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Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class
- functionmouse 11mo agoMaybe I would've had something intelligent to say about this article, had I been allowed to read it.
- gscott 11mo agoYou have to have money to read it but first you need to be able to read to earn money. It is a crazy circular problem.
- isatis 11mo agoUn-paywall'd: https://archive.ph/lcAZ3 https://archive.ph/lcAZ3
- stevewodil 11mo agoI don’t know if this matters much. When I was in school it was rare to actually read a book assignment anyways, and I’m sure with LLMs now it’s less. I’ve started to have a positive association with reading only in the last few years, I wish schools didn’t force books onto children and make them think they hate reading for their whole lives.
- anon7000 11mo agoIt’s odd, I read ravenously as a kid/teen, as did my siblings. You need to read what you enjoy, and for it to not be forced. (For example, summer reading at the library gave out prizes kids cared about for reading books.) Plus, we didn’t have access to much digital media like TV/video games (though it was the early 2010s) because my parents were strict, so books were a solid source of entertainment.
- brightball 11mo agoI read a lot of books that fit my tastes as a kid, usually adventure/fantasy genre stuff. Never enjoyed the stuff that got assigned in school though. I’d probably like it now.
- Natsu 11mo agoAnything you're forced to do too much you lose all enjoyment of. If you're given at least a bit of agency, it's far more enjoyable. I read because I wanted to all the time, but every reading assignment was a chore.
- watwut 11mo agoIt is not just it being homework. It is not like I hated evything in school - I actually discovered quite a few intersting things there. It is that books everyone here is said that kids dont read anymore or brags they read ... are just not interesting books for a kid.
- wkat4242 11mo agoThat was my problem too. Not in the US but in Europe. The stuff we had to read was all by 'highly acclaimed: authors who have carved out this niche of 'literature art ' between them. However their books were dusty, tough, whiny and horrible to get through. Yuck. I never read fiction in my own language ever again just in spite.
- RajT88 11mo agoI too read ravenously as a kid. Strangely, in the 90's we were never assigned full books in English classes, just short stories or chapters.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoI'm older than you (graduated high school in 1975). I read tons of sci-fi as a kid. I also don't remember reading any whole novels for English class. Maybe we did, but if so I have successfully blocked them out. I have been amazed at the number of houses I've been in over the years which didn't appear to contain a single book.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Telaneo 11mo ago> I wish schools didn’t force books onto children and make them think they hate reading for their whole lives. It's a tough position to be in, although I'd imagine it could be remedied by having the kids pick whatever book they want. So they can read whatever they want, but they do have to actually read it. Form a learning/teaching point of view, this is probably ideal, but I'd imagine it's not really possible from a logistical point of view, since the teacher would likely have to familiarise themselves with as many books as they have pupils, which isn't viable unless the class is fairly small.
- idle_zealot 11mo ago> I wish schools didn’t force books onto children and make them think they hate reading for their whole lives The problem is that if you don't force them, they never actually become literate enough to discover that reading is fun later in life.
- DaSHacka 11mo agoOr, as we've seen recently, you can force them and they still won't be literate enough.
- aaplok 11mo agoYou could force kids to read books without forcing which books to read. The issue as always is to find a balance between giving kids agency and making sure they do what's right.
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoNow that creating written works is trivial, the new skill to have would be figuring out if what you are reading has an ulterior motive, such as advertising. Or even figuring out if it was created with the intent to have any utility at all for the reader. Other than avoiding any written works made after 2020, I am not sure what to tell my kids. Even trusting the claim that something was written after 2020 seems difficult, unless you have a physical print showing its age.
- BeFlatXIII 11mo agoThe kids don't hate classroom reading because of the reading; they hate it because of the associated curriculum. “Why were the curtains blue?” is a skill wasted on children. I only gained an appreciation for such meta-reading during a weeks-long TV Tropes bender during a spat of unemployment after getting fired from my first big-boy job.
- Ekaros 11mo agoMakes me wonder is wrong question been asked. Shouldn't it first be why were curtains described in first place?
- bgbntty2 11mo agoI think school ruined fiction books for me. I had to read long boring books about stories that didn't interest me, with useless sentences describing what the scene looked like or what someone had for dinner. Most of the stories and themes were outdated and didn't have enough context to make them understandable. Some books even used outdated words and phrases. Maybe if I wasn't forced to read a book in an outdated language about some Christian farmer 300 years ago while I was not in school, and if I could access a succinct version 1/10th of the length of the book, I'd read it. Maybe if I wasn't asked to describe minor details to prove I read the book, I'd actually focus on the story and not on every irrelevant detail. Maybe if my teacher didn't force their religious holier-than-thou attitude and allowed us to form our own opinions, I'd be more engaged. What school taught me was how to get away with not reading the books. I skimmed books by skipping tens of pages at a time or asked friends for the TL;DR or just got an F. Now I have a feeling of uneasiness and dread when I try to read fiction for fun. So I don't. Most 300 page fiction books I had to read could've easily been condensed to 30 pages without any loss of information. Being forced to read and memorize poetry was the absolute shit. A lot of people won't care about poetry no matter how hard you try to force them to like it. And half of it was propaganda - how $nation survived $struggle, how $nation is so great or beautiful or how $hero did $ethical_thing.
