I think cell phones and internet has alot to do with it. Video games have desensitized. Child have no responsibility now. Dishes, homework, and a bath do t exist to them anymore. Spelling doesn't because of auto correct. But as a father, it is my job to instill those principles. Hmmmmm.
Wes, this means the world to me that you took the time to respond to my ramblings. I hear what you’re saying about cell phones and my own intention is to do some research on it. Xoxo
Hi! High school English teaxher chiming in here with an off-the-cuff response.
My biggest theory lies in the perception of the value of being educated. In other words, kids don't see the value in being educated for the sake of it. They see it as a means to and end, and oh by the way, that's a fallacy we teachers propogate. I'm not anti-STEM, but so much of the educational push seems to revolve around the prescribed HS to College to Big Money Job model.
Yet somewhere in there we've forgotten that there is value to learning and being educated, to reading poetry and great novels, to history, to Beethoven. If there isnt a $ at the end of it, students aren't going to full invest. And I don't think society has done a good enough job of laying that foundation, and we teachers don't have the language to stave off the erosion, to stem those tides (pun intended).
I taught for 4 years: ELA 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. I currently homeschool my 12 and 8 year olds, and teach at our homeschool co-op. I have a 17 yo who attends public high school. I also have a 5 month old baby.
The following are reasons I believe that are contributing to kids not reading. (I agree with a previous commenter that learning and reading are very linked. Also deep thinking and reading.)
1. Screens. As others have already said. Shortens attention. Entertains instead of engages. Too easy.
2. Not enough boredom. This elaborates on the above point. Kids just aren’t bored enough to engage with books in their free time. There are so many other things to do that are “easier”. I’ve seen research that it takes 45 minutes for kids to really settle in to free play. They’ll wander around only barely figuring out what to do with each other or alone. Very few kids get enough free time to get to that 45 minute marker. Similarly with reading. You need lots of empty time to settle down to read.
3. Over stimulated. There is so much unnatural light and stimulation in our world. So much going and going. Reading is a calm and solitary activity. Perhaps they also don’t have enough real human connection…
4. School is too competitive and pressure filled. Just like work in America, it follows you home at night and on the weekend. When I was in school, I was a high achiever and had homework but stuff was due during school hours. Having homework regularly due via google classroom at 11:59 pm means my daughter is regularly doing her homework late in the evening. Yes, she could do it a different time but it doesn’t feel set up to help her do better. She also gets chronic app alerts and group messages from her extra curriculars. Her first theatre audition is two weeks before school starts. That can be done because the director can message them all and tell them to be there. We would have had to show up to school.
5. Because of above, students are burnt out. This also lines up with starting academics way too early.
6. Students don’t have time to free read in the classroom. They are allowed to be doing something online when they are done with their work.
7. Reading is less part of the culture. Lots of adult readers read on Kindles or their phone. People even have the Bible on their phone at church. Young people just see screens. Hardly anyone is carrying a book around with them anymore. The kids don’t see reading as a cultural practice.
Ways to combat this:
1. Limit screen time.
2. Increase the prevalence of reading culturally. Read real books in front of children/students. Increase free reading time. (See The Book Whisperer).
3. Increase margin in the child’s life. Less to do. More boredom.
4. Have times when the only choice is to read: before bed you can read or you can turn out the lights. A car trip without screens.
I’m sure there is a lot more. Maybe I need to turn this into a full blown post instead of just a comment. Thank you for the thought provoking prompts.
Camilla, thank you for your detailed post. I agree with everything you are saying. We have independent reading in my classroom every day for 20 mins sometimes longer as the year progresses. Some student grow to love that time but each year it is fewer and fewer. This could be because fewer are able to read well. I love your ideas on lack of boredom. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of that before and it makes so much sense. It makes me think that we’ve started treaded children and teens like mini adults and they are not equipped to adult. I would love if you turned your ideas into a post. My simple goal is to create a dialogue. Surely, if we all work together we can do better for the future kids and teens.
