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The article completely misses the most likely cause: educators have massively screwed up reading education! Instead of teaching kids phonics ("what sounds do t
by crote 2y ago
The article completely misses the most likely cause: educators have massively screwed up reading education!
Instead of teaching kids phonics ("what sounds do those letters make?"), they are being taught alternative forms which boil down to whole-word recognition and guessing. Don't recognize a word? Just make up something which feels right in this context. The result is that kids have incredibly poor reading skills, so they don't read books because they simply can't read.
It's made even worse by the "students are less likely to identify works of literature as favorite books, instead referencing young adult books like the Percy Jackson series" elitism going around. If you want kids to read, stop force-feeding them boring and outdated "classics". Those books aren't fun, they don't align with their day-to-day life, and kids just don't care about them. Would you rather have a kid who ends up with the idea that reading is horrible because they were forced to go through Ulysses and who is never going to read a book again, or do you want a kid who thinks reading is fun because they read a dozen Percy Jackson novels and who is going to branch out beyond YA later in life?
It's easy to blame social media and TikTok, but we've heard those same lazy arguments blaming "modern innovation" for decades. First with radio, then with television, then with internet, then with games, and now finally with social media. It's wasn't true then, and it's not true now.
And stop trying to drag "the left" and student lone forgiveness into this: it has absolutely nothing to do with kids' reading skills and only undermines whatever argument you're trying to make.
- kazinator 2y agoLuckily, there are great phonics videos on YouTube, some of them over an hour long. Phew!
- sickofparadox 2y agoThe fact that teachers would rather chase fads that obviously do not work rather than practice time-tested and proven teaching methods is probably not a problem that can be solved with "great videos on YouTube".
- ziml77 2y agoIs 3-cueing even being used anymore? It seems decently well known that it's garbage that hurts students.
- sickofparadox 2y agoI'm not familiar with 3-cueing but according to the last public school teacher I spoke with "whole word literacy" seems to be the method of the day today, and I am at best skeptical of its efficacy.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AlanYx 2y ago3-cueing is still being used in some places, although there's been strong pushback in the last couple of years. 3-cueing isn't the main problem though these days IMHO. It's "balanced literacy" reading instruction strategies that try to find a middle ground with phonics and either cueing or whole word reading. My daughter's school for example did a lot of phonics to start, but then inexplicably transitioned to teaching a weird strategy where you look at the shape of the word and the first letter and guess, using pictures to help if available, and then only as a last resort, sound it out. It baffles the mind. (If it worked, I wouldn't object, but too often it ended up with attempts to utter "decoded" words that were quite far off from the actual text of the word.)
- ziml77 2y agoJeez that's crazy. I wonder if teachers at your daughter's school are in conflict over the strategy to use so they decided to use a hybrid approach to make both sides equally unhappy. I really hope that everything other than phonics continues to get enough pushback to completely wipe them out. Because otherwise children are just being set up for failure :(
- KittenInABox 2y ago
- ziml77 2y ago> And stop trying to drag "the left" and student lone forgiveness into this: it has absolutely nothing to do with kids' reading skills and only undermines whatever argument you're trying to make. The post was very difficult to read because it started with an entirely unrelated rant and then kept veering off into other crap about things he doesn't like about the "the left" with weak links at best back to why people aren't reading anymore. A copy-paste of your comment would make a better blog post.
- greenhearth 2y agoYou're blaming the teachers? That's a nice tactic. Also, YAL is taught widely.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoTechnically it's not just teachers, it's the people who ultimately dictate the curriculum... but otherwise yes, we absolutely should blame educators for failing kids in this way. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-and-fall-of-vibes-based-literacy https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-...
- nunez 2y agoeducators don't fail kids; the system that educators operate under (that we vote for) do.
- nataliste 2y ago>Would you rather have a kid who ends up with the idea that reading is horrible because they were forced to go through Ulysses and who is never going to read a book again, or do you want a kid who thinks reading is fun because they read a dozen Percy Jackson novels and who is going to branch out beyond YA later in life? Boomers already tried that approach with Millennials by promoting Harry Potter as a gateway to lifelong reading and the results suggest that it doesn't work. Instead of branching out into more complex literature, the overwhelming majority of Millennials (still!) remain fixated on the same YA series that they read as kids and teenagers (not to mention films and video games). The assumption that light, enjoyable reading will naturally evolve into more sophisticated tastes in the future due to positive associations in childhood is like saying kids allowed to eat chicken nuggies and french fries for every meal mature into healthy adults with varied diets. No, the majority just eat the same thing, end up stunted, and still hate broccoli as adults. >First with radio, then with television, then with internet, then with games, and now finally with social media. It's wasn't true then, and it's not true now. It was true then and is true now. The reality is that these technologies did, in fact, erode vital skills, habits, and cultural practices essential to maintaining a healthy society. The damage is difficult to notice because each new generation lacks a reference point for what was lost—not just in their own lives but also in their parents' lives. Over time, these losses compound, but no one sees them as losses because they have already been lost. Even focusing solely on literacy, the decline in the complexity of written language over the last century is undeniable. Sentence structures have simplified, vocabulary has shrunk, and the demand for nuanced, layered prose has diminished. You can argue that this isn't inherently negative—perhaps prioritizing accessibility over complexity serves broader audiences—but of course, you'd say that. It's easier to justify a loss when you're acclimated to the diminished standard and lack a frame of reference for what was left behind.
- watwut 2y agoPast generations read a lot of junk. By a lot I mean very huge amount of pure junk. And people of my age are still rereading and celebrating sci-fi and fantasy books they discovered when young. The most popular books were simple romance, detective stories and such. And kids used to read ... kids books. Harry Potter is fairly complicated compared to other books for that age category.