this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Mate I've taught more than a thousand students and the level of engagement on reading ... Anything ... Is depressingly low.
I asked my students to read a chapter of a book over a term. We would read a section every week and Monday would be a reading group where we would discuss what we read and then present our groups findings. Each section was 10 to 20 pages. About 10% of the student body would read anything.
It made me sad
I was in advanced English classes throughout high school, and even in those most people just read the Cliff Notes and regurgitated them. Meanwhile I read not only the assigned works but also on my own. And those assigned works were almost all things I hated reading.
The worst part was when my teachers saw me reading a book for pleasure they would tell me it wasn't "real" reading because apparently you have to hate what you're reading for it to count.
I'd be okay with cliff notes. At least they learned something
Tbh I have loved reading my whole life and especially when I was a kid. But every single book I ever had to read for a class was a slog that I could not get motivated for. At least for me, the simple fact that it was assigned reading destroyed my interest, even if it was a book that I would have enjoyed otherwise. I've heard similar stories from many people who never enjoyed reading until they started doing it of their own volition.
We were reading a part of a book on cyber warfare which describes the various stages of shenanigans that led us to the first cyber war against Ukraine.
It's non technical.
I teach networking and security
For many people, reading is boring. And people have different attention spans and different types of brains.
Some people have internal monologues and some don't.
Some people instantly conjure up rich visuals when given info, some don't.
I suspect many readers who like reading tend to easily create visuals in their minds. I can visualize things but it's not always automatic or detailed and so reading seems like an artform based on older less fun technology.
A lot of times kids are bored and annoyed with all the other subjects going on too. They have to memorize facts that could be easily googled, they have to take tests in different subjects. School was mostly excruciating when I did it and whenever I could i zoned out to give my brain a break from paying attention to boring things.
We should let students take more classes they want. Let science types do more science, let less intellectual kids learn to repair AC units, and let people who love to read be in classes with others like them.
If in my school I had done much harder science classes and more computer classes and less history and literature and other things that i mostly endured to get a good grade, i would have been happier. Also AP and Honors classes mess things up because if you are smart then not taking AP or Honors lowers your GPA and messes up your ability to just choose what you want
And sometimes it's the role of education to expose students to things they benefit from but wouldn't necessarily seek out on their own. Reading comprehension and use of language is a vital skill to function as an adult in society, and to acquire that you need to read, a lot. Short texts, long texts, different styles, poetry, prose, etc. There's really no way around it.
Dont you know kids though? Boring is death.
/s
I have yet to see evidence of this being the case.
You haven't been looking very hard I gather. There are numerous studies done on the benefits of reading, you could use your preferred search engine to read a few of them perhaps.
My real point is is that most people just coast through life with no real intellectual stimulation. They will even deride people with hobbies more involved then watching sitcoms and critize students when they take classes not related to a career path
Is it actually a vital skill though? I feel like this isn't really true.
Most jobs don't require precise and skillful use of language.
Society is a lot more than just work though - and I'd argue it's the least interesting part - but yes, if you're going to communicate with people, verbally or in writing, it's going to be beneficial to you in your line of work.
But how about being able to understand other people and the world around you better and perhaps contribute to it? Be able to involve yourself in the democratic process perhaps or otherwise benefit your community? I could go on and on, but who cares about any of that anymore, right?
It probably doesn't matter.
Nuances of language don't really matter with large political topics like:
Laws based on biblical concepts vs individual freedom
or
Immigrant rights vs. Impact on locals
or
Supporting people with government subsidies by taxing wealthy people vs people fend for themselves
These large societal differences don't need nuanced or clever language to be debated, nor are they somehow informed by learning boredom tolerance by getting through some snoreathon book written hundreds of years ago like the great gatsby
ironically i once told a guy the great gatsby was my favorite book to try to seem smart because i wanted to suck his dick, so i cant say i never got any benefit from that book.
So your argument is politics should be cartoonish, stylized and theatrical instead of nuanced and actually constructive? Congratulations, you got your wish. Just be sure to make the most of it before the masters of simplification and emotionally charged language - the fascists - take over, it's just a matter of time I guess.
Arguments about politics don’t need a 2000 word essay on the meaning of Daisy’s pier light being green instead of yellow.
No one is arguing that. Less-dumbed-down, thoughtful and well-formulated arguments and debates would benefit everyone, though. Especially if the audience is educated enough to be able to appreciate them.
pier light?
The mansion in which Daisy resides with whats-his-name has a light at its end. It blinks green.
What? Why?
