Why Don't Kids Read?

One of my favorite letters in WICOR is the R, which stands for Reading.  Reading is an essential skill for success in school.  It’s an essential skill in life.  I hope that the surgeon giving me a transplanted heart has read her medical textbook as well as current medical research.  I hope the CPA preparing my tax returns has read the current tax laws.  I hope that my students read the chapter I assigned for homework last week. 

Unfortunately, a cry of distress heard from teachers around the world (translated into English for the purposes of this e-mail) is “Kids today can’t read!”  Alongside that is its not-too-distant cousin, “Kids today don’t read!” 

This week’s Wednesday WICOR blog is a top-ten list devoted to answering that question:  Why Don’t Kids Read?  

Why Don’t Kids Read?

1.  They’ve never had to.  School has provided them with fill-in-the-blank worksheets, study guides, and study questions that allow the students to scan a text for boldface words or important phrases rather than trying to make meaning of the text.  The person who made the worksheet did all the comprehending for the students instead of making them do it on their own.

2.  They’re out of practice.  Like any skill, reading requires practice, and the less they read, the more their reading muscles atrophy and they become comprehension weaklings. 

3.  It’s not fun.  Believe it or not, most teenagers do not find reading about the of development of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia to be as thrilling as updating their Instagram, meeting their virtual friends online for a game of World of Warcraft, kicking a soccer ball, or IMing their BFFs. Some teens have discovered the joys of pleasure reading—hopefully an ever-increasing number in Plano due to self-selected reading being done in  English classes--, but that’s generally a well-kept secret in the adolescent world.

4.  It’s hard work.  Reading, especially the kind we expect in rigorous high school and college courses, does require some effort.  Struggling to follow a complex argument, grappling with a challenging sentence construction, and wading through some dense academic verbiage are all aspects of the reading adventure, and some people are not up for the challenge.

5.  They’re easily discouraged.  (See 4 above). When the going gets rough, some teenagers find it’s easier not to try.  

6. They don’t expect the text to make sense and aren’t willing to struggle when necessary to figure out what it means.  If I had a dollar for every time I head a student say, “I read it, but I didn’t understand it,” I could retire now.  Another favorite response:  “This chapter doesn’t make sense.”  Really?  It’s amazing that the professional textbook writers wrote something completely nonsensical and got it past the professional editors to have it published.  Really?   

7.  They don’t have reading role models.  Recent literacy studies indicate that pleasure reading is at an all-time low; in fact, a 2007 NEA report indicated that nearly 50% of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books—fiction or nonfiction--for pleasure, and overall adult readership is declining across the age spectrum. If students don’t see people they admire reading and talking about their reading, they have little incentive to try it on their own. 

8.  Some of them actually have legitimate reading impairments or difficulties.  Reading problems are widespread and diagnosed with increasing frequency. Unfortunately for these students, texts probably aren’t going to vanish from academia immediately, so they have to find modifications and adaptations to help them succeed on reading-related tasks. 

9.  They do read—just not books and articles.  Leisure reading today involves reading text messages, websites, blogs, status updates, and the captions scrolling across the bottom of the screen during the Academy Awards pre-show telecast—text which is short, to-the-point, quippy, and probably not laden with SAT-worthy vocabulary or challenging sentence structures.  In the world of academia (for which we are allegedly preparing our students), sometimes one has to read something longer than 140 characters, something that won’t fit on the screen of a smart phone.      

10.  Reading requires sustained concentration, and students have so many distractions these days.  In a world full of sound bites, white noise, music video-paced editing, and 3D high-tech spectacle, reading is decidedly less glamorous and flashy than what students do in their leisure time.  Reading requires the reader to provide his or her own special effects.  Doing that requires the undivided attention of the entire brain. Ouch.        

 

Stay tuned:  Next week’s blog will give you some AVID-approved strategies to help you begin solving the problem of why your kids can’t or don’t read.

 

I hope you carve out some time for pleasure reading this week!

Craig