school student in the early 80s, our English class read out loud Mark Twain's classic "Huckleberry Finn." Every student read passages from the novel out loud, even me - I'm a stutterer to this day, and the black kids, who read Twain's n-words out loud. The teacher did not sugarcoat the novel and openly acknowledged the pain of his black students having to read the n-word out loud. When I was in grade school (5th grade ?), our class was taken to a college production "The Crucible," an Arthur Miller play about the Salem Witch Trials. It was a different world back then, when the public schools tried to teach their students about the true state of the world.
In the 1950s my neighbor wrote “why Jonny can’t read” it was written to my mother, Mary, and dedicated to Stephen my brother. It was a best seller for 35 weeks and had huge impact on reading education bring about change from “look say” to phonics. Stephen is now 83. He would be as surprised as I to hear of this sad state.
@ at present, he is ill and not reading. He has been a regular reader throughout his life. My wife and I are 80. She has gone from a book each a day reader to computer zombie. I have a lot of computer time and I find that after a 12 to 40 pages I fatigue and go back to the computer. I have tried to quit the computer after reading books that persuaded me of the harm. Each time I failed. When our son was young, my wife read the hobbit and then the trilogy of the rings to him . He reread them himself, and it said them on a lifetime of avid reading. He is 58.
So, I'm French and I see that this "disliking" towards reading doesn't only affect my country, but the western world as a whole. I think the main reason is more due to socialogical and historical issues than to technical issues (as global reading). My theory (that no intellectual seems to assume) is that we shifted civilization, we changed era. From "renaissance" to the end of the second millennium, the western world was a "reading civilization". Our knowledge was acquired and transmitted by texts, by books, by newspapers. People used to read long texts, used to take their time. But by the end of last century, everything became faster and faster. Dozens of television channels, continuous news channels, Netflix, TV series, internet... People got drowned into a flood of informations. And into a flood of entertainment. Everyone can see that we have more and more difficulties in concentrating. Myself (66 years old), I always read books from my childhood, but now I need to "go fast", I need to understand very quick what the book or the press article means, what's the point, the conclusion, without getting into the details. What I mean is that we left the "reading civilization", the literary civilization, and have entered the technological civilization. No turning back. What do you think about this?
Just a historical note to put the complaint about non- reading students in context: a large number of great English language works, Russian classical authors, the great French authors were first published in serial format, usually in a peridical, monthly periodical. The reader did not have to devour the whole work in a week. For example, Dostoyevsky would submit a chapter, and the public would have a chance to slow read it, possibly reread it, get immersed in the characters, plot etc. I believe these binge reading courses leave students with a surface level knowledge of the material. I went through such a course and really dont remember much of what we read. My assumption at the time was that jammimg in dozens of books in a semester was a way of testing basic reading/cognitive skills, and not so much the value gleaned from the work.
I remember when I was in college in the 1980s we had to read many books, and my complaint was that we didn't have enough time to appreciate what was in the books.
Thank you for sharing your insights into why so many people have stopped reading, Shelly. I am sixty-four and have been a lifelong reader. In fact, I still have the book (Treasure Island) my elementary school teacher inscribed to me in 1970: "To Kevin B. - for having read the most books in the school year." A few months back, I was taking my evening break in the cafeteria at work. As usual, I sat down to read my book. I looked around and counted seven people. No one was speaking to each other. Instead, every person was looking down and focused on their cell phones.
Great video Shelly! I've been personally struggling with my kids and reading and I think a lot of your points make sense and I completely agree with you on cellphones!
The shift to whole language was actually in the 90’s. I started school in the 70’s and learned to read through phonics. I began teaching in the 90’s when whole reading was the “new thing.”
Great video. I have also watched Jared's video and as a bookworm/dragon, this shift we are seeing makes me so sad :( I performed well in tests at school and only in the last 2 years (I am 28) have I really re-found my love for reading. My husband is slowly getting into reading with me, and we are currently reading The Chronicles of Narnia together, and bit by bit he is building up his reading 'muscle' and is LOVING it. I love that you pushed against the norm to fulfil a reading to its completion and I am sure you will have made positive impacts on your students as a result, even to the 'dismay' or 'disapproval' to the leadership. We are leaning strongly to home education (my husband was home schooled with Charlotte Mason philosophies). I hope this video reaches more people! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
I guess it would have been about 1998 I remember feeling like I was going to die of boredom when we were studying "Great Expectations". I swear it went for a month if not the whole 6 weeks. Weve gone from overanalyzing novels to the point of trying to find hidden meaning in the color of the curtians in the room where a scene takes place to not being able to handle more than a few paragraphs. Can we find a middle ground between those two extremes?
Exactly. Nobody talks about how absolutely dreadful some of the books called “literature” can be! I’m 48 and still don’t see the point of analyzing books like that. If it’s that difficult to understand then maybe it’s because it’s poorly written. Not to mention books written in Shakespearean times that basically require you to understand a whole new language.
@DoubleA-ou7pj i was almost with you until you used "poorly written" as an excuse lol. The fact is we ARE too stupid when first given these books, it's why we learn to analyze them in the first place. A lot of people will never care enough to learn it beyond passing a test, but it's still an important skill so people can recognize subliminal/manipulative messaging in their everyday media and advertising, or just be able to understand basic context in communication. (Learning about the book itself is not the point. The critical thinking skill related to it is what's important).
I take a book to work and read every day. And recently I was talking to my coworker who is 24 years old and what I would consider quite intelligent. I mentioned how I hadn't read this particular book since high school and wanted to reread it to see if I still liked it, and she said she doesn't even remember being made to read a whole book in school. I asked her what she meant and she said the teacher had so many books to get through in a year, they'd have them read excerpts instead. I was stunned. As an avid reader, if I would have been told to only read bits of every book my teacher gave me, I'd have been so aggrevated. Did they not wonder what happened in the story? Did they not want to find out how it ended?? Besides, how much can you really learn just from reading specific chapters of a book?
Happy to see this post and subject. I'm afraid the situation is worse than the presenter portrays. And, if you think things are bad now, wait until AI takes hold and people not only stop reading, but stop thinking altogether! A few thoughts: People who like to read have an advantage--they intuitively see in their mind what they're reading as like a movie playing. Not everone has this inate ability. What''s considered 'highbrow' today would have been thought 'lowbtow' a hundred years ago due to the gradiual 'dumbing down' of our society. If someone can force themselves to read Joyce or Proust for even 5-10 pages at a sitting for a month or more, they will see the magic of literature unfold in their mind.
I grew up on phonics, we were taught how to pronounce a word by first separating the word into to syllables (how many) then find which syllable has the accent on it, also we were taught the suffix and prefix. In 2002, when my daughter was in the 4th grade, I had to teach her how to write in cursive and learn the capital of every state once I found out it wasn't being taught anymore. My 7th grade teacher got me hooked on reading when she introduced Moby Dick to our class, after we turned in our book report she took us to the auditorium and treated the class to the movie, it was wonderful :)
So scary how our world is going. I’m a reader. Yes - I’m on social media and I do get caught up in scrolling mindlessly lots of times. Lol. But it love to read whole books! Ha ha. And I can’t imagine our world without reading. Our church libraries have disappeared. People weren’t checking out enough books. I can only afford to buy and then store so many physical books. I love and use my public library and hope they don’t go away also. Just new to your channel. Thanks for reading and sharing your love of books.
I think that one of the drivers for testing,esp in state schools (uk) or public schools (us) is the monitoring of the schools’ performance which sometimes seems to take priority over consideration of the long term effects on the students. Attention span is a serious issue when some of these students learn to drive!
Massachusetts just took the first toward deemphasizing testing by removing the standardized test as a graduation requirement. This video describes one major problem with "teaching to the test". I went to public school in Massachusetts and we read significant quantities of novels and plays - I was lucky to just happen to attend one of the best public school systems in the U.S.
Thanks for this! I'm shocked that kids don't read whole books! I'm impressed that you tried to get kids to read a whole book - but for this to be discouraged by educators is beyond reasoning for me. I still read, in my 60s, and I started with phonics. We need MORE TEACHERS LIKE YOU!
This is so depressing to hear BUT TY for sharing your experience. I had no idea. This explains so much to me. I will check out Jared's video on this as well.
I initially had difficulty catching on with reading in early grade school but then starting in the third grade my parents enrolled me in a book club where I could order items such as adventure novels and history books. By the fifth grade I was outscoring everyone else in the class on standardized tests of reading comprehension. I did this by reading with a dictionary handy at all times. In other words I had to teach myself to read meaning of course that it wasn’t really my teachers, half of whom struck me as being imbeciles, who did it for me. But then if someone is not disturbed by their own illiteracy they of course will never bother with all of that in order to master the art of reading. Although I got my degree and taught for 7 years I detested the other teachers and quit to become a merchant seaman and then finally a barber for 20 years. As a barber I would always be reading in between haircuts or at least two books a week. And now at the age of 69 I’ve read in excess of 5,000 books which is no great accomplishment considering how easy reading is if you’re doing it for pleasure. But at the same time this retro preoccupation makes me feel like the last of the Mohicans in a sense now that the dark ages are returning. So if this trend continues we’ll return to a world in which only monks know how to read.
What is your opinion of audiobooks? I spend a lot of time at the gym, and listen to audiobooks for enrichment. This way, I read about 12 books per year. Just finished "The Count of Monte Cristo"; terrific.
So much to unpack on this topic. One thing I haven’t seen suggested is to write questions for novels that mirror the state exams. I did this as a classroom teacher and saw great results both in student growth and test scores. Overall, I think they grew more than if I had done just one or the other. It’s not a win-lose situation, you don’t have to sacrifice novel study to help students do well on their exams. On a side note, a novel a week isn’t deep learning/ analysis. But I’m not sure how many colleges have this standard… I think most have a more realistic approach to studying literature.
If it is any consolation, an academic at Oxford recently said that his students were struggling to read a novel a week. When I read English at university we were expected to have read all of Shakespeare and the lecture schedule was a play per week. To be fair, we were given a couple of weeks for those enormous Victorian novels.