- floren 11mo ago> Most of the stories and themes were outdated and didn't have enough context to make them understandable. Some books even used outdated words and phrases. no cap Mr Darcy ur parties are bussin fr fr
- bgbntty2 11mo agoI should've used "archaic" instead of "outdated". As in, "incomprehensible to someone speaking proper modern $language". Without a dictionary, a normal student couldn't understand what was being said in many sentences throughout the book. Some books actually had a dictionary in the end, but not for all the archaic words and phrases.
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- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoI don't understand this. If kids are reading for enjoyment already, is assigning a book in school going to kill their love of reading? Or are we taking about kids who never read until school forced them to? From what I understand, if parents read to kids when they are little, they become readers who enjoy it.
- Telaneo 11mo ago> If kids are reading for enjoyment already, is assigning a book in school going to kill their love of reading? I nearly did to me, or atleast the continual assignments did. It took a long time for me to pick up a fiction book again. School never assigned me technical writing and encyclopedias, so I continued to enjoy those, thankfully.
- 1718627440 11mo ago> If kids are reading for enjoyment already, is assigning a book in school going to kill their love of reading? Yes. (n=1)
- watwut 11mo agoYes, because it amounts to several hours long homework. Kids are more slower then adults at reading, so this can easily amount to 10 hours of additional homework which you do on top of usual homework. So yes, if you spent 10 hours reading a book you don't care about this week, you don't feel like reading something else. You feel like you spent awful lot of time reading already and feel like reading is something like vacuum cleaning - duty but not something you do for fun.
- robcohen 11mo agoIt just seems to me that the entire purpose of school is not clear. What precisely is the purpose of "English" class? What? To read and speak English? Ok, then why can't kids test out of it most of the time? Is the purpose to be knowledgeable about a canon of literature? Why can't people test against that? The truth is that pedagogy and instruction is just a lazy way of providing childcare. So who cares what they do with their time.
- djoldman 11mo agoIn the USA, you can test out of it: the GED.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo agoThe purpose of school is a mix between providing childcare, and making sure most of society have a largely overlapping common upbringing experience. We hear that we encourage diversity - but only of superficial stuff like sexual orientation or skin color. We don't want people that think too differently. This is why I, despite my deep appreciation for the pursuit of knowledge and having spent a significant chunk of my life in the academia after graduating, want my kids to spend as little time as strictly necessary in primary or secondary schools. And the need comes from the fact that I need some of that childcare, not that I need someone else to teach my children anything.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo agoIt is awfully hard to get anyone, children or adults, to think at all
- andrekandre 11mo agoi was literally told this at $JOB once: we dont have time to think; just give us a framework to follow it seems like thinking is a form of torture for some... but maybe its our work/lifestyle that makes it so.. idk
- adfm 11mo agoI’ve noticed some of these kids can’t tell time on analog clocks nor read cursive handwriting.
- kevmo314 11mo agoAside from signatures, which don't need to be read, I don't remember the last time I've seen cursive outside of an elementary school.
- ls612 11mo agoI never stopped writing in cursive but then again I don’t write much by hand anymore.
- lucyjojo 11mo agoyou don't write. people don't write in cursive around you?
- thrwaway55 11mo agoWhy would you write in cursive? If you care about WPM key board toasts it. If you care about handwritten your receiver cares they got your letter at all not that it's cursive or not. Cursive is an outdated skill for when it was the fastest way to get words written to paper.
- gambiting 11mo ago>>Why would you write in cursive? I'm confused. How do you write if not in cursive? Do you just write in block capitals? With each letter on its own? Do you just not hand write anymore? >>Cursive is an outdated skill for when it was the fastest way to get words written to paper. But....It still is? Without using some kind of machine of course.
- doubled112 11mo agoI’m not sure the last time I’ve handwritten anything longer than a signature and my cursive skills show it. On a white board or diagram, block letters seem like the most legible choice. Everything else is typed.
- tomcam 11mo agoTo me the ability to read a whole book is a competitive advantage in the job market.
- eimrine 11mo agoFor what industries?