This is a vague and general response, hastily typed as I make dinner.
Like you said, it’s really complicated. I’m responding as a former middle and high school English teacher, and current PhD student/college lecturer, and also as a parent. I taught at private schools, but the problems are there too.
One thing I think is that kids are exposed to academics way too early. My son (2), is so curious and loves learning and reading. He has no screen time. But if he has to start formal academics before he’s developmentally ready, then that sucks the joy out of it. I also think that kids aren’t being adequately prepared at lower levels, eg aren’t being exposed to challenging texts in ways that help them learn to read well and enjoy the challenge. The way kids have been taught to read is now being acknowledged as a bad move, and that contributes too.
That issue snowballs—they’re burnt out and underprepared in middle school, and by the time they get to college they’re even more underprepared. One of the schools I taught at was a homeschool hybrid, and it really underscored this for me—the kids who had been homeschooled for a while preserved their love of learning (generally; there are always exceptions), while the kids who transferred from public school were often there because they were burnt out. Of course, I didn’t see the thriving public school kids because they stay in public school, so take that with a grain of salt.
Oh! What could be done differently: play-based preschool and kindergarten, phonics-based reading instruction, drastically reduced or eliminated screen time, really good books, read alouds that are just a bit above reading level to stretch kids, lots of time to move their bodies even past kindergarten. All of this starts way before middle school, but I think it would have huge effects.
I love your suggestions. I also like what you said about exposing kids to academia too soon. I have said that for years and I always get these funny looks. Little kids should be playing and playing is a type of learning.
I am the mother of five children, ages 21, 19, 15, 11, and 9. I am very interested in what you are tackling here. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time to write a full reply but I can give you some initial thoughts. My younger kids do not like going to the library. Not at all. I loved it. It’s like going to a free bookstore I can spend hours at the library. If I drag them there with me they are complaining, asking when we can go back home. What do they do at home? Watch on-demand streaming whatever. We limit Roblox/Mincraft time with a 45 minute timer but they have to practice their musical instruments first. (My oldest two are in a special school for students with significant disabilities. They are each there until they are 22. Their education looks different but I’ve approached literacy similarly, regarding exposure to books but not with expectations.)
However, for all the kids —and they’ve been educated in different ways (private school, public school, special education, early childhood educated for the older ones, kindergarten starts for the last two)… none of my kids seem to like learning. We have books all over the place. My husband and I are constantly reading. We’ve made books accessible in their rooms. I’ve read to them at night until they stopped wanting me to. When my 11yo reads it is usually a graphic novel. Sigh.
They only want screens. They are willing to draw. My youngest one writes stories, but I don’t know how long that will last because her older siblings all wrote as well but then they stopped.
They’ve become consumers, not producers. They want entertainment but not enrichment. They want comfort and no challenge. I don’t know what to do. I don’t blame teachers. My kids are above benchmarks in everything, but I don’t think they want to learn. I don’t know how to get them out of this rut. I’ve taken the iPad away (it doesn’t even get charged). The streaming shows are on in the background while they draw. I suppose that’s better than YouTube. But still, I can’t help but think this isn’t a good thing, this current life. They don’t read nearly as much as I did at their ages.
Zina, thank you so much for your reply. I feel your response in my core, and I see this in my own children 21 and 17) as well. It’s the decline in the love of learning that breaks my heart.
For me the decline in reading goes hand in hand with learning. Reading is no longer the escape it once was. Sure, there was a lot of pulp out there but I would accidentally pick up things that challenged me. And stories help us understand relationships. Kids don’t interact with each other so much anymore… they don’t know how to ask each other in real dates, etc. What a world…
Every English teacher loves a good pun. I like your thoughts on the value of being educated separate from just making money. You’re totally right, we have lost sight of the beauty of just learning.