Wow! This is my first time watching one of your videos and I'm thrilled to see the number of views and comments you have. I'm rereading "How to Read a Book" by Adler & Van Doren to learn how to read (and think) at a deep level. Good for you for having snuck full novels into the classroom and for having shaken the dust off your feet and are now teaching at a private school with no cell phones. (I love the hymn you inserted at the end of the video, too).
A YTer that my girls watched when they were younger went off to college. I remember they were watching when she was complaining for an art course she had to know 20 artists for a test and was upset that she wasn’t given the names who she’d be tested on. I told my girls that the art teacher wants her to know ALL the artists. In high school, it was to learn what is needed for the test, forget, and move on. I think testing is a huge problem within the educational system. I have recently watched some videos about the deterioration of learning to read by site words in both the US and the UK. I believe the statistics in the US is that 1 in 5 graduate without the ability to read-maybe enough to read stop signs or basic forms. The average reading level for graduates is at the 6th grade level. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.). It’s very sad.
As a graduate school professor this is really revealing. I can’t count on students to read scientific papers. I have test questions that are routinely missed and they are not poor questions according to the psychometrics. This tells me that our students are likely not getting the information because they don’t know how to read comprehensively anymore. Wow.
After 25+ years in the education system, my disappointment with every new trend-No Child Left Behind, Common Core-is that they purport to ready a student for college and career without really paying mind to the joy of learning. The writing program forces students to write about passages they read-to ready them for the big test-rather than their own experiences. Whatever happened to “write what you know”? Starting in early grades, students are made to read a balance of nonfiction to fiction to prepare for college texts. Why not let them choose? Youngsters typically relate to stories. My point is that public education today tends to focus too much on college readiness and too little on what students need at their particular stage of development.
In school I cried when we were out into reading groups. I hated being put into the delayed group because that meant I was reading the "baby books" and I was embarrassed. I started reading Junie B. Jones in 2nd grade and it snowballed from there. I'll have to admit that ironically due to university and having to synthesize academic journals I've slipped away from reading for leisure but this was a great conversation starter because we're teaching students to read for tests and not read for their own edification.
My oldest son when to public school for kindergarten and 1st grade. He had a good experience. I think there are just different paths in education and all have their pros and cons. What's most important is having loving, supportive parents through it all.
Hi Shelly, great video. The deterioration of our ability to comprehend and tell stories is a significant obstacle for our culture to overcome. If all we consume are micro-stories (social media highlights, online video content like TH-cam, and news articles) then we lose the ability to zoom out and see the larger narratives that are unfolding in our life. With that being said, I fall into that camp of finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on reading. My strategy has been to take extensive notes while reading, but this limits me to only one book a month, and mainly non-fiction. Reading for me is like a second job, because it helps inspire me to write -- primarily philosophy and poetry. The downside of this, is that I rarely immerse myself in those grand narratives that can have such a profound impact on us. I know the benefits of reading fiction, but I personally feel like non-fiction has a greater net benefit to my life, although at the cost of my learning about the essential narratives that structure our lives and cultures we find ourselves nested in. (Edit: in conclusion, although I agree that literature is more valuable than social media, I have yet to be convinced that literature is more valuable than non-fiction. Personal preference, of course.)
I sent my boys to private school from pre-k through graduation. As a single mom, it was difficult many years. But I saw the extreme benefit to my boys and it was so worth it. They are both adults and have many times thanked me for sending them there.
Thank you for articulating the problems I had with my own public school education! I graduated from high school only two years ago so this is very relevant to my experience. Looking back, I fortunately had an elementary school that encouraged reading books all the time - daily library visits, teachers reading full novels aloud, choice reading, etc. In middle school that was reduced to maybe 2-3 books a year, and high school was much worse. I absolutely love reading books, but there were many points as a student where that interest was totally killed, so I consider myself very lucky for the exposure to books I grew up with. It's interesting to get a teacher's perspective on this, as I always thought being a public school teacher must be kind of stifling, but none of my teachers ever really commented on it.
Can't tell you how many British University students constantly speak about how much they disliked their course. If it was Maths, they "hated Maths". If it was English, they "hated reading". When I'd ask why on earth they were at Uni, they'd say "needed a degree"! I'd think, you do know that, even with the degree, you'll be doing this thing that you "hate", right?
@@Shellyish I guess that, formal education and the requirement to pass exams / complete assignments, etc. can diminish people's love of something. The hobby becomes a source of stress.
Let's look on the bright side. My new flirting line is, "Ma'am, would you mind if I read you an interesting book ?". That joking aside, I personally prefer to read aloud to other people, as much as I like reading on my lonesome. I am a fairly solitary, introverted person, but one way I like making connections with people is reading books to them, live. Few people reject it.
I would love if someone offered to read to me. I enjoyed when teachers would read out loud to the class, found it relaxing. I do read myself though, usually a book a week.
Shelly - Simply amazing video. EXACTLY my thoughts my entire life after leaving college (I am 76 with a BS and three advanced degrees one a JD). You are precisely correct from my Junior High through my final class…..we are taught the “test”, forget overall subject substance. I now do feel I really missed out. My house is now piled high in books, history, classics mostly. I I’m desperately trying to regain true reading as a skill. I am extremely pleased to see people of your obvious quality taking this issue on. Blow them away…..you are clearly focused on the right key issue. I recall hearing in my distant past “readers are leaders”. Your students are very fortunate to have you as a teacher and most importantly, a role model! May the Lord God Almighty richly bless you and your vital work. Thank you for making such an important difference….one student at a time.
What an awful way of teaching. I can’t imagine not having read The Giver, Animal Farm, The Outsiders, etc. because the school district didn’t deem it necessary
“We are witnessing the greatest loss of human capital in history” said Jonathan Haidt about smart phones impact on the young (last summer on Triggernometry podcast, IIRC). I would not be prepared to accept his stark assessment if I had not been prepared by his new book’s pre-publication PowerPoint lectures posted here last January and December. The only hole in the generational impact and decline of the young’s socio-emotional development that has remained glaring was this: was it only observed in the US? No. Subsequent research shows the same measurable negative impacts internationally. Thus, I am glad to report that various no smart phones for teens and children becoming the new norm in law with countries in Europe and Australia. And until the same arises within the US in something tantamount to a moral panic, our young are at hazardous risk.
Anybody else remember the scholastic book fairs in elementary school? That was a world event for us kids. I am so grateful to have grown up pre-internet pre-phone era. Good memories
I remember bookmobiles too. In the 60's, 70's and part of the 80's, there was an effort to TEACH, now it is keep the line moving, no time for testing and helping those that don't make the grade.
The sad part is seeing the lower scores being accepted.
@@joemeAccepted? Lower scores and standards are encouraged.
That way groups who spend time on activities other than academics don't stick out and look less educated than everyone else.
We'll just gage schools on their athletic programs from now on.
The Scholastic Book Fairs were my favorite parts of the year as a kid in elementary and middle school.
Some schools still have them. My daughter-in -law is a elementary school librarian. The book fair is a big event at her school
RIF Reading Is Fundamental
As a College professor of 25+ years, its not just reading. TLDR is a real thing but I can't get them to watch a video tutorial I have made specifically for them. ME: "Did you watch the video I sent you? STUDENT: "I started it but then I was really busy this weekend" "Started it?' it was 6 mins long and giving you the exact answer to the thing you were struggling with. Its attention span. They'll read texts and Reddit posts by the thousands--because they are short. The internet has created a whole generation of kid who can't stay focused for more than a few mins.
That is a very frustrating problem, I hear you.
As an adult, I’ve noticed my attention span is shot- I used to read novels easily but these days I’m struggling to get through one book- my iPhone demands my attention too much. Im addicted to Reddit and TH-cam
I have 5 kids, my youngest being 4 and she has a longer attention span. My 13 yr old just read the divine comedy out loud to me while i did the dishes all last week. Good thing I homeschooled from the start it sounds like they're already miles ahead and more than ready for college
Sounds like they could use some romantic-era poets.
I'm a 58-year-old guy and isn't a big part of the problem (elephant in room) DEI and affirmative action? If in the NFL, the best players don't advance, will the NFL be as good? It seems odd that students don't do the work in universities; don't they just fail and get let go after the first semester? How can an elite university student pass if they have the attitude to not bother doing the course work?
I don't think it's the internet. The internet makes us smarter.
When you turn a university into a business then standards come second to money.
@John-h7l9e Absolutely. A friend of mine said Bristol Poly., has become a joke since it became UWE.
Profitable universities have NOTHING to do with reading. You don't go to college to learn how to read or get introduced to books. I'd collected over 500 books by the time I was a freshman in college. Colleges ARE forgoing traditional foundations of Western literature which is intellectual suicide.
Read "Brave New World" by Huxley, then the essay & lecture where he explains that it wasn't a prediction, but an explanation of how the current Anglo-American ruling aristocracy (which his family was a part of) intended to engineer society.
"In the future, nobody will read Shakespeare - not because it wi'll be banned, but because we'll make them not want to". (I've paraphrased the gist of the quote from memory)
Written in 1931.
Thanks for sharing. I have read "Brave New World" and really enjoyed it at the time.
Yes. Exactly.
It's systemic. It's beyond just using the "wrong" method of teaching to read.
On the contrary - It's the right method for the ends that they want to achieve.
For most people, thinking about this is to scary and painful.
So they deny the blatant reality.
If you actually understood read the book (which I don't think you have) it is about how a socialist society would look like not a Anglo-american aristocracy. I also summise that you haven't read the book because the quote you used isn't in it and paraphrasing something that doesn't exist is just making things up.
Maybe people don't want to read shakespeare because the language is outdated. Does thou use the word 'thou' when talking with 'thou' neighbors? I thou does not because thou doesn't.
Huxley was a scary read, especially in 8th grade. I think it made an impression on me with it's totally unnatural, yet sadly believable picture of the techno-scientific world of engineered people.
I appreciate the addition of your point of view. I wish I had said this in the video, but I think the order of causes I cited also mirrors their impact; whole language is a problem, but the excerpt-based curriculum is much worse, and then I suspect phones are the thing doing the most damage.