- epolanski 11mo agoAny job position requiring intelligence and nuance which unavoidably stems from informing yourself.
- eimrine 11mo agoBut the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism which eventually makes you not better candidate on the market but worse.
- epolanski 11mo agoI hate capitalism but I don't make the rules so play the game anyway.
- bitcurious 11mo ago>But the same will inevitably make you hating the capitalism If anything, reading has made me recognize the cultural and historic universality of the problems folks attribute to capitalism.
- eimrine 11mo agoSorry, I meant reading books.
- 1718627440 11mo agoSaying everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, that just hasn't found enlightenment is not a good argument. A sizable portion of people will have the opposite revelation. I for one think people still thinking socialism is a good thing, haven't read enough history books about the 20th century.
- tyleo 11mo agoComments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.” It’s bizarre stuff to say. What would you have the education system do? Put iPads in front of kids all day?
- cr125rider 11mo agoYou can say it’s like childcare, sure. But learning has to come from somewhere. Parents seem to be doing less and less out of the classroom. Does that mean we’re just giving up then?
- scoofy 11mo agoSociety grows great when people plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. The problem is that we aren’t raising all of the kids right. It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff. We aren’t a nation of nerds, I doubt we ever were, but nerds really ought to create a support system for each other. I understand why people care so much about which school district they are in. It’s as much about a culture of curiosity as test scores.
- atmavatar 11mo ago> It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff. Even that is multi-dimensional. Another big problem we have in the US is that there are groups of people who don't want their children to learn certain things that most well-educated people take for granted. For example, it's pretty common to this day for some school districts around the country to skip over teaching evolution. It's also common to misrepresent the causes behind the civil war and gloss over the genocide of native populations. Others could probably come up with additional examples.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoThey've rebranded knowledge they don't like as "woke".
- frompdx 11mo agoWhen I was in high-school 20 plus years ago excerpt based reading assignments were fairly common in non-honors/advanced placement classes. Except there were whole textbooks full of excerpt based assignments instead of computer software for this purpose. Anecdotally I took honors and AP English and those classes destroyed my desire to read for years. I only read a few of the assigned books cover to cover because they were either dreadfully boring or the expectations for how quickly we should read them were more than I, a very average student, could manage. Usually some combination of both. Rather than relying on cliffnotes and sparknotes alone I would typically read the first chapter, the last chapter, and then some chapter in the middle so I was prepared for tests and discussions. At the end of the day the AP exams didn't test you on your knowledge of The Scarlet Letter or The Great Gatsby. The exam tested you on your ability to read an excerpt and answer questions about it as well as your ability to write a multi-paragraph essay from a prompt while a proctor wearing the most hideous smelling blackberry perfume bathed you in an olfactory assault every time they walked by. In-classroom writing assignments were the most effective way to prepare and we did them frequently. As a reward for doing well you got to skip a couple of 100 level English credits in college. Sure there are lots of brainrot distractions available to kids today, but it feels like the education system never takes a moment to look inward and acknowledge that The Scarlet Letter and My Antonia are dreadfully boring reads. It took me three tries to finish 1984 because the beginning is such a slog. It is strange to say kids aren't interested in reading (from the article) when a lot of the subject matter is objectively dull. Four of the six books in the article header are books I don't even want to think about let alone read.
- eimrine 11mo ago> Sure there are lots of brainrot distractions available to kids today Take apart the distractions per se, how is it possible to read book for a kid in 2025 at all? Reading thick books requires having some device with no distructions. In my young ages all computers and all smartphones used to have no distructions, but now all computers (except some Linux distros) used to be bombarded with distructions in such a way that I can not read a book on any proprietary OS without getting some notification about anti-virus software or some updates or a need to restart, or just some events happening on the Internets. My point is not just that distractions distract people, but distructions have become inevitable on almost any modern device able to render PDF with formulas.
- oxag3n 11mo agoKids are either into reading or not. There's a critical mass when kids read because they like it, to the point where I need to remind them to read less.
- inemesitaffia 11mo agoPretty much every one in the selective school I went to read for fun. Even the "troublesome" ones.
- skeptrune 11mo agoAll of the literature we recommend in school is outdated, so it makes sense to me that kids would not want to read them. More school districts should experiment with contemporary novels that make sense in a modern context.