Probably so ships don’t bump into it?
I am really glad the hot dude never asked me about that
I disagree that nuanced and sophisticated english language skills are needed for debates. Even getting into complex debates can be done without nuanced language.
I think if 3 years of English Lit were replaced with ecological science, society would be less likely to perish.
I am not as optomistic as you that somehow complex boring books are a panacea for fascism, which is not only linked to ignorance, but also religion and usually prejudiced analysis that is passed on through word of mouth or online and rarely refuted. Hamlet won't stop Nazism.
Facism also tends to increase when groups in society feel like their quality of life is declining and they don't understand the economics involved or how to change it and invent a type of mythology to explain things they can't grasp. A better way of reducing fascism is by teaching an anti-fascism course in school AND reducing inflation by not doing things that will cause bizarre secondary economic effects but sound good to naive voters.
For instance:
"let's raise the minimum wage to 30 dollar so everyone is comfortable"
vs
"let's eliminate the minimum wage entirely and provide free health care and a $200 housing voucher for people who need it funded by taxes"
one of those makes people happy but fucks up the economy and increases inflation, and one improves things without causing bizarre secondary problems, and the average voter doesn't know the difference
The idea that "Oh, if all the morons likely to believe facist ideology are just taught Hamlet, it will all be okay" probably over-estimates the iq of the average person who would read it. Facism stems more from changes in living standards and a lack of feelings of control rather than from an ability to reason.
Well, of course nobody said that, it's a gross oversimplification of my argument - a strawman - which I guess is very fitting in this context.
That's not true, it's literally what you said.
To quoeth you exactly, you said "Hamlet, that will fix them Nazis."
Is this comment sarcastic? Because yes actually I do think that a firm grasp of language and rhetoric are incredibly valuable in both discussing and understanding all of those topics.
Literally all of it is true
Including the "favorite book" part, which ultimately worked
That sucker got sucked, probably due to misbelieving my lies of erudition
Glad that you rate your own subjective opinions as true.
I am also glad i rate my own subjective opinions as true
I can't visualize nearly at all and when I was younger I would devour a novel daily. I have ADHD and a strong internal monologue.
I don't read books very often now and I think the reason for this is that my need is somewhat met (and maybe partially overwhelmed) by reading things online, unfortunately the majority of the things I read online are lower quality and creativity than a book would be.
What if the visuals and monologues are trained and not gifted?
I hated reading for years and years, I read well above grade level in school but honestly hated it.
Decades later, I got into audio books, which kickstarted me reading.
The visuals I've gotten over the years went from almost nothing to vivid recreations.
An interesting thought... I was always a bookworm and absolutely devoured books as a child. But it's definitely true that I have the full imagination suite running in my head. 3D environments and objects, picture, sound, even little echoes of smell, touch and taste...I probably wouldn't find fiction as engaging without that trait. But is me having that because I was given the opportunity to develop that skill early? My parents read to me quite a lot when I was small after all... Or is it just entirely innate?
The whole thing about school is that it isn't generally great at personal tailoring and in some instances there's some ethics around kneecaping students by just funneling them into what's easy and closing off avenues that they might find engaging or need to engage with later. If you decide to not learn language skills and you later decide you want to go to University you are just kind of screwed. A certain amount of basics is just training you to play the game. Brains are also a develop and use it or don't have it and lose it situation. What is actually being asked when a kid is given a memorization task for instance is less about them being able to cough up that specific fact later and more about the mental process of forming that neural connection so you can apply it later. If you don't train the ability to memorize a memory remains weak. It's in part why different generations appear to have different mental strengths and weaknesses characteristically. A mind needs to train individual processes and tweaks in school programs are always trying to optimize. Some people have natural gifts in certain areas but if they never are given application to need them they underdevelop.
Your experience in school is also pretty typical. The average kid can only pay strict attention to something for about their age in minutes. Bored and annoyed is just sort of what happens regardless. More modern approaches factor this in and include more regular refresh breaks for young people... but the classical default is basically to just keep a class doing a thing for long periods while their student's individual brains cycle in and off task and accept a certain amount of student unhappiness as just a casualty of the process.
Pretty much incapable of visualizing, even the simple apple experiment, but have loved reading since I was a kid. I've found myself when reading skimming a lot of the description sections and mostly following the dialogue, where most of the meat in books actually happens. I actually don't think I'd be able to write a book for the reason that I couldn't do the description section.
In my case I was read to sleep every night before bed when younger, so perhaps it was positive association that made it stick with me?
And were there no consequences for not doing the assignment?