You did such a great job with your video. And there are a few things I wish I would've said in my own. Primarily, that I didn't intentionally mean to draw a strong comparison between public/private school, but used those experiences to illustrate that how education is executed is incredibly important.
phones seem to simply act as a catalyst for quicker decline rather than the cause of it. people have had these issues in the past and we didn't have phones. it's only sped up a process that was unintentionally put into motion decades before.
@@wmd40 yes, the phone gave people easy access, anywhere, any time, to distractions and other reasons not to read. it made things portable. in the past when you went places, the access/distractions were left behind.
While it may be a data point of one, I was very disappointed when San Jose Unified stopped paying for Accelerated Reader (gives kids points for compression tests for whole books.) Then in middle school they started demanding kids read “classics” that are at the 4th grade reading level but the content is over 100 years old and cringy to today (you beat the dog?)
Anyhow my daughter had been a champion reader and the school system was determined to beat it out of her after she left elementary school. Some kids are the fastest runner - her identity was being a voracious reader until heavily discouraged by the school. (The shrinking library should have been a clue. It was clear what mattered to the school). Reading now has zero social value for adolescents - it literally doesn’t matter. Now my daughter is trying to transfer into SJSU and again, reading or her reading/essay SAT scores do not matter.
This happens with music too. I remember growing up and we would listen to whole albums or sometimes even double albums (e.g., Quadrophenia). Now it seems like most music is very short and aimed at getting into some TikTok video. My perception is that young people today don't have the patience to listen to an 80 minute mini-opera about a young mod named Jimmy. In my public high school, we read Moby Dick, Huck Finn, and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time among many other great books. Heck, as a senior, I was even allowed to assign a one day seminar on a book and I picked Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
One of my favorite memories is from my 7th Grade English class in the 70s. During the last 10 minutes of every class, our very diminutive teacher would hop up on her table-desk and read a novel aloud to the whole class. She would always ask us to put our heads down and close our eyes to better listen to the novel. I loved it and looked forward to it every day.
What a lovely memory! Thanks for sharing. I may start doing that with my class. :)
My teachers often did that, too! :) Those novels still give me nostalgia.
I went to school at roughly that same time and I remember teachers reading aloud a chapter a day of a book to us. It wasn't for any test or any grade, simply for enrichment and enjoyment and to stimulate our little minds.
This reminds me of what my mom would do with me at home. From my time in grades 3 to 5 she would read appropriate aged books to me. She read constantly herself as well. Not only was it a great bonding experience but she instilled in me a love for reading! I'm 54 now and still cherish those memories and am so grateful to her!
My teacher read aloud The Lion, the Witch 😢and Wardrobe to us in 4th grade. Good memories!
As a high school student in the mid-1960s my honors history class was required to read "A Tale of Two Cities" while we were studying the French Revolution. There was nothing on our test about this novel and we did not discuss it in class. It had been assigned for enrichment purposes only. Yet everyone read the ENTIRE book. I know this because we talked about it outside of class. It was fun.
@@katherinedote2324 so cool! Thanks for sharing.
Wow. In the 21st century, anything done for enrichment is seen as a waste of time
@@DebbieDavidson06 It does make me wonder, exactly WHO is making these value judgments?
@@katherinedote2324 that is a good question. I believe educators are pandering to the "needs" of students. Students believe they do not need the humanities, so colleges do comply. They have no choice if they want to stay viable. So many colleges have gotten rid of their humanities departments. It is sad.
How much other homework did you have each day? When I was in high school in the 2010s, between sports, clubs, and homework, the only way I got my fun reading in was by neglecting my sleep and reading at 2am. I hear students get even more homework nowadays
I'm a 63 year old Black man. A lifelong voracious reader. Reading is one of the few addictions that doesn't harm self or others. Don't know if people can be forced to do it.😮
I feel the same way.
I'm a blackman also !!! The culture doesn't promote reading!!! Especially to blacks because that can come close to humanity!!! To provoke thought is a human ability only!!!
Unless you are me, and buy many many books because they are such loved, interesting, beautiful things to experience and read. 😂
RIP my wallet. (And my husbands wallet) 😂
@@marzet70 While this is true that reading is not promoted, black women are some of the biggest readers in America.
@@raynaemurray My husband told me that I'm going to "read us out of house and home."
This “snippet” approach to knowledge has worked its way into medical research. I’m not knocking the youth of our great country, but I have seen research teams being run by fresh graduates who refer to themselves as subject matter experts. Indeed, they are experts. They are experts at grabbing headlines and bits of abstracts that they weave into dynamic presentations and present with confidence. If you ask them questions about data or experimental design they will quip “I don’t see this as a concern”. It’s obvious they are not reading papers in total. I’ll admit, it is arduous and a time commitment to do so especially if one takes the time to read supporting references.
Thanks for sharing.
@@samuelbonacorsi2048 It's the advertising model of creating texts. Ad copy makes money, fast.
"Are you jealous?"
I don't know how this works in medical research, but in a lot of basic research disciplines, the lack of funding, the teaching/research loads PhD students take on, the publish or perish environment, etc. really make it so that there really is no time to be thorough. So often, the person most willing to be unscrupulous and the person who sounds the most confident often ends up getting ahead.
@@theRealCrazyOne This is true.
Have you seen 'catch me if you can ?
'I concur'
Jesus Christ! I’m an English teacher in Switzerland, and if I tried to get away with teaching only excerpts, I’d get fired! And that’s in a second language!
‘Not the end of the world’ it kind of is. These students can’t sustain rigorous thought, and that sure as hell isn’t good.
@@mutahmarriagecounselor2272 now you are just being mean. Being able to analyze a paragraph and pull salient information out of it for a regurgitative test is certainly 'a' skill. But being able to actually make it through a book- a full book- with the various complex and sustained chains of ideas within it, is a different thing altogether. That is apparently a skill that is being lost. And to have a functioning society, I think we need people that can think a bit longer term than sound-byte length.
@@mutahmarriagecounselor2272methinks it is you who needs to develop better reading comprehension: where exactly did he say (or even imply) that that was what you said?
@@mutahmarriagecounselor2272 Sadly, it's not.
Reading is and never was a mean to itself. I was curious and the only way to gain knowledge in my childhood were books. I had a wall of them to pick from. I was good in history as i read a book or most topic we had. This was fun and I wanted more. Once you read a few hundred books it becomes really easy like swimming, climbing, bicycle riding. The more you do it the easier it becomes. If I would have depended only on the reading one is obliged to because of school then I would reached this ease and joy.
This shocked me. I had no idea about policies NOT to read full books.
Shocking, I know.
My district doesn’t believe in novels. Crazy.
Read "Brave New World" by Huxley, then the essay & lecture where he explains that it wasn't a prediction, but an explanation of how the current ruling aristocracy (which his family was a part of) intended to engineer society.
"In the future, nobody will read Shakespeare - not because they'll be banned, but because we'll make them not want to".
@@KritterRaw Teaching to the test. The score is a form of payment.
Train them young.
@@GMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGM i am so shocked the new captain america movie is titled brave new world and no critic or anyone is talking about it! when i mentioned it on a film review channel the only response i got was that it was foolish of me to think hollywood writers had even thought to read that much less actually know about it beforehand, its just a catchy slogan. ARRRRGGHGHGHGH!
Thank you for this video. I wasn't surprised at all when I saw that famous article in _The Atlantic_. I'm a Classics teacher in a French a rather difficult middle-school on the outskirts of Paris and also adjunct at a Parisian University. Thankfully, in France, the official programme is relatively open and allows one to teach pretty much the way one wants (with the unfortunate consequence that your education will depend on whether you have a talented and knowlegeable teacher or not). Literature is still valued in France and you are supposed to teach entire texts. The students I have come from mostly problematic backgrounds and do not grow up in families that value reading, the arts in general or even education. But it is precisely because I have these kids that I place the bar high and make it my mission to teach them to enjoy literature, think hard, use language correctly and so on.
Thankfully, France still has that snobbish obsession with being cultured, which means that a significant proportion of French society places value on "useless" stuff (the Humanities, literature, museums etc.). French high schools also have a compulsory philosophy course. We still learn to write long essays that are supposed to synthesise theory and reading of texts. Now, this may be done in a very French way, but even if I am unhappy with the format, standardised "fill the box" tests are hardly ever used. Mobile phones have been banned for a long time in the French education system.
Now, if I take Greece, where I grew up and was educated, there are quite a few things that can be criticised, but teachers are still respected up to a degree ; Ancient Greek is one of the compulsory subjects (alas, taught in an uninteresting way), foreign language learning is expected.
In other words, it does seem that the French and Greek system is, despite, its many problems, much richer, when it comes to the material covered, than the US system, which seems ghastly. As a European, also, this very American obsession with "useful" stuff that goes hand in hand with materialism and work-till-you-drop attitudes, can only be alien. I've also always found it strange that in American media (films) people who enjoy reading/History and Philosophy are portrayed as weird, whereas the uneducated worker who works non stop is portrayed as a role model. Says a lot about a culture, I think. Another thing that I have found strange is the American obsession with kids being extremely sensitive and breakable entities that should never be frustrated. This has reached Europe as well, but at some point kids here learn that not everything is fun, enjoyable or centred around them.
I don't mean to say that the French or Greek educational system is perfect by any means : both have quite a few problems. For example, since the 90s the hours devoted to French have been reduced by a half : spelling & grammar were "bad" for a long time, and as a result, a very significant amount of French people don't know how to spell correctly and remedial French courses are becoming the norm in quite a few universities. It's precisely because of this situation that I categorically refuse to lower the bar with my students in that rather difficult school and I insist on reading "difficult" texts with them, teaching them all sorts of vocab they would never come across, and showing them that they can play with language and use it accordingly to the communication setting.
At some point, countries will have to choose : either they go on underfunding education, lowering the bar & forcing teachers to teach in a way that produces idiots or they'll have to accept that teachers play a vital part in building societies and consequently need to be allowed to teach in a way that allows students to develop properly.
