Posted on 02/03/2008 10:05:10 AM PST by tj21807
"As a school librarian, I wind up reading all sorts of damning reports on students' lack of reading skills. The latest dire news came from the National Endowment for the Arts' recent "To Read or Not to Read" study, which warned that "less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier." High school students are faring even worse: Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of "non-readers" has doubled over a 20-year period, from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. This multitasking generation, we're led to believe, can't focus on any item for longer than nine minutes."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Neither can I what?
My kids made me take them to Barnes & Noble last weekend so they could spend some of their Christmas money. They’d read all of the books they’d received as gifts and wanted more.
Why am I not surprised? half the problem is that they have nothing to read if they could read!!!
My friends and I spent hours reading every Star Trek book ever printed....but at least we read in junior high and high school.
Back then...star date 1986... we actually had to do book reports in school, that means we had to read books! Do that do that in schools these days?
American kids are intentionally being dumbed down by the public school system. Without the ability to think critically, it makes them easy pickings for the Democratic-socialist power structure. They’ll “get in line” and “vote the right way” much more easily.
American kids are intentionally being dumbed down by the public school system. Without the ability to think critically, it makes them easy pickings for the Democratic-socialist power structure. They’ll “get in line” and “vote the right way” much more easily.
“You ain’t just whistling Dixie!”
Demographically, the high school students of today bear little resemblance to the high school students of even 20 years ago.
Idiocratic civilizational collapse is coming, and its advance is accelerating.
I've forgotten,who said if you don't do well in school you'll be stuck in Iraq?
Reading isn’t dead everywhere. Our school district participates in the Accelerated Reader program.
The students must read in a balanced manner from these categories: Realistic Fiction, Fantasy, Biography, Non-fiction, Folk Tales/Fairy Tales, and Historical Fiction.
They are required to read a certain amount for their reading grade, but those who participate wholeheartedly earn trophies. My daughter is working on her third trophy of the year. :)
Our city also has a separate reading program. The children work their way up through dogtags, letters from the school officials, mayor, and governor, to culminate in another trophy.
Lastly, if the students in each school read a certain number of words/pages, they get to choose a stunt for the Principal to participate in. For the last three years, at our elementary school they met the goal in early spring, and went on to meet a second goal.
Our libraries are busy places. :)
My daughter has a monthly book report.
Should the public be taking advice from a librarian who can't read a highly-literate book with comprehension? I don't theenk so.
It just so happens that my column this week is about a great and influential librarian, rather than a sad and failed one.
Congressman Billybob
I had to walk 20 miles to school, up hill, both ways.
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The books these days are either novels or new-age rubbish. If you want something worthwhile you need to dig out the older books, maybe up to 1983. That was the end of the usefulness of books—1983. It’s too much to expect the kids to read stuff they know is junk.
BOOKmark
My daughter has a monthly book report.
WOW! A school out there that makes kids read books! Who knew?
I suggest: “The Way Things Ought To Be” by Rush Limbaugh
and trust me...depending on the age of my kid I would make them read it!
That doesn't count as reading.
I do a lot of reading etc and if I am discussing a book with someone who I am not entirely familiar with, I will ask the question “Do you read?”
More and more one gets a dumb look or possibly “Of course I can read, you calling me stupid” with my reply being “I was asking if you DID read, not CAN you”
And sorrowfully, the younger they are the less apt they are to ‘get’ it.
NOW, WHAT WAS THE TOPIC???
So?? Who says you have to read EVERY DAY? Reading is like eating—you can only read what’s good for you, not just read for the sake of reading.
Every day we come in here we are reading....Although I am not so sure all of us comprehend so well.
Think of all the poor kids who can’t read and can not come in here and join the fun??? Oh what a shame!
Does not count as reading. What is your reading list now?
You must have accumulated massive altitude, by the time you finished school!
;^)
I'm curious, why was it uphill both ways?
She’s nine. A little young for Rush, although she was reading Harry Potter at age 6.
My son is 14. I’ve lent him my copies of Rush’s books.
He loves Rush. I tell him it’s natural, since I had Rush on 6 hours a day when I was pregnant with him. :)
Our home school is heavy on the reading. History is mostly reading, with texts, biographies, and historical fiction. For English we read a great deal, both aloud and silently. For Economics, my son is reading Hazlitt. Etc.