Ended up here looking for the second War and Peace bookmark (thanks for making them). I happened to see this post and thought I would respond, even if it's several months late. I'm also an educator, with 20+ years of experience and have just about taught it all. Started in 3rd grade, then fourth. I then made the jump to secondary and have taught MS math, Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Physical Science, Economics, and a number of electives. I currently teach TechEd - mostly woodshop, welding, electronics, and engineering & design. I started in private school and am currently teaching in a rural public school. Most of that I'm licensed for, although I have taught a few things on an emergency license. The joys of teaching in small schools - you do what they need you to.
Anyways, my point is that I've taught a lot and have quite a wide range of experiences. I've seen the same things that you are seeing. I get kids in high school that are passing classes, receiving "proficient" ratings on state testing, and graduate, but are functionally illiterate. They have little reading endurance (I'm not sure if you saw the Atlantic article a few months ago where college professors were discussing their students who had never read a complete novel in high school, many of them never even assigned one). They rely on YouTube audio versions of books and online summaries to get through any reading they are assigned. That's when they are assigned books to read anyways. Too often is some short excerpt from an anthology rather than novels. When they are assigned novels its usually something recent so that its more "relevant" to them (don't get me started).
I think some of the other commenters have laid out much of what's going on. Phones and other electronic devices certainly aren't helping anything (see Anxious Generation). We start doing academics too early and "teach" the curiosity out of the students. We've "progressed" to teaching reading in ways that aren't effective rather than do what has worked for centuries. Schools teach reading as "skills" that can be tested by the state and kids have stopped seeing the relevancy of it. Maybe if we got away from the "how is this relevant to me?" questions and instead asked, "What can we learn from this?" we might see the actual relevancy of some of these texts. From my experience its too often, "read this chapter and then answer these comprehension questions." That's fine to an extent, but maybe there should be some actual dialogue about these great works of literature rather than fill in the blank questions. Many parents also don't read and so its not modeled to them either at home or at school.
As you mentioned, its not just reading, its learning in general. There doesn't seem to be an understanding as learning as a way of life. Its become completely transactional and schools are absolutely complicit in this. I know from my administration everything is about "college and career readiness" and that "college" part is just more education so that you can get a different kind of job that requires more hoops to jump through. It isn't because education has value for its own sake. On top of that we've "reformed" education by giving every student a device. The 1:1 trend, I think, is an experiment on humans gone terribly wrong. We were promised so much, with so little actual return. At least for us. The EdTech companies have made lots of money, I assume. Those devices are really just distraction machines with multiple tabs and access to a thousand games, YouTube videos, and the like. I forget who it was, but someone wrote here on Substack that the primary purpose of something is what you do with it 80% of the time. If he gave us a hammer we of course would look for something to hit with it. Well, more than 80% of the time kids are using screens for entertainment. So when we give them a laptop or tablet, their going to want to use it for entertainment. That's the primary purpose of a device with a screen for them. Then we're shocked when we catch them on YouTube instead of writing their essay.
We've also gone a way from kids learning and memorizing a wide range of information. Instead its become, "They don't need to memorize that. They can just look it up." We've externalized our memories and as a result students no longer have the background knowledge to understand what they are reading. Imagine trying to read War and Peace if you know nothing about Russian culture at the time, or the Napoleonic Wars, or even a basic understanding of Russian or European geography. "Call me Ishmael" makes no sense as the first line of Moby Dick if you don't have an understanding of the Old Testament. Why is Huck so torn up about helping Jim get to freedom? It doesn't make sense if you don't understand that many people at the time thought they had a moral duty to report runaway slaves. You get the point I'm sure.
I feel very blessed that I have three kids who all read. My wife and I are both readers, we read to them every night, and we've severely restricted their screen time, and for the most part they don't fight us on it. They seem to have an understanding, especially when we point out the difference between what they do with their free time ( ie. actually play, often outside) and what their friends do. They are all in public school, but if I had the ability to I would either homeschool or put them in a classical school. From my experience, they read a lot, write a lot, and especially the classics. All good things in my opinion.
Just a few of my thoughts. I'm sure I wasn't particularly articulate, but hopefully there's something there to continue the conversation.