Thank you for sharing. There is no perfect education system. It seems, though, that some European countries have not lost the notion of what education means. It is refreshing.
"... I categorically refuse to lower the bar with my students in that rather difficult school and I insist on reading "difficult" texts with them, teaching them all sorts of vocab they would never come across, and showing them that they can play with language and use it accordingly to the communication setting... "
That is the mark of a good teacher.
anti-intellectualism in the U.S. goes back to the 1600's. Just search on wikipedia.
But you're right. One of the many problems is that being stupid and gullible is glorified. Having a brain can make you a social outcast.
------
In terms of schooling, too many kids start school not developmentally ready. Most never catch up. Also, more and more time is taken up by state tests.
Sorry to say, but the French system may be, overall, even worse than the American ones (and there are tens of thousands). That is IIRC. A French company conducts annual testing of students around the world. The test is called the PISA. Google it and check out the results by country. That said, both are still, likely, among the world's top 10%. When I last checked the results, US students scored higher in English reading than British kids. No sh*t.
Thanks for this. I am Australian and tend to revere French intellectualism and culture (from considerable exposure).
The "practical" obsession of Anglosphere education is all about the class system: rich kids get music, sport, classics, high expectations and endless resources.
Poor kids get the "three r's". Job training for shit jobs
Young people don’t read because schools killed their curiosity. I volunteer at a Title I school and the emphasis is teaching to THE TEST because that’s how schools are rated. Children are not allowed to satisfy their curiosity about a subject if it deviates from the plan. There’s no free time or library time to explore the fascinating world of books. The System beats the child down then complains that they’re beaten down.
Thanks for sharing.
Bingo
For the large part yeah, schools is the instrument of conformity. Freedom not allowed.
I thought that was the point of no kids left behinds... so kids can like read many of their interests
I have heard friends who teach in public schools express that same thing. Teach to the test.
I’ve taught college literature for 15 years, and this is the best connection I’ve seen re: the gap b/t K-12 and higher ed. The kids don’t have any exposure to complete stories or novels. Everything is excerpted-which is terrible bc the internet already removes context. I don’t know how this trend gets slowed, much less reversed, without a complete ban on phones in school and a total overhaul of testing regimes.
Phones should defiantly be banned in schools and for kids under sixteen.
i remember when i read the entirety of martin luther king, jr.'s last book, where do we go from here: chaos or community? (not even for a class or anything, but for the purpose of a story i was writing that referenced the book in chapters 9-10.) that was the day when i was reminded that context is very important, b/c once i finished the last page after reading every single chapter in detail i came to the conclusion that politicians on both sides (not just conservatives) quote MLK out of context!
I read mostly non-fiction, but in my day we would read whole books. One result of people's not reading is that they constantly mix up homonyms like "rain', "reign'", and "rein". When you get all your English from television (or TH-cam videos!) this is inevitable.
They also mix up "there", "they're" and "their". Lack of punctuation, poor spelling and poor grammar are a pet hate. I refuse to read anything poorly written.
I actually stopped reading the Financial Times (a broadsheet that was/is supposed to represent the very best of writing & journalism) when a front-page piece mixed up 'illicit' with 'elicit'.
Almost anywhere else, I'd have to let that pass - but that was when I lost patience for dropped standards overall.
@@Islas_Canarias Or mixing up "are" and "our".
@@darylallen2485 That’s just bad pronunciation!
The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain
The reign in Spain falls mainly in the plane
The rein in Spain falls mainly in the plain
I really want to use mane instead of main ,
But manly doesn't work
And plane works for wood and flight .
Hope humour lands .
I'm so glad I let my little girl borrow my old Kindle one day. She took off with that old thing like a rocket. Fast forward to today. She’s in elementary school and can easily read a chapter book (400-600 pages) a week. And asks me to take her to the library. Today she picked up 8 chapter books she wanted to keep her busy during Thanksgiving break.
The moral of the story is to give your kid a Kindle Paperwhite. Not a tablet.
That's great news. It's crucial to set up good habits like this as a child.
Your daughter is in elementary school and is already reading 400-600 pages a week? Sir, your daughter is of well above average intelligence. I pride myself of being a book worm and avid reader of novels when I was 17 thanks to my late parents' support. But in elementary school I was still at the level of heavily illustrated books of short stories.
Make sure you support your daughter's education in every way possible, she has a bright future ahead of her.
Or a … book ??
@@mikethespike7579 Na, that's not exactly above average intelligence. Any child can read 400 - 600 page books if they're raised properly and read to by their parents as children. I was tested at the above the highest possible reading level my school system could score in 4th grade (12th+ grade plus/college level). If you can read at all in elementary school then it's not hard to read at a 12th grade level. The later Harry potter books were like 9th grade reading level apparently but millions of kids read Harry Potter in elementary school.
I do understand that most kids can't do that but it's only because of how they were raised. If they were given the opportunity to read from a very young age then reading 500 page books in elementary school could easily be the average but most kids aren't read to or given books as children so most kids spend their entire lives struggling to read.
Honestly, Harry Potter is the perfect book series to read to improve your ability because it starts out as a relatively low level childrens book but by book 4 and onward they become noticeably more difficult such as using a greater diversity of words. The amount of different words in a book is basically the only thing that determines it's reading level so if you can read confidently and actually look up words then the vast majority of books should be accessible to anyone at any age. It's only when you get books that are studied in college literature classes that it can become a struggle to understand what they mean for reasons other than not knowing a vocab word. Before that level the overwhelming majority of books are written so that anyone can understand them, as long as they can lookup any words they don't know. A book must be extremely complex to be difficult to understand even if you know every word in it. The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector comes to mind as an example of a book with simple words but extremely difficult to understand passages.
@@nomorenames5568 What you claim seems grossly exaggerated to me.
I have never known an elementary school child to have the perseverance and intellectual capacity to read 600 pages and and follow the author's expositions. And that every week? There are such gifted children, but they are very few and far apart.
I appreciate your comments as an educator. Rigor in education is no longer a priority. A friend who is a teacher said most students have difficulty reading aloud. We remembered reading books in class where we read aloud taking turns up and down the row and students had to keep track in the book. That apparently is no longer the way reading is taught. There are also techniques for reading quickly (one way, is not to verbalize the words in your head) and I took a speed reading class in high school that was invaluable in college and law school. I was an academic librarian at a university and I saw so many students taking short cuts like reading only the abstract of an article but not the entire thing for their research, or asking me to find them 5 peered reviewed articles without they themselves doing the grunt work. Sorry, no go, we teach you how to find them, not hand them over. The philosophy is do the bare minimum to pass the test.
That's fascinating. I have my MLIS degree and wondered what modern challenges librarians face. I've heard from educators throughout the academic spectrum relay that students demanding the shortcut is a huge problem. That's not how life works. You must put in the work to gain the benefits. Thank you for sharing.
@Tensytheneedlesmith Hi! Can I ask how you train yourself not to ‘verbalize’ words in your head as you read? I no longer ‘mouth’ the words but I still hear them in my head. Thank you!
@@Drewsmodels It's partly based on a speed reading course which I took in high school. Basically, you scan text by tracking, initially with your finger, down the page. Our minds naturally insert the next word in a common phrase and the trick is not to sub-vocalize all the words as you are reading. It takes practice, but when I feel myself stopping and vocalizing each word in my head, then I start quickly scanning to avoid doing that. I don't do it as often when reading fiction, or non-fiction with difficult vocabulary, but when there is a lot of info dumping in a novel I start speed reading. When I was in college and then law school, the scanning technique was invaluable since I was able to skim, find keywords in the text quickly and then went back to focus on the crucial topic. I think speed reading has a bad rap these days, and maybe I've just read so much over the years and have a large vocabulary, that my speed has naturally increased, but I definitely think subvocalizing each word, which is how we first learn how to read, definitely drags the reading speed. Interestingly, I am bilingual and when I read in Spanish, I read much slower because I have to really focus on each word. So, in essence, the more you read the faster your get, ;-).
@ thank you!
It is effective to use technology to find relevant articles and even pre-select them. This is done with google scholar and other ways. Do not get me wrong I own a few thousand books and read a lot more, but work on a deadline and pleasure are two different things. The only problem we have Today is a lack of reading. Unless you read a few hundred or better a thousand books you are on a different level. It is the difference of swimming as staying over water and swimming like a fish. It becomes natural.
My son goes to Chicago Public Schools, so, one of the biggest public school systems in the country and also one that gets a lot of negative press. He goes to our neighborhood school, (so not one of CPS's selective enrollment schools that your kid has to test into). I couldn't be happier with how reading has been taught. They use phonics. The teachers have read novels to his class every year since Kindergarten. Now he's in 3rd grade and they just finished The Witches by Roald Dahl (which the kids LOVED). Basically, I'm just trying to provide an example to show that it isn't necessarily a public vs. private thing. Public schools certainly have a different kind of pressure when it comes to standardized testing, but that doesn't mean there aren't amazing public schools and principals out there who do everything in their power to focus on what kids really need. Great video - thanks for sharing your take!
Thank you! And absolutely! I hope I didn’t too heavily imply this is a public school thing because it’s not. I’ve met and taught very smart students in public school. Also, most schools vary widely depending on the teacher, principal, district, and state. And my oldest son went to public school for two years. We were really happy with the education he received. I happened to switch to teaching private school and brought my boys along with me. Several states have implemented a “no cell phone policy” in their schools which I think is great step in the right direction. Thank you for your wonderful comment.
My children have had a similar positive experience but in a smaller school district. We feel very lucky
@@HavaDay5979 that’s great to read!!
I went to public school and I remember “The Book Mobile,” our local library on wheels would come to our elementary school every Monday and we got to check out at 5 books 📚. A week. It’s where we all got our first library card. We also learned to read Phonetically. I believe when they stopped teaching to read that way they killed the drive to read in a lot of children. I I happy to hear some children are getting the experience the joys of reading like I did. I read and could not imagine life without books 📚.