- kotaKat 11mo ago> it makes sense to me that kids would not want to read them That's why the 2026 remake of Animal Farm in animated form includes a twerking pig[1]. Education with brainrot is the future! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtjPGXZLW6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtjPGXZLW6g
- Pikamander2 11mo agoI agree wholeheartedly with this. While "the classics" may have some educational and cultural value, many of them came off as dry and pretentious. There are countless anecdotes online of people who loved to read books as a kid but thoroughly hated reading by the end of high school or college, which is a terrible outcome. I think that English classes in general are far too prescriptive and narrow in what they assign students to read, particularly when it comes to fiction. They seem to adopt the attitude of "These books are well-written classics. You have to read them, and if you don't enjoy them then there's something wrong with you." Forcing students to read specific boring material might make sense in other classes like History or Science where there are very specific facts that they need to remember, but the required reading portion of English classes doesn't need to be handled in such a rigid way. I suspect that we would end up with far better results if we gave students a curated list of popular books and had them pick out their favorites to read rather than just telling them to go read Ethan Frome and write an essay on loneliness afterwards.
- Kim_Bruning 11mo agoPlausibly some kids might still be reading entire novels worth of text online on the regular. Think of all the massive fanfic archives (Including original fics) Lots of fanfic authors have fans of their own, and those have got to be coming from somewhere. It doesn't need to be in dead tree format. It doesn't need to be famous authors. Just so long as they read! For long form original see eg: * The last angel https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/ https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.24420... * The wandering inn https://wanderinginn.com/2017/03/03/rw1-00/ https://wanderinginn.com/2017/03/03/rw1-00/ * Or eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) which made its way off the net and into print, possibly to the detriment of both. :-P Original location (afaict) (no longer available there) : https://www.galactanet.com/writing.html https://www.galactanet.com/writing.html
- fgh_azer 11mo agoThe question is whether reading: - an entire novel worth of short texts, beginning to end - an entire novel worth of short excerpts from longer texts - an entire novel, beginning to end are the same things.
- Kim_Bruning 11mo agoOh, are you responding to my examples? * Last angel: A web serial, sure it's chunked into chapters/updates, but paper novels have chapters too. * The Wandering inn, same as above, it's at 2 million+ words and counting. People read it. * The Martian: Actually the shortest text of the bunch. Now available as a traditional paper novel.
- fgh_azer 11mo agoI am not responding to the examples, and I am not challenging the claim that famous vs not famous author does not matter, or that dead tree vs screen does not matter; I am raising the question whether it's just a quantity issue ("Just so long as they read", "entire novels worth of text"). Is it? I am not sure either way. Do you lose something by only reading chapters of a novel but never the whole story from the beginning to the end, even if you're still reading the same amount?
- spicyusername 11mo agoI never understand where these anecdotes come from. I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, read full books all the time and have since they were quite young. The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class, and the kids you'd expect from the homes you'd expect read plenty. So whatever the problem is, if there even is one, is less to do with school curriculums, english classes, screen time, or the availability of books, and more to do with the culture of many homes not prioritizing reading.
- fzeroracer 11mo agoOkay, now what's the literacy rate in your county? What does the data actually say?
- QuadmasterXLII 11mo agoPretty funny if it's Mississippi and they're just correct.
- spicyusername 11mo agoA quick Google search says 67% of elementary school kids scored at or above reading proficiency in my county. 73% for high school.
- idontwantthis 11mo agoIn Clark County high schools in NV, they do not read a single whole book in English classes even in honors.
- smelendez 11mo agoIs it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and remembered the details.
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- haizhung 11mo agoIm seeing the same in Germany. Here’s an incomplete list of all books that I read as mandatory high school assignments, which I can recall from memory. * Die Vorstadtkrokodile * Faust I * Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum * Antigone * Die Verwandlung * Bahnwärter Thiel * Der Sandmann * Die Räuber * Hamlet * Der Besuch der alten Dame * Im Westen nichts Neues * Unterm Rad * Woyzeck Im probably missing 5 books or something like that. Many of these books have had a profound impact on my views on the world, more than I would have guessed at the time.
- mmooss 11mo agoInteresting. Would you share with us their English names and what they're about?
- 1718627440 11mo agoI will only do things from memory, you can use Google yourself. * Die Vorstadtkrokodile "The suburb crocodiles", which is also how the youth gang in the book is called. Boy wants to be part of the gang, which has idiotic tests of courage. Plot twist is that the guy who refused to do this idiotic tests ends up being the tough guy. I don't remember if this was the main character or not. Ends up saving some other boy in a wheelchair, I think while they play in a collapsing old industrial building. * Faust I Maybe the most famous German book from v.Goethe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust,_Part_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust,_Part_One Old professor Faust makes a deal with the devil that he can take his soul, if he is able to provide him with true joy. Professor gets young again, parties, seduces a flawless faithful girl, makes her kill her mother, she ends up in prison being pregnant, devil proposes to save here if she ditches god, she refuses. Faust flees, huge cