Posted on 11/21/2007 4:49:20 PM PST by shrinkermd
In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.”
Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.
The study also examined results from reading tests administered to adults and found a similar trend: The percentage of adults who are proficient in reading prose has fallen at the same time that the proportion of people who read regularly for pleasure has declined.
Three years ago “Reading at Risk,” which was based on a study by the Census Bureau in 2002, provoked a debate among academics, publishers and others, some of whom argued that the report defined reading too narrowly by focusing on fiction, poetry and drama. Others argued that there had not been as much of a decline in reading as the report suggested.
This time the endowment did not limit its analysis to so-called literary reading. It selected studies that asked questions about “reading for fun” or “time spent reading for pleasure,” saying that this could refer to a range of reading materials.
“It’s no longer reasonable to debate whether the problem exists,” said Sunil Iyengar, director of research and analysis for the endowment. “Let’s not nitpick or wrangle over to what extent is reading in decline.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Don't know what that is. Read a lot, and it is all 'work.'
Yeah, Mom's gonna buy that one.
If the people are honestly not doing any reading at all, it’s a no-brainer that it would cause problems. I’m not sure that reading for pleasure is any more likely to be a benefit than reading in general though. I read a lot of technical stuff for work, and try to stay on top of the news. I would say neither of those is fun, but both certainly qualify as reading.
“Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading”
Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline in teachers wanting to spend extra time reading book reports. (fixed it)
See if they read, then they have to write about it and teachers have to red it.
They need a study for this? At age 60 I continue to read for pleasure as I have all my life - and, needless to say, read with a reasonably high level of skill. I can’t imagine life without reading, writing and expressing myself orally.
>...some of whom argued that the report defined reading too narrowly by focusing on fiction, poetry and drama. Others argued that there had not been as much of a decline in reading as the report suggested.
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generally, many would not define literacy as a familiarity with the european and american literature; conversely, the new literacy would amount to getting by in business, etc.
compare the movie “beowulf” to the original poem.
the former i viewed last friday at the opening. the visual special effects and sound dominated; the plot stumbled along.
imo the movie destroyed the original.
I think that there is quite a bit to this. My 5 yr old reads all of the time, and loves it. He is currently at a 4th grade level and keeps improving. He is doing significantly better than my neighbor’s twin 6th grade boys who spend all of their free time in front of the TV, gaming. He’s in a lot better shape physically too.
I also notice adults can’t spell anymore.
Lack of reading and spelling indicates lack of respect for the English language.
Another reason to make English the official language.
Okay, but not the only language. Six languages reading would not be too many.
Leisure time is spend with I pod stuck in the ears entertaing lower brain function at the expense of the cerebral cortex exercise given by reading.
Definately.
“These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people”
Who can blame them? School books are so boring, many recent high school and college graduates never want to look at another book again.
Other NYT HEADLINES:
“Washing hands helps prevent illness.” and “Teenagers have sex.”
They don’t teach spelling and grammar like they did when we were growing up in the 60’s and 70’ and like our parents and grandparents were taught. Someone along the way decided that repetion and drills were boring, therefore not effective ways to learn. Therefore, no one knows spelling rules, grammar rules and rarley read the classics. It’s pitiful.
That’s true. But school and books are suppose to be boring. That’s life. It’s all about training and going through ordeals to find out what you’re made of. That’s why military training is hard and excruciating instead of safe and fun.
Books are great, if they are good literature. High School English teachers ruined a lot of great literature by forcing the students to read it and analyze it for the "hidden meanings" instead of just reading it for its own enjoyment.
They aren't saying that people are scoring lower in grammar and spelling. They are saying that people are scoring lower in reading comprehension. Some reading comprehension tests can be faulty because they are based on conclusions about the meaning of the literature that are made by the test maker. I'd like to see the tests on which these claims are based.
For parents of young children out there, it is essential that children get a detailed evaluation of their reading skills very early on. Special care needs to be given both to eyesight and to dyslexia, which can be either obvious or subtle, yet strongly impact on their reading.
The bottom line is that anything that either interferes with reading, or makes it less enjoyable, should be taken care of as much as possible at a young age.
It is not unrealistic that in the future, children will be given special training to help them achieve and maintain their focus for progressively longer periods of time, while performing complex tasks, without getting distracted.
Children who bounce back and forth from being focused to being unfocused, will have a much harder time studying and performing in tests. If you can’t concentrate, it is hard for you to succeed in just about anything.
And finally, helping children to enjoy reading also means reading more yourself. If you can provide at least some context to what they are reading, to include pictures and background, it acts to help seed their imagination.
For example, most children have never seen a castle, much less been inside one, so they have few images in their minds of what a castle is, what it contains, what its purpose is, or what people who live in a castle looked like.
daily pleasure readingDon't know what that is. Read a lot, and it is all 'work.'
They pay you to read FR? Where do I sign?
Less reading could well be a proxy measure for time spent watching TV or playing computer games. It could be that the problem is the TV and computer games, not the lack of reading.
It’s a good thing they didn’t include my household in this “study” or their numbers would have been totally screwed up.
Reading is just natural for us, including our 9 year old.
I read 4 books per month and 8 newspapers a day and I’m still retarded.
Now THERE'S the problem. Too many teens today aren't reading books because they're too busy chatting online about celebrities and reading MySpace where people invent their own spellings and say stupid things.
I know a homeschool family that owns 6,000 books, at last count. Our family owns approximately 2,000, at last count. I can’t imagine a family owning only 10 books. All I can say is, their homes must be much neater than mine! ;-) Our home is overflowing with books, even though I’ve gotten rid of many. But my kids love books, so I guess that’s the tradeoff.
bump
“I can’t imagine a family owning only 10 books.”
There’s a catch- your home and the other homes you mention have books that are interesting, creative, well-written, imaginative, intelligently written, and alive. But you won’t find books like that in public schools, and the large volumes of homework limits those kids’ exposure to the kinds of books you and your friends read.
I remember the books in school. I think they were boring to me mostly because someone was telling me to read them. ;-) The books I enjoyed the most were the ones I would sneak into class and read secretly when I was supposed to be doing something else... lol.
Uhhh...Duhhh!
I don’t ‘read’ FR. FR is more like short conversations with people who walk by your house while you sit on the front stoop in your rocker. ‘Work’ has nothing to do with what one gets paid to do. It’s like the character in ‘The Mandarins’ who was hammering up some pictures and one of the characters said, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be doing work. Put that hammer down.”
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