I am dyslexic, and phonics is the way that people should learn to read unfortunately. Education gets trapped in new fads, and many schools adopt them. I'm really glad to hear that you're school. It's using phonics. We have known how to teach reading and mathematics for thousands of years. It's insane that we're still coming up with.Cookie.Waze to teach them
I teach middle school. This is the first year where I've had students who cannot read "a chapter book" because they only read graphic adaptations/novels.
What state is this in? Just curious, as I graduated hs in 2020 in New York, and I remember reading novels in middle school.
@@negative6442 just means you were good or had a good school. Even back in 2006 3rd graders weren't reading at a grade level. Had 9 year olds reading see spot run for reading time instead of reading more age-appropriate books. 20% of graduating students are functionally illiterate.
@@robertblume2951 I think this is one of those things that varies from state to state. I went to a fairly decent middle school here in New York and did reading, and my mother who worked at one of the worse schools for a number of years said they did as well.
You're right though, I'm in college now and I find it painful when my classmates stumble over their words and struggling to read words that aren't particularly difficult. Makes me wonder what some of these people are doing on their phones all day if they can hardly read.
@@negative6442 NY is the first to adopt fads like "whole language learning" and "no child left behind", or whatever insanity comes down from the ED.
@@negative6442 I think she’s in Texas because she is subscribed to a Texan news station.
I’m a high school English teacher in Virginia. We teach whole novels but it’s a struggle to get students to read. The first VDOE standard is building reading stamina so I think there is a shift back to teaching whole books. I agree with your comments about cell phones. Our public school is following new state laws that cell phones must be “off and away.” I have noticed a big difference between last year (cell phone policy up to teachers’ discretion) and this year (no cell phones at all - hooray).
It is great to hear your school is making that change!
Every state needs to have the cell phone law passed!
I'm surprised that so many schools just gave up on keeping smartphones off and away during class. Back in my day (yes, I'm saying that in a cranky old man voice) if they even saw the outline of a cell phone in your pocket, the principal would lock it in their drawer and you could pick it up at the end of the day. And that was in the early 2000s, when cell phones could make phone calls and MAYBE send text messages if you had the latest and greatest model.
I'm frustrated that a lot of schools now issue take-home laptops to every student. I know there were probably good intentions to this, and maybe it has some benefit for kids who don't have a computer or Internet access at home, but I think it's damaging the quality of education on the whole. Kids just punch all their math problems into Desmos and all their writing assignments into ChatGPT, and they learn absolutely nothing as a result.
@StacyBullock-o4g Parents failed their kids as the parents did not read to the kids, they do not read themselves and are a bad role model and they do not have books at home kids can read. The school can not replace failed parents.
i grew up with this "excerpt reading" method, the result : i read my first novel at the age of 28, i have been reading ever since and can't understand why i didn't start earlier
Super interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I remember getting praised at work because I solved a computer problem they had for a few weeks. the instructions for solving it were three paragraphs, all I did was read the text on screen and do those things.
So even though people are being taught on excerpts, they still aren’t good at reading comprehension, because three paragraphs shouldn’t be too much for anyone.
Who remembers enrichment programs in schools? It was required that we read several books a semester, dependent on age and grade. We also had workbooks, worked at our own pace, in class. I grew up in a very rural, small school, back in the 1980's. Enrichment involved reading several books a semester, 1 big project for the year and taking a field trip. We may have been considered "country bumpkins" but we were immersed into language, speech and ideas outside of our small town life.
And older kids were paired with younger kids and they had to help them learn to read for 1 hour a week at my school in Canada. This is In addition to the hour of reading homework 4-7 books. I always got 7 books I needed the extra help with my ADHD and learning disability. I proudly have a reading room and 4 bookshelves almost completely filled with books I have read.
A clear cut case where the adage “older is better” and the less “sophisticated” achieves more by NOT following the fads.
At some time in the past I read, “All readers are not great leaders, but all great leaders are readers.”
No wonder they don't know how to read for pleasure. There's nothing pleasurable about reading excerpts
And there is even less pleasure in not having enough time to read as you are struggling through a mountain of work that, at times, is not humanly doable by one single person without burning yourself out.
I agree about the stamina and weird teaching methods, but I gotta say - I grew up on phonics teaching, and I loved reading when I was young (still do), but I wouldn't have been able to read a novel a week on any kind of regular basis either, just cos there are other things you need or want to do with that time.
That is a very fair point.
Especially because at least when I was in college I was also reading chapters in science textbooks and academic articles for all my other classes.
When I was in middle school, I finished reading a book every 2 days. I wasn’t rushing or trying to meet some goal. It just happened because I liked reading. There’s definitely enough time to read 1 book per week and have time to do other things
@MrGrimlocke deep read assigned novels for your lit class? And do all your other reading for your other classes?
I guess you're a faster reader than I was.
I would agree. I grew up reading (am 55). I was read to as a small child, read to as a school-aged student, studied plays and poetry in English at High School, have read for 1.5 hours today already, but Ithink a novel.a week is too much, especially with classes and assignments and sleep required.
There are multiple factors here. Nowadays, everyone goes to college. It isn't just for the really smart people. To do almost any job, they want a BA. So the university feels that it has to pass everyone. This leads to teaching to the bottom. In middle school and high school teachers are discouraged from giving any homework at all. This leads to five minute assignemts, and the students spend the rest of the time twiddling their thumbs. The experience would be so much more improved if teachers could give out a list of optional assignments. If a teacher said, you can write optional essays, and I will give you feedback, it won't count against your grade, but I want you to grow in your writing skills, it would be a tremendous benefit. Teachers could also provide a list of optional books to read.
I teach college students. 99 percent of them would not do anything optional.
Bravo. Great video. Most of the problem, as you said, seems to be the lack of attention-span development. Electronic media is so overwhelmingly overstimulating that the quiet pace of reading leaves many people jumping out of their seats.
A closed-eyes, decaying sound wave meditation -- such as listening to a gong strike sound, resonate and decay, is a very good way to begin focusing attention.
Even short classroom meditations have been shown to greatly increase children's attention span and concentration level. It is also a technique that can mitigate symptoms of mild ADHD.
This is not surprising to me as I have observed that many people struggle with pretty basic reading as adults, but it’s a tad surprising because (like you) my experience was being taught phonics as a homeschooled kid and I always read whole books to learn. Glad that schools are slowly changing this! I think cell phone policies need to happen everywhere
Thank you for sharing your experience. I appreciate you, Grace!
The UK adopted phonics back in 2006, but suffers the same reading issues at universities today as the US.
I do agree that focusing on tests does not teach students about life.
But to be fair, most teachers in the US come from the least able-minded pool. Thus, testing-teaching sets up a reasonable low bar of accomplishment for these most average skilled “teachers college” graduates.
Well, some university teachers have complained but it is not as bad as it is in the USA. Is it ever? Students have replied that they feel they don't have enough time and I suspect distractions and a brain trained by the internet is to blame. However, for English literature in the UK pupils are required to read five or six entire books, plays or poetry anthologies.
Great discussion! I'm a homeschooling mom on my 22nd year and have seen a difference over the years in my kids' attention span, even here at home where time on devices is heavily regulated. They can be great tools for a lot of things, but they can't be the main thing. Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective on this!
Thanks for sharing your experience, homeschooling moms have a unique perspective on this.
In high school in the seventies, I was assigned to read The Grapes of Wrath over Christmas break. I am a procrastinator, but read it in a few days before the end of break, Loved the book and am so glad it was assigned. Fast forward to the 2000's and I was a high school teacher (not English) and we all were prohibited from assigning any school work over the holiday break.
good, no need to assign such homework, it accomplishes nothing. assign the reading other times throughout the school year.
@@SoloRenegade /sarc
Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that. Why would I want to do assigned reading when I'm supposed to be on holiday break?
It blows my mind that kids are not being read to. I went to school from the mid-eighties thru 1999, and I was read to, by my teachers, every day of my academic life. We also had time set aside every day for silent reading. Back then, it was called D.E.A.R. In middle school and high school, we always studied entire novels. This was very interesting.
Thank you!
late 90s/early 00s elementary school we had silent sustained reading time as well and were read to at different times. Sitting in a circle listening to our teacher read was the best part of my day (edit: I just remembered it was listed on the board as USSR, "uninterrupted sustained silent reading")
Until the phones are done away with, students won't read period.
Drop Everything And Read! Yes I loved that in middle school. Made me really appreciate sitting in silence with a good book.
Banning phones from classrooms is clearly the right thing to do. I can't wrap my head around why people don't want that in their schools.
For safety reasons. The U.S. isn’t exactly a safe place.
@StrawberryJamJam29 Somehow, this wasn't a problem 30 years ago when the crime rate was far higher.
@@StrawberryJamJam29 Do phones make classrooms safer?
@@Anonymous-sb9rr I think it's about school shootings.
Blocking students from having phones on wouldn’t hurt safety. Each teacher could still maintain contact with the office and the outside world via a cell phone.
I was a substitute teacher's aide for a few years. I was mostly in special education, but when I was in regular classrooms, I noticed that even when an excerpt of a novel was used, it was usually to teach a concept like primary vs. secondary sources, with no mention of how to get meaning from the text. Sometimes the passages used were beautiful, but no comment was made on the writing quality or the events in that scene, and how they could relate to the children's lives. I guess there was no time for such lessons. No wonder kids don't read if they don't have to. They don't know that reading has anything to do with finding meaningful life lessons, comfort, joy, etc. I guess I got lucky. I was in public schools in years when phonics was taught. Grandparents volunteered to read novels to us, and teachers had us read novels to learn to write small papers on them. I guess that was allowed back then. Then I was homeschooled after fourth grade. My mom made sure I read a lot. When I got to college, I wasn't a good test taker at first, but my reading stamina was good. Cell phones weren't smart then. My reading stamina is not nearly as good now.
Thank you for sharing your experience, it really highlights the issues at play.
Using a novel to talk about primary vs. secondary sources sounds like a terrible idea. Aren't both supposed to be nonfictional?
