By design. Morons who don’t know how to think or fight back.
Zorgoroff on
“Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times.”
It seems like this might be part of the issue!
kikipitchingdelivery on
I love reading now and find it incredibly important, but when I was in school like ten years ago, never finished novels except like Catcher in the Rye. I relied on sparknotes. Hasn’t it always been this way? In the schools I went to, it was very rare for kids to actually read the books. Is it just getting a lot worse???
summon_pot_of_greed on
Anecdotal from my experience teaching:
Tons of kids can read full novels.
Many of them do not want to read full novels.
Many of them do. Probably a good 25% of my kids are always walking around with a book in hand.
A small, but quickly growing percentage, genuinely cannot read. Full novel or otherwise.
Lawspoke on
I bet these kids are reading 100k word fanfictions on Ao3 though.
On a more serious note, I think the author makes a good point here:
>Then that teen might want to move on to something else by Keegan, or by another Irish author, or make some other connection.
It might do schools some good to take a long look at their curriculums and update them a bit, mixing in some contemporary works with the classics. Maybe some of you had different experiences, but my English teachers acted like the publishing industry disappeared sometime in the 70s.
HauntedReader on
This is all basically a result of state testing but it’s easier to blame in attention span. Schools were moving to just excerpts a long while ago because that’s how they’re assessed.
Habeas-Opus on
I’m thankful to report that not all schools are run by idiots. My daughter is still assigned 3-4 novels per year in 10th grade. (US)
The_Actual_Sage on
As someone who was diagnosed with severe ADHD 20+ years ago, I remember when my symptoms were strange. I remember my classmates in middle school asking why I couldn’t finish assignments and why I had to read the same pages in books over and over. Now? Anecdotally, it seems much more common.
Not to sound dramatic, but if you told me social media/short form content/other boogeyman has essentially trained millions of otherwise healthy brains to have ADHD I wouldn’t be *that* surprised.
wewladendmylife on
I remember my highschool class had very few avid readers, a decent portion would just check sparknotes for assigned writing. During reading time in class we could all read at a pretty decent pace though, aside from one or two slow out-loud readers. This was a couple years before chat GPT. They could read at or around their grade level for the most part, they just didn’t enjoy “forced” reading from assigned literature which I can kind of understand.
Literacy and writing skills seem to have plummeted so quickly and I don’t think AI or any single factor can be blamed. That OU essay that was in the news was surprising in just how poorly it was written. Felt like reading a middle school rough draft.
I don’t really know how you turn this around. There are plenty of historical examples of low literacy rates rising. I can’t think of any examples of successful turnarounds of high literacy rates decreasing at a national level.
WitchyKitteh on
“They might need that school assignment – perhaps of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – to help them realize how rewarding reading a novel can be. Yes, start to finish.”
No? These school assignment choices tend to draw people away from the medium of reading (maybe ignoring John Green).
Ok_Height3499 on
Speaking about my three teen grandchildren, they are right.
averageduder on
There’s part of this that is a self fulfilling prophecy and schools not assigning novels because they don’t think the kids can so the kids don’t.
I’m a history teacher and in my semester length classes there’s always a book to read. It’s usually Slaughterhouse Five, but sometimes it’s Catch 22, sometimes it’s The Things They Carried, sometimes it’s something else. I actually just finished reading a student essay on S5 a few minutes ago.
Society might become less literate, but it won’t be my doing.
13 Comments
They’re correct.
By design. Morons who don’t know how to think or fight back.
“Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times.”
It seems like this might be part of the issue!
I love reading now and find it incredibly important, but when I was in school like ten years ago, never finished novels except like Catcher in the Rye. I relied on sparknotes. Hasn’t it always been this way? In the schools I went to, it was very rare for kids to actually read the books. Is it just getting a lot worse???
Anecdotal from my experience teaching:
Tons of kids can read full novels.
Many of them do not want to read full novels.
Many of them do. Probably a good 25% of my kids are always walking around with a book in hand.
A small, but quickly growing percentage, genuinely cannot read. Full novel or otherwise.
I bet these kids are reading 100k word fanfictions on Ao3 though.
On a more serious note, I think the author makes a good point here:
>Put a copy of Claire Keegan’s haunting novella, Foster, in a teenager’s hands – it’s only 130 pages long – and concerns about atrophied attention spans might fade. (Foster was one of the books recommended in this intriguing Guardian [article](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/13/this-extraordinary-story-never-goes-out-of-fashion-30-authors-on-the-books-they-give-to-everyone) about which books authors consistently give as gifts.)
>Then that teen might want to move on to something else by Keegan, or by another Irish author, or make some other connection.
It might do schools some good to take a long look at their curriculums and update them a bit, mixing in some contemporary works with the classics. Maybe some of you had different experiences, but my English teachers acted like the publishing industry disappeared sometime in the 70s.
This is all basically a result of state testing but it’s easier to blame in attention span. Schools were moving to just excerpts a long while ago because that’s how they’re assessed.
I’m thankful to report that not all schools are run by idiots. My daughter is still assigned 3-4 novels per year in 10th grade. (US)
As someone who was diagnosed with severe ADHD 20+ years ago, I remember when my symptoms were strange. I remember my classmates in middle school asking why I couldn’t finish assignments and why I had to read the same pages in books over and over. Now? Anecdotally, it seems much more common.
Not to sound dramatic, but if you told me social media/short form content/other boogeyman has essentially trained millions of otherwise healthy brains to have ADHD I wouldn’t be *that* surprised.
I remember my highschool class had very few avid readers, a decent portion would just check sparknotes for assigned writing. During reading time in class we could all read at a pretty decent pace though, aside from one or two slow out-loud readers. This was a couple years before chat GPT. They could read at or around their grade level for the most part, they just didn’t enjoy “forced” reading from assigned literature which I can kind of understand.
Literacy and writing skills seem to have plummeted so quickly and I don’t think AI or any single factor can be blamed. That OU essay that was in the news was surprising in just how poorly it was written. Felt like reading a middle school rough draft.
I don’t really know how you turn this around. There are plenty of historical examples of low literacy rates rising. I can’t think of any examples of successful turnarounds of high literacy rates decreasing at a national level.
“They might need that school assignment – perhaps of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – to help them realize how rewarding reading a novel can be. Yes, start to finish.”
No? These school assignment choices tend to draw people away from the medium of reading (maybe ignoring John Green).
Speaking about my three teen grandchildren, they are right.
There’s part of this that is a self fulfilling prophecy and schools not assigning novels because they don’t think the kids can so the kids don’t.
I’m a history teacher and in my semester length classes there’s always a book to read. It’s usually Slaughterhouse Five, but sometimes it’s Catch 22, sometimes it’s The Things They Carried, sometimes it’s something else. I actually just finished reading a student essay on S5 a few minutes ago.
Society might become less literate, but it won’t be my doing.