I think cell phones and internet has alot to do with it. Video games have desensitized. Child have no responsibility now. Dishes, homework, and a bath do t exist to them anymore. Spelling doesn't because of auto correct. But as a father, it is my job to instill those principles. Hmmmmm.
Wes, this means the world to me that you took the time to respond to my ramblings. I hear what you’re saying about cell phones and my own intention is to do some research on it. Xoxo
Hi! High school English teaxher chiming in here with an off-the-cuff response.
My biggest theory lies in the perception of the value of being educated. In other words, kids don't see the value in being educated for the sake of it. They see it as a means to and end, and oh by the way, that's a fallacy we teachers propogate. I'm not anti-STEM, but so much of the educational push seems to revolve around the prescribed HS to College to Big Money Job model.
Yet somewhere in there we've forgotten that there is value to learning and being educated, to reading poetry and great novels, to history, to Beethoven. If there isnt a $ at the end of it, students aren't going to full invest. And I don't think society has done a good enough job of laying that foundation, and we teachers don't have the language to stave off the erosion, to stem those tides (pun intended).
I taught for 4 years: ELA 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. I currently homeschool my 12 and 8 year olds, and teach at our homeschool co-op. I have a 17 yo who attends public high school. I also have a 5 month old baby.
The following are reasons I believe that are contributing to kids not reading. (I agree with a previous commenter that learning and reading are very linked. Also deep thinking and reading.)
1. Screens. As others have already said. Shortens attention. Entertains instead of engages. Too easy.
2. Not enough boredom. This elaborates on the above point. Kids just aren’t bored enough to engage with books in their free time. There are so many other things to do that are “easier”. I’ve seen research that it takes 45 minutes for kids to really settle in to free play. They’ll wander around only barely figuring out what to do with each other or alone. Very few kids get enough free time to get to that 45 minute marker. Similarly with reading. You need lots of empty time to settle down to read.
3. Over stimulated. There is so much unnatural light and stimulation in our world. So much going and going. Reading is a calm and solitary activity. Perhaps they also don’t have enough real human connection…
4. School is too competitive and pressure filled. Just like work in America, it follows you home at night and on the weekend. When I was in school, I was a high achiever and had homework but stuff was due during school hours. Having homework regularly due via google classroom at 11:59 pm means my daughter is regularly doing her homework late in the evening. Yes, she could do it a different time but it doesn’t feel set up to help her do better. She also gets chronic app alerts and group messages from her extra curriculars. Her first theatre audition is two weeks before school starts. That can be done because the director can message them all and tell them to be there. We would have had to show up to school.
5. Because of above, students are burnt out. This also lines up with starting academics way too early.
6. Students don’t have time to free read in the classroom. They are allowed to be doing something online when they are done with their work.
7. Reading is less part of the culture. Lots of adult readers read on Kindles or their phone. People even have the Bible on their phone at church. Young people just see screens. Hardly anyone is carrying a book around with them anymore. The kids don’t see reading as a cultural practice.
Ways to combat this:
1. Limit screen time.
2. Increase the prevalence of reading culturally. Read real books in front of children/students. Increase free reading time. (See The Book Whisperer).
3. Increase margin in the child’s life. Less to do. More boredom.
4. Have times when the only choice is to read: before bed you can read or you can turn out the lights. A car trip without screens.
I’m sure there is a lot more. Maybe I need to turn this into a full blown post instead of just a comment. Thank you for the thought provoking prompts.
Camilla, thank you for your detailed post. I agree with everything you are saying. We have independent reading in my classroom every day for 20 mins sometimes longer as the year progresses. Some student grow to love that time but each year it is fewer and fewer. This could be because fewer are able to read well. I love your ideas on lack of boredom. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of that before and it makes so much sense. It makes me think that we’ve started treaded children and teens like mini adults and they are not equipped to adult. I would love if you turned your ideas into a post. My simple goal is to create a dialogue. Surely, if we all work together we can do better for the future kids and teens.
I’m so glad you are still providing time in the classroom for reading!