I enjoyed your video! I'm Brazilian, and I recently read a study showing that the majority of people in Brazil didn’t read a single book last year. This is very concerning! I'm 25 years old and love to read. This problem has always existed here, but it seems to be worse now. I hope we can change this in the future.
Thanks for sharing!
I read books because I enjoyed reading books. I even read aloud - think MacBeth with witchy voices. I even re-read books. I write books and have been known to investigate books and hunt up out of print, etc.
I love that!
People have looked at me like I have three heads when I mention re-reading any book. I always tell them that a truly great book is worth re-reading. People re-watch movies and re-listen to songs... Why not re-read books?
When you re-read a book every few years, the way it resonates with you can be very different. Maybe you didn't relate to some character the first time around, but the second or third time, you've gone through something similar to them and now find them deeply relatable. And there will always be SOME symbolism, allegory, or other literary device that you didn't catch when you first read it.
I agree that learning thrIough phonics makes sense. One way of looking at this is thinking how you would learn another language with a different alphabet from your own (say, for instance, if your first language is English, which uses the Latin alphabet, and you want to learn Russian, which uses the Cylirric alphabet); you would want to know what sound each letter makes before thinking about reading and writing in the language.
Also, about phones, I would say they are not "phones" anymore - the phonic element of these devices is secondary at best. These are now more like mobile telescreens.
Thanks for sharing.
Reading helps people develop critical skill thinking. Reading opens up people’s perspectives and help them see the world and a more mature, enlightened way. Reading all types of books such as history, different philosophies, literature, biographies, etc. helps people learn to see through propaganda, and it also develops empathy.
As I can see, you in the US face the same problems as we do with my students in Czechia, Central Europe. Cell phones sure are a detraction and the attnetion the student pays to the lesson without having his cell phone to hand is much deeper, that´s positive. Good luck! Ivan
@@ivanrumanek thank you!!
It’s a worldwide problem. Cell phones / social media are distractions everywhere.
I was a teacher in France. They banned cell phones in the classroom years ago. Surprised you didn’t mention/know this.
Thats an issue in the US because (look it up) parents want their kids to have their phones with them 24/7 especially at school in case of school shootings
@@Dezzo0721 - SOLUTION=dumb cell phones (ie, no graphics), and NO “smart phones.”
@@Orson2u Yep. Good ol' dumb phones offer nearly all of the benefits (communication in emergencies or less serious circumstances, like asking to go to a friend's house after school) while eliminating all of the bad things (social media addiction). I really wish it hadn't been normalized in our culture for kids to have a smartphone pretty much as soon as they have the motor functions to operate one.
Great video! Reading AND reading comprehension is so important and foundational to a child’s education. I love the insight you shared re: education system.
Thank you so much!
The field of epigenetics summarizes the human condition like this. We are converting the dominant informational stream from our environment into form, function and patterns of behavior. I read an article awhile back about our range of sensory awareness and how it has narrowed significantly. The example that I remember was our auditory range. We used to be able to make 350,000 auditory distinctions and now the average is 150,00. The article stated that this was true for all of the 5 senses. Given that sensory motor inference is cognitive inference we can infer that what allows a person to become a effective writer is the ability to convert their sensory motor experiences into a formal structure. Our range of perceptual awareness expands the possibilities of that conversion. Conversely the narrowing of our perceptual range constricts the possibilities of that conversion. This is all I have for now. Have a beautiful day everyone! 🌞
Thanks for sharing!
I'm almost sixty seven years old and thankful I grew up in an era before smartphones. At my school, I read William Golding, Lord of the Fies, John Steinbeck and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Earnest Hemingway. The Pearl. This fired up my curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I ended up reading almost all of the John Steinbeck novels and then I graduated to Theadore Dreiser. I went onto read Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Colins. I will be forever more grateful to the teachers who introduced me to these authors. I hear and read a lot about banned books week and books being removed from schools and libraries in America. That is alarming.
In the UK nothing is perfect but banning books from libraries and schools is rare.
Whenever I go out and especially when I have hospital appointment (of which are many) I always take a book with me knowing there might be a long wait in the waiting room. I'm a slow reader and manage to read a book a week.
We have very intelligent people working hard to make all screens (tv, phone etc) as addictive as they can. They have done their job extremely well.
No longer people, but "interaction - responsive" specialist AI modules, that also instantaneously share trends data (clicks, dwell time on a particular feed), and use this data to further, rapidly optimise their content delivery, since this content is used as a carrier to sell, either directly, or indirectly "via association".
Oh Lord Jesus hearing this hurts my Soul. I have two grown children who were required to read a book a week in school from grade school to middle school . Because book reports were required in high school they were still required to read. Flash forward One of my nieces was a teacher as well as her father and stories they would tell us were crazy about how the school system wanted them to teach. My niece no longer teaches, and before my brother in law died he was Principal at very nice high school and was changing things at his school. With him gone everything has gone back to “normal” as it were. Thank you for caring. I appreciate you 🎉🎉🎉❤
It sounds like you have a strong family legacy of education, thanks for sharing.
@ NO! I thank you for caring. Teachers are so special to me. I tell my son all the time, I will watch sports when teachers and nurses are paid the same money the athletes are. Teacher deserve it more because they shape young minds and know when they see a child who wants to learn and encourages them. Teaching encompasses so many professions, (teacher, social worker, nurse, Mom) all wrapped in the title of Teacher. I have already given all the important teacher I’ve ever had their flowers while they were alive. I am who I am today because I have had a lot of awesome teachers in my life. So once again Thank you for caring.
What a great conversation! 🙌🏼 I’ll never forget my third grade teacher reading aloud “A Wrinkle in Time” from cover to cover. I was completely engrossed. Children can’t enjoy an excerpt with no context to the story as a whole, all that’s left is analyzing. Two books, “The Read Aloud Family” and “The Enchanted Hour” really encouraged me to take ownership as a mother (and homeschooler) for reading aloud and I highly recommend to parents whether you homeschool or not! 😄
Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm going to check out those books!
Maybe my experience also illustrates this. My dad got a scholarship at Yale when I was seven. My parents were told that we should not follow him until I had cracked the reading code. So I learned to read according to the phonic system. Then we moved to the US, and I was put into a totally English speaking classroom. I won’t deny that it was a bit stressful until I cracked the language code. I did that simultaneously with learning to read. The first book I read through was in English. It was a book I had borrowed in the class library.
Thanks for sharing.
I can't say much to the current trend but 20 years ago reading in class was painful. Nothing was interesting, nothing was challenging, and when it was discussed in class it wasn't so much with a teacher as much as just the talking points of the curriculum.
I loved reading as a kid. School stamped that out. It wasn't until my later 20's I got back into it.
Hm. That’s fascinating.
Books are fun, creative, enlightening, teach empathy, and allow us to be critical thinkers. It scares me that people are forgoing reading.
I graduated a private high school in 83. We read lots of novels and books. Excerpts do you have a place in a reading curriculum, but it’s not the whole picture. Mind-boggling the novel reading would be discouraged.
Excerpt reading only was shocking to me as well at the time. And I can see now appreciate both - novels and excerpts, but, in my opinion, we need a mixture of both.
I was a teacher for three years. I had kids and now I homeschool because of my experience in the public schools and this very thing.
I currently teach high school English in NY. Year 24. I teach whole books still. In fact, I read each book cover to cover, without assigning even a single page for homework. I do assign an Independent Reading book once per quarter. These days, it's down to a small handful of students that actually read their books...many take 0's on the assessments. I'm not giving in though. When English teachers give up on reading, we are finally, once and for all....screwed. We need a return back to literacy more than almost anything else. Most countries in Europe, not to mention Asia, are still setting rigorous academic goals for their young citizens. Over here in the US, we've grown afraid to ask too much of our children for fear that they'll be mad at us, not to mention those damned smartphones and social media. What an ironic name huh? Smart phone. The phone is the only smart thing of late. I'll keep on fighting to inspire kids, but between you and me....I'm so over it.
Thank you for sharing your story.
This is interesting and I love hearing from teachers’ points of view. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
As a current homeschooler (primarily with Charlotte Mason method -whole living books- though I do phonics specifically) I find this information heartbreaking, but as a state university elementary ed graduate I can 100% agree with your thoughts here. It's so sad that this is our current state. I had a conversation with a college graduate teaching high school literature in a private Christian school and I asked what her favorite book was to teach? She told me which text book "grade 10 textbook". 😭 She couldn't even tell me names of quality classic literature because she had graduated from the school she taught in and just didn't know!
It is heartbreaking to hear this!
Retired professor with 50+ years of experience in secondary school classrooms and university (undergrad through doctoral course programs). Students have been inherently lazy for years. Professors have buckled under to students' whining and administrators' demands to retain students in universities. Social promotion is the norm, as is grade inflation. I've seen graduate students unable to read at the 5th grade level, not understand what a thesis statement is, or lack vocabulary skills necessary for academic success. What's important for colleges and universities are two things: enrollment stats and open checkbooks. The rest is irrelevant. Affirmative action with the "flavor of the month club hiring" brought in people who had no experience teaching or being an administrator------and others had to carry them and do their work; what mattered was race, gender, ethnicity, religion or gender orientation. The education system is broken in this country, and we don't have to look far to see who's at fault: out of control and lazy students; parents who know nothing yet think they are all Einsteins; and a federal government that keeps spending boatloads of money on students who can't read, write or comprehend even the most basic of subject matter. What's the end result? Generations of apathetic individuals who see no value in education and who are uninformed about American history, current events, or public affairs. And that's just how the feds want students to grow up: to be educated dimwits incapable of critical thinking and can be easily swayed by politicians. That's what education is now all about in the US and has been for years.
Thanks for sharing!
The answer is simple children who are read to by their parents, encouraged to read on thier own, and are raised by literate people become readers themselves. If this does not happen by the third grade, it is unlikely the kids will ever be good readers no matter the educational system or the instructor.
True I am a curious person and I figured a way to knowledge without the middleman. My mom was reading to me and eliminating her as middle man gave me access to the really good stuff.