If you want your kids to read more, enforce a somewhat early bedtime, with the caveat that they can read half an hour if they WANT to. Most will WANT to, and feel like they’re getting away with something if they stay up longer!
Little do they know that exactly what you had planned all along, nyark nyark.
I still read my Star Trek novels.
Who are you to decide what “reading” is?
You’ve got great kids. I’ve been a “readaholic” since I was 6 years old (I’m just shy of 51 now).
Too many kids nowadays (and adults for that matter) don’t understand the pure JOY of reading!
I don’t read long novels every month
That doesn’t count as reading.
I beg your pardon! Yes it does! Long novels, short novels, whatever is reading, and it improves reading skills. The novel in question however, and the information in it may not do much to improve one’s IQ, but it will improve one’s reading abilities.
Who are you to decide who is to decide?
You decide for yourself. Leave the rest of us alone.
So did I. In the snow. :-)
Truth won’t be found in novels. But, we prefer fables to truth.
Both my daughters used to do book reports. They often read what we read, so they often did reports from Ann Coulter, Rush, Hannity, Bill Bennett. I often think it must have looked a little funny for one kid to get up and talk about their Goosebumps book and mine to talk about the latest Ann Coulter book.
What a load of crap all this “kids can’t focus/ADD” mess is.
We have kids who are doped up on meds for ADD/ADHD who supposedly cannot sit still for 2 minutes, nor “achieve” in school...
Yet you go to their house each day, and they can master Guitar Hero, or Halo III, or whatever - without so much as budging out of their spot for hours on end.
It isn’t about an inability to focus on one thing, it is that they have corrupted their brains into needing additional stimuli to keep their interest (like their video games).
If they find it interesting (basically if it is something they want to do), then most of them can do it for extended times - but if they are not interested - then forget about it. And our society now says - give them meds to “help them focus”. Sounds like the old artists and musician’s excuse for getting high -
We are raising a generation of chemically-dependent children, and wonder why the WOD is a failure, and why our schools just get worse, regardless of the money poured in.
I just want people reading and not watching TV or playing video games which rots your brain!
Pardon me for being a bookworm...but what is Guitar Hero, or Halo III,????
Well...sheesh, what do they expect....they feed kids morbid, depressing crap as reading material, with murders, rapes, etc. (My grand daughter had to read “The White Cadillac” when in junior high.) Most books that are pushed are NOT very uplifting. I wouldn’t want to read that stuff either. Now, on the other hand, my niece reads voraciously, but has spent most of her years on fantasy reading...I introduced her to a few other things like O Henry and other classics, and she’s realizing at 17 she needs to get out of the “fantasy” world. BUT, not all kids are that motivated....they need to be ENCOURAGED to read GOOD books!
I would contend that the kids know that the real stuff is in fact on TV and not in what passes for books these days. Those kids who can pull a four-point and hit a decent major in College and go on to a PhD will have the world by the short hairs and of couirse will be reading the right stuff, not novels, not TV. The rest can become car mechanics and plumbers if they are lucky and win that way.
Did you know you can make a better living as a PLUMBER than as a Librarian or teacher????
I have not heard of The White Cadillac”. What is it about?
When I was in Junior High we had to read “To Kill a Mockingbird”
You can make a better living as a garbage person in most states than as a teacher or librarian.
40% do not graduate from HS now. Maybe that is an improvement since the 1800s when 99% didn’t get past 4th grade.
Indeed. Become a millionaire a lot quicker than most librarians could imagine.
it is like I said......novels are not crammed with knowledge...but they improve reading in general. Personally I think they are boring. I do know women who read them and the more they read, the faster they can read, not just novels, but everything they do read. It does improve memory because it keeps your mind active by reading.
I can’t find the summary on any website, and this was about 8 years ago.....but, it was bad enough that I wrote a letter to the School Board about it, suggesting that THEY read it. Only got a cursory letter back, but felt that I put them on notice. It was a depressing book, that’s what I recall....with rape and murder.
I had to walk 20 miles to school, up hill, both ways,
in the snow,
without any shoes,
after I fed the chickens,
and shoveled out the corrals,
carrying my younger brother on my back.
I take that back!!! Not all are boring!!
Jurassic Park was a novel....and I have only read it a million times! I camped out in the theatres waiting for the movie to come out, because the book was damn good and I knew the movie would be out of this world.....then I hid under the seat with all the other 8-year-olds every time the raptors came out because they were too scary!
You had feet?
Ah...
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