It’s my hill that I will die on.
This is a vague and general response, hastily typed as I make dinner.
Like you said, it’s really complicated. I’m responding as a former middle and high school English teacher, and current PhD student/college lecturer, and also as a parent. I taught at private schools, but the problems are there too.
One thing I think is that kids are exposed to academics way too early. My son (2), is so curious and loves learning and reading. He has no screen time. But if he has to start formal academics before he’s developmentally ready, then that sucks the joy out of it. I also think that kids aren’t being adequately prepared at lower levels, eg aren’t being exposed to challenging texts in ways that help them learn to read well and enjoy the challenge. The way kids have been taught to read is now being acknowledged as a bad move, and that contributes too.
That issue snowballs—they’re burnt out and underprepared in middle school, and by the time they get to college they’re even more underprepared. One of the schools I taught at was a homeschool hybrid, and it really underscored this for me—the kids who had been homeschooled for a while preserved their love of learning (generally; there are always exceptions), while the kids who transferred from public school were often there because they were burnt out. Of course, I didn’t see the thriving public school kids because they stay in public school, so take that with a grain of salt.
Oh! What could be done differently: play-based preschool and kindergarten, phonics-based reading instruction, drastically reduced or eliminated screen time, really good books, read alouds that are just a bit above reading level to stretch kids, lots of time to move their bodies even past kindergarten. All of this starts way before middle school, but I think it would have huge effects.
I love your suggestions. I also like what you said about exposing kids to academia too soon. I have said that for years and I always get these funny looks. Little kids should be playing and playing is a type of learning.
I am the mother of five children, ages 21, 19, 15, 11, and 9. I am very interested in what you are tackling here. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time to write a full reply but I can give you some initial thoughts. My younger kids do not like going to the library. Not at all. I loved it. It’s like going to a free bookstore I can spend hours at the library. If I drag them there with me they are complaining, asking when we can go back home. What do they do at home? Watch on-demand streaming whatever. We limit Roblox/Mincraft time with a 45 minute timer but they have to practice their musical instruments first. (My oldest two are in a special school for students with significant disabilities. They are each there until they are 22. Their education looks different but I’ve approached literacy similarly, regarding exposure to books but not with expectations.)
However, for all the kids —and they’ve been educated in different ways (private school, public school, special education, early childhood educated for the older ones, kindergarten starts for the last two)… none of my kids seem to like learning. We have books all over the place. My husband and I are constantly reading. We’ve made books accessible in their rooms. I’ve read to them at night until they stopped wanting me to. When my 11yo reads it is usually a graphic novel. Sigh.
They only want screens. They are willing to draw. My youngest one writes stories, but I don’t know how long that will last because her older siblings all wrote as well but then they stopped.
They’ve become consumers, not producers. They want entertainment but not enrichment. They want comfort and no challenge. I don’t know what to do. I don’t blame teachers. My kids are above benchmarks in everything, but I don’t think they want to learn. I don’t know how to get them out of this rut. I’ve taken the iPad away (it doesn’t even get charged). The streaming shows are on in the background while they draw. I suppose that’s better than YouTube. But still, I can’t help but think this isn’t a good thing, this current life. They don’t read nearly as much as I did at their ages.
Zina, thank you so much for your reply. I feel your response in my core, and I see this in my own children 21 and 17) as well. It’s the decline in the love of learning that breaks my heart.
For me the decline in reading goes hand in hand with learning. Reading is no longer the escape it once was. Sure, there was a lot of pulp out there but I would accidentally pick up things that challenged me. And stories help us understand relationships. Kids don’t interact with each other so much anymore… they don’t know how to ask each other in real dates, etc. What a world…
Every English teacher loves a good pun. I like your thoughts on the value of being educated separate from just making money. You’re totally right, we have lost sight of the beauty of just learning.