I agree 100% but we've already established that few kids in the future will grow up in a literate household. Future parents are in a world today where new technology is being allowed to crush our extended thought processes -- which were once the glory of civilization & the dividing line between man and beast. We will lose creative writing. Instead we'll have 'content creation' by committee and/or AI.
Absolutely brilliant! I have noticed this in recent years as well. Wonderful analysis, Shelly!
Hi Shelly!!!!! I love your videos!
I’m sure you are very right in your viewpoint but I also wonder if time management is a big factor as well. College students are bombarded with extra campus activities that take up exorbitant amounts of time. Such has fraternities, clubs, volunteering, sports….
With all of these activities, a class load and probably working to keep up with living expenses, I can understand why a novel a week would be daunting. When do they have time?
It's a hard balancing act for sure!
Yes. A novel a week is totally unsustainable.
Agreed on top of the course load. I remember each of my classes in college would have several assignments a week which felt like busy work on top of actually learning the material to pass the future exams. I read a good amount in my free time as a med student and I cannot imagine being able to read a book a week on top of all of that.
When I was at school in the 70s I recall our teacher reading the whole of books out loud to the class. Particularly recall for her 50th birthday she took us outside and we sat in a circle on our chairs and listened to her read Robinson Crusoe.
I learned through phonics (homeschooled), as well as playing video games. I played Final Fantasy VII and my brother read the game to me, and soon I was able to read it for myself with his help. By the time I was done with the game - I was probably around six years old - I could read it without help.
I could read full adult novels by the time I was eight years old. (I distinctly remember reading Watership Down and Ender's Game at eight, with the entire Agatha Christie catalog not much later.) But now, I have lost much of my attention span and find it difficult to finish even a fiction book.
It is never to late to go back to the mental gym.
I was a Final Fantasy 6, Chronotrigger, Earthbound, and Illusion of Gaia kind of gamer when I was a kid. I guess they do require reading a lot of text. I was always a big reader too and also read above what was considered normal for my age/grade.
As a high school student in the early 80s, our English class read out loud Mark Twain's classic "Huckleberry Finn." Every student read passages from the novel out loud, even me - I'm a stutterer to this day, and the black kids, who read Twain's n-words out loud. The teacher did not sugarcoat the novel and openly acknowledged the pain of his black students having to read the n-word out loud.
When I was in grade school (5th grade ?), our class was taken to a college production "The Crucible," an Arthur Miller play about the Salem Witch Trials.
It was a different world back then, when the public schools tried to teach their students about the true state of the world.
Thanks for sharing.
In the 1950s my neighbor wrote “why Jonny can’t read” it was written to my mother, Mary, and dedicated to Stephen my brother. It was a best seller for 35 weeks and had huge impact on reading education bring about change from “look say” to phonics. Stephen is now 83. He would be as surprised as I to hear of this sad state.
Interesting. Does he read much?
@ at present, he is ill and not reading. He has been a regular reader throughout his life. My wife and I are 80. She has gone from a book each a day reader to computer zombie. I have a lot of computer time and I find that after a 12 to 40 pages I fatigue and go back to the computer. I have tried to quit the computer after reading books that persuaded me of the harm. Each time I failed.
When our son was young, my wife read the hobbit and then the trilogy of the rings to him . He reread them himself, and it said them on a lifetime of avid reading. He is 58.
That's fascinating! Thanks for sharing!
So, I'm French and I see that this "disliking" towards reading doesn't only affect my country, but the western world as a whole. I think the main reason is more due to socialogical and historical issues than to technical issues (as global reading). My theory (that no intellectual seems to assume) is that we shifted civilization, we changed era. From "renaissance" to the end of the second millennium, the western world was a "reading civilization". Our knowledge was acquired and transmitted by texts, by books, by newspapers. People used to read long texts, used to take their time. But by the end of last century, everything became faster and faster. Dozens of television channels, continuous news channels, Netflix, TV series, internet... People got drowned into a flood of informations. And into a flood of entertainment. Everyone can see that we have more and more difficulties in concentrating. Myself (66 years old), I always read books from my childhood, but now I need to "go fast", I need to understand very quick what the book or the press article means, what's the point, the conclusion, without getting into the details.
What I mean is that we left the "reading civilization", the literary civilization, and have entered the technological civilization. No turning back.
What do you think about this?
I agree. Well said.
Just a historical note to put the complaint about non- reading students in context: a large number of great English language works, Russian classical authors, the great French authors were first published in serial format, usually in a peridical, monthly periodical. The reader did not have to devour the whole work in a week. For example, Dostoyevsky would submit a chapter, and the public would have a chance to slow read it, possibly reread it, get immersed in the characters, plot etc. I believe these binge reading courses leave students with a surface level knowledge of the material. I went through such a course and really dont remember much of what we read. My assumption at the time was that jammimg in dozens of books in a semester was a way of testing basic reading/cognitive skills, and not so much the value gleaned from the work.
Thanks for sharing!
I remember when I was in college in the 1980s we had to read many books, and my complaint was that we didn't have enough time to appreciate what was in the books.
Thank you for sharing your insights into why so many people have stopped reading, Shelly. I am sixty-four and have been a lifelong reader. In fact, I still have the book (Treasure Island) my elementary school teacher inscribed to me in 1970: "To Kevin B. - for having read the most books in the school year." A few months back, I was taking my evening break in the cafeteria at work. As usual, I sat down to read my book. I looked around and counted seven people. No one was speaking to each other. Instead, every person was looking down and focused on their cell phones.
I’m sure your teacher would be proud of your continued love of reading.
I was born in 1982 and also learned to read through phonics and I LOVE reading.
Great video Shelly! I've been personally struggling with my kids and reading and I think a lot of your points make sense and I completely agree with you on cellphones!
Thank you, Melinda! I loved your Five for Five this morning. ❤️❤️❤️
The shift to whole language was actually in the 90’s. I started school in the 70’s and learned to read through phonics. I began teaching in the 90’s when whole reading was the “new thing.”
Great video. I have also watched Jared's video and as a bookworm/dragon, this shift we are seeing makes me so sad :( I performed well in tests at school and only in the last 2 years (I am 28) have I really re-found my love for reading. My husband is slowly getting into reading with me, and we are currently reading The Chronicles of Narnia together, and bit by bit he is building up his reading 'muscle' and is LOVING it. I love that you pushed against the norm to fulfil a reading to its completion and I am sure you will have made positive impacts on your students as a result, even to the 'dismay' or 'disapproval' to the leadership. We are leaning strongly to home education (my husband was home schooled with Charlotte Mason philosophies). I hope this video reaches more people! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
I guess it would have been about 1998 I remember feeling like I was going to die of boredom when we were studying "Great Expectations". I swear it went for a month if not the whole 6 weeks. Weve gone from overanalyzing novels to the point of trying to find hidden meaning in the color of the curtians in the room where a scene takes place to not being able to handle more than a few paragraphs. Can we find a middle ground between those two extremes?
That's a great point about finding that middle ground!
Exactly. Nobody talks about how absolutely dreadful some of the books called “literature” can be! I’m 48 and still don’t see the point of analyzing books like that. If it’s that difficult to understand then maybe it’s because it’s poorly written. Not to mention books written in Shakespearean times that basically require you to understand a whole new language.
@DoubleA-ou7pj i was almost with you until you used "poorly written" as an excuse lol. The fact is we ARE too stupid when first given these books, it's why we learn to analyze them in the first place. A lot of people will never care enough to learn it beyond passing a test, but it's still an important skill so people can recognize subliminal/manipulative messaging in their everyday media and advertising, or just be able to understand basic context in communication.
(Learning about the book itself is not the point. The critical thinking skill related to it is what's important).
I take a book to work and read every day. And recently I was talking to my coworker who is 24 years old and what I would consider quite intelligent. I mentioned how I hadn't read this particular book since high school and wanted to reread it to see if I still liked it, and she said she doesn't even remember being made to read a whole book in school. I asked her what she meant and she said the teacher had so many books to get through in a year, they'd have them read excerpts instead. I was stunned. As an avid reader, if I would have been told to only read bits of every book my teacher gave me, I'd have been so aggrevated. Did they not wonder what happened in the story? Did they not want to find out how it ended?? Besides, how much can you really learn just from reading specific chapters of a book?
I think students have gotten used to excerpt reading.
Happy to see this post and subject. I'm afraid the situation is worse than the presenter portrays. And, if you think things are bad now, wait until AI takes hold and people not only stop reading, but stop thinking altogether!
A few thoughts:
People who like to read have an advantage--they intuitively see in their mind what they're reading as like a movie playing. Not everone has this inate ability.
What''s considered 'highbrow' today would have been thought 'lowbtow' a hundred years ago due to the gradiual 'dumbing down' of our society.
If someone can force themselves to read Joyce or Proust for even 5-10 pages at a sitting for a month or more, they will see the magic of literature unfold in their mind.
Thanks for sharing.
@@Shellyish You are very welcome!
I grew up on phonics, we were taught how to pronounce a word by first separating the word into to syllables (how many) then find which syllable has the accent on it, also we were taught the suffix and prefix. In 2002, when my daughter was in the 4th grade, I had to teach her how to write in cursive and learn the capital of every state once I found out it wasn't being taught anymore. My 7th grade teacher got me hooked on reading when she introduced Moby Dick to our class, after we turned in our book report she took us to the auditorium and treated the class to the movie, it was wonderful :)
Thanks for sharing!
So scary how our world is going. I’m a reader. Yes - I’m on social media and I do get caught up in scrolling mindlessly lots of times. Lol. But it love to read whole books! Ha ha. And I can’t imagine our world without reading. Our church libraries have disappeared. People weren’t checking out enough books. I can only afford to buy and then store so many physical books. I love and use my public library and hope they don’t go away also. Just new to your channel. Thanks for reading and sharing your love of books.
You are so welcome!
Taking time to make this shows obvious care for students and children. Thank you.
I think that one of the drivers for testing,esp in state schools (uk) or public schools (us) is the monitoring of the schools’ performance which sometimes seems to take priority over consideration of the long term effects on the students.
Attention span is a serious issue when some of these students learn to drive!