Ended up here looking for the second War and Peace bookmark (thanks for making them). I happened to see this post and thought I would respond, even if it's several months late. I'm also an educator, with 20+ years of experience and have just about taught it all. Started in 3rd grade, then fourth. I then made the jump to secondary and have taught MS math, Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Physical Science, Economics, and a number of electives. I currently teach TechEd - mostly woodshop, welding, electronics, and engineering & design. I started in private school and am currently teaching in a rural public school. Most of that I'm licensed for, although I have taught a few things on an emergency license. The joys of teaching in small schools - you do what they need you to.
Anyways, my point is that I've taught a lot and have quite a wide range of experiences. I've seen the same things that you are seeing. I get kids in high school that are passing classes, receiving "proficient" ratings on state testing, and graduate, but are functionally illiterate. They have little reading endurance (I'm not sure if you saw the Atlantic article a few months ago where college professors were discussing their students who had never read a complete novel in high school, many of them never even assigned one). They rely on YouTube audio versions of books and online summaries to get through any reading they are assigned. That's when they are assigned books to read anyways. Too often is some short excerpt from an anthology rather than novels. When they are assigned novels its usually something recent so that its more "relevant" to them (don't get me started).
I think some of the other commenters have laid out much of what's going on. Phones and other electronic devices certainly aren't helping anything (see Anxious Generation). We start doing academics too early and "teach" the curiosity out of the students. We've "progressed" to teaching reading in ways that aren't effective rather than do what has worked for centuries. Schools teach reading as "skills" that can be tested by the state and kids have stopped seeing the relevancy of it. Maybe if we got away from the "how is this relevant to me?" questions and instead asked, "What can we learn from this?" we might see the actual relevancy of some of these texts. From my experience its too often, "read this chapter and then answer these comprehension questions." That's fine to an extent, but maybe there should be some actual dialogue about these great works of literature rather than fill in the blank questions. Many parents also don't read and so its not modeled to them either at home or at school.
As you mentioned, its not just reading, its learning in general. There doesn't seem to be an understanding as learning as a way of life. Its become completely transactional and schools are absolutely complicit in this. I know from my administration everything is about "college and career readiness" and that "college" part is just more education so that you can get a different kind of job that requires more hoops to jump through. It isn't because education has value for its own sake. On top of that we've "reformed" education by giving every student a device. The 1:1 trend, I think, is an experiment on humans gone terribly wrong. We were promised so much, with so little actual return. At least for us. The EdTech companies have made lots of money, I assume. Those devices are really just distraction machines with multiple tabs and access to a thousand games, YouTube videos, and the like. I forget who it was, but someone wrote here on Substack that the primary purpose of something is what you do with it 80% of the time. If he gave us a hammer we of course would look for something to hit with it. Well, more than 80% of the time kids are using screens for entertainment. So when we give them a laptop or tablet, their going to want to use it for entertainment. That's the primary purpose of a device with a screen for them. Then we're shocked when we catch them on YouTube instead of writing their essay.
We've also gone a way from kids learning and memorizing a wide range of information. Instead its become, "They don't need to memorize that. They can just look it up." We've externalized our memories and as a result students no longer have the background knowledge to understand what they are reading. Imagine trying to read War and Peace if you know nothing about Russian culture at the time, or the Napoleonic Wars, or even a basic understanding of Russian or European geography. "Call me Ishmael" makes no sense as the first line of Moby Dick if you don't have an understanding of the Old Testament. Why is Huck so torn up about helping Jim get to freedom? It doesn't make sense if you don't understand that many people at the time thought they had a moral duty to report runaway slaves. You get the point I'm sure.
I feel very blessed that I have three kids who all read. My wife and I are both readers, we read to them every night, and we've severely restricted their screen time, and for the most part they don't fight us on it. They seem to have an understanding, especially when we point out the difference between what they do with their free time ( ie. actually play, often outside) and what their friends do. They are all in public school, but if I had the ability to I would either homeschool or put them in a classical school. From my experience, they read a lot, write a lot, and especially the classics. All good things in my opinion.
Just a few of my thoughts. I'm sure I wasn't particularly articulate, but hopefully there's something there to continue the conversation.