So true. Thank you.
Massachusetts just took the first toward deemphasizing testing by removing the standardized test as a graduation requirement. This video describes one major problem with "teaching to the test". I went to public school in Massachusetts and we read significant quantities of novels and plays - I was lucky to just happen to attend one of the best public school systems in the U.S.
Thanks for this! I'm shocked that kids don't read whole books! I'm impressed that you tried to get kids to read a whole book - but for this to be discouraged by educators is beyond reasoning for me. I still read, in my 60s, and I started with phonics. We need MORE TEACHERS LIKE YOU!
THANK YOU!!!
Reading is for the intelligent. This goes hand in hand with why people don't read anymore. In other words, it's the idiocracy.
Thanks for sharing.
This is so depressing to hear BUT TY for sharing your experience. I had no idea. This explains so much to me. I will check out Jared's video on this as well.
I’m glad the video resonated with you.
I initially had difficulty catching on with reading in early grade school but then starting in the third grade my parents enrolled me in a book club where I could order items such as adventure novels and history books. By the fifth grade I was outscoring everyone else in the class on standardized tests of reading comprehension. I did this by reading with a dictionary handy at all times. In other words I had to teach myself to read meaning of course that it wasn’t really my teachers, half of whom struck me as being imbeciles, who did it for me. But then if someone is not disturbed by their own illiteracy they of course will never bother with all of that in order to master the art of reading. Although I got my degree and taught for 7 years I detested the other teachers and quit to become a merchant seaman and then finally a barber for 20 years. As a barber I would always be reading in between haircuts or at least two books a week. And now at the age of 69 I’ve read in excess of 5,000 books which is no great accomplishment considering how easy reading is if you’re doing it for pleasure. But at the same time this retro preoccupation makes me feel like the last of the Mohicans in a sense now that the dark ages are returning. So if this trend continues we’ll return to a world in which only monks know how to read.
I agree with you reading is like a penguin in the water. It is so easy and natural, but you have to read a few hundred books to become the penguin
What is your opinion of audiobooks? I spend a lot of time at the gym, and listen to audiobooks for enrichment. This way, I read about 12 books per year. Just finished "The Count of Monte Cristo"; terrific.
I really love audiobooks.
So much to unpack on this topic. One thing I haven’t seen suggested is to write questions for novels that mirror the state exams. I did this as a classroom teacher and saw great results both in student growth and test scores. Overall, I think they grew more than if I had done just one or the other. It’s not a win-lose situation, you don’t have to sacrifice novel study to help students do well on their exams.
On a side note, a novel a week isn’t deep learning/ analysis. But I’m not sure how many colleges have this standard… I think most have a more realistic approach to studying literature.
I can only pray for more teachers that are on your wavelength. You've got the right idea. Keep on spreading it around.
Thanks!
If it is any consolation, an academic at Oxford recently said that his students were struggling to read a novel a week. When I read English at university we were expected to have read all of Shakespeare and the lecture schedule was a play per week. To be fair, we were given a couple of weeks for those enormous Victorian novels.
Wow! This is my first time watching one of your videos and I'm thrilled to see the number of views and comments you have. I'm rereading "How to Read a Book" by Adler & Van Doren to learn how to read (and think) at a deep level. Good for you for having snuck full novels into the classroom and for having shaken the dust off your feet and are now teaching at a private school with no cell phones. (I love the hymn you inserted at the end of the video, too).
Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it! I especially love when anyone recognizes the hymn.
A YTer that my girls watched when they were younger went off to college. I remember they were watching when she was complaining for an art course she had to know 20 artists for a test and was upset that she wasn’t given the names who she’d be tested on. I told my girls that the art teacher wants her to know ALL the artists. In high school, it was to learn what is needed for the test, forget, and move on. I think testing is a huge problem within the educational system.
I have recently watched some videos about the deterioration of learning to read by site words in both the US and the UK. I believe the statistics in the US is that 1 in 5 graduate without the ability to read-maybe enough to read stop signs or basic forms. The average reading level for graduates is at the 6th grade level. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.). It’s very sad.
That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing!
As a graduate school professor this is really revealing. I can’t count on students to read scientific papers. I have test questions that are routinely missed and they are not poor questions according to the psychometrics. This tells me that our students are likely not getting the information because they don’t know how to read comprehensively anymore. Wow.
That is a really interesting and troubling observation.
After 25+ years in the education system, my disappointment with every new trend-No Child Left Behind, Common Core-is that they purport to ready a student for college and career without really paying mind to the joy of learning. The writing program forces students to write about passages they read-to ready them for the big test-rather than their own experiences. Whatever happened to “write what you know”? Starting in early grades, students are made to read a balance of nonfiction to fiction to prepare for college texts. Why not let them choose? Youngsters typically relate to stories. My point is that public education today tends to focus too much on college readiness and too little on what students need at their particular stage of development.
In school I cried when we were out into reading groups. I hated being put into the delayed group because that meant I was reading the "baby books" and I was embarrassed. I started reading Junie B. Jones in 2nd grade and it snowballed from there.
I'll have to admit that ironically due to university and having to synthesize academic journals I've slipped away from reading for leisure but this was a great conversation starter because we're teaching students to read for tests and not read for their own edification.
So interesting and so sad. This kind of stuff freaks me out about making the right choices for my son when he is school-age. Oof. Lots to think about!
My oldest son when to public school for kindergarten and 1st grade. He had a good experience. I think there are just different paths in education and all have their pros and cons. What's most important is having loving, supportive parents through it all.
@ yes well said! ❤️
Hi Shelly, great video. The deterioration of our ability to comprehend and tell stories is a significant obstacle for our culture to overcome. If all we consume are micro-stories (social media highlights, online video content like TH-cam, and news articles) then we lose the ability to zoom out and see the larger narratives that are unfolding in our life.
With that being said, I fall into that camp of finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on reading. My strategy has been to take extensive notes while reading, but this limits me to only one book a month, and mainly non-fiction. Reading for me is like a second job, because it helps inspire me to write -- primarily philosophy and poetry. The downside of this, is that I rarely immerse myself in those grand narratives that can have such a profound impact on us.
I know the benefits of reading fiction, but I personally feel like non-fiction has a greater net benefit to my life, although at the cost of my learning about the essential narratives that structure our lives and cultures we find ourselves nested in. (Edit: in conclusion, although I agree that literature is more valuable than social media, I have yet to be convinced that literature is more valuable than non-fiction. Personal preference, of course.)
I’m right there with you on the difficulty of reading for pleasure.
I sent my boys to private school from pre-k through graduation. As a single mom, it was difficult many years. But I saw the extreme benefit to my boys and it was so worth it. They are both adults and have many times thanked me for sending them there.
That's wonderful! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for articulating the problems I had with my own public school education! I graduated from high school only two years ago so this is very relevant to my experience. Looking back, I fortunately had an elementary school that encouraged reading books all the time - daily library visits, teachers reading full novels aloud, choice reading, etc. In middle school that was reduced to maybe 2-3 books a year, and high school was much worse. I absolutely love reading books, but there were many points as a student where that interest was totally killed, so I consider myself very lucky for the exposure to books I grew up with. It's interesting to get a teacher's perspective on this, as I always thought being a public school teacher must be kind of stifling, but none of my teachers ever really commented on it.
Can't tell you how many British University students constantly speak about how much they disliked their course. If it was Maths, they "hated Maths". If it was English, they "hated reading".
When I'd ask why on earth they were at Uni, they'd say "needed a degree"! I'd think, you do know that, even with the degree, you'll be doing this thing that you "hate", right?
Thanks for sharing.
@@Shellyish I guess that, formal education and the requirement to pass exams / complete assignments, etc. can diminish people's love of something. The hobby becomes a source of stress.
Let's look on the bright side. My new flirting line is, "Ma'am, would you mind if I read you an interesting book ?". That joking aside, I personally prefer to read aloud to other people, as much as I like reading on my lonesome. I am a fairly solitary, introverted person, but one way I like making connections with people is reading books to them, live. Few people reject it.
Ha!! That’s so cool!
I would love if someone offered to read to me. I enjoyed when teachers would read out loud to the class, found it relaxing. I do read myself though, usually a book a week.
YES book reading is a lot more rewarding than doomscrolling.
Thanks for sharing.
Shelly - Simply amazing video. EXACTLY my thoughts my entire life after leaving college (I am 76 with a BS and three advanced degrees one a JD). You are precisely correct from my Junior High through my final class…..we are taught the “test”, forget overall subject substance. I now do feel I really missed out. My house is now piled high in books, history, classics mostly. I I’m desperately trying to regain true reading as a skill. I am extremely pleased to see people of your obvious quality taking this issue on. Blow them away…..you are clearly focused on the right key issue. I recall hearing in my distant past “readers are leaders”. Your students are very fortunate to have you as a teacher and most importantly, a role model! May the Lord God Almighty richly bless you and your vital work. Thank you for making such an important difference….one student at a time.
I am so glad you resonated with this video! I really appreciate you! :)
What an awful way of teaching. I can’t imagine not having read The Giver, Animal Farm, The Outsiders, etc. because the school district didn’t deem it necessary
Thanks, Dillon!
What stops someone from reading it without a school forcing them to?
@@amazinggrapes3045 accessibility, awareness
“We are witnessing the greatest loss of human capital in history” said Jonathan Haidt about smart phones impact on the young (last summer on Triggernometry podcast, IIRC). I would not be prepared to accept his stark assessment if I had not been prepared by his new book’s pre-publication PowerPoint lectures posted here last January and December. The only hole in the generational impact and decline of the young’s socio-emotional development that has remained glaring was this: was it only observed in the US? No. Subsequent research shows the same measurable negative impacts internationally. Thus, I am glad to report that various no smart phones for teens and children becoming the new norm in law with countries in Europe and Australia. And until the same arises within the US in something tantamount to a moral panic, our young are at hazardous risk.
I totally agree. I see it as the biggest disaster humanity has ever faced and I don’t think I’m being dramatic.
Podcast😂😂😂
Thanks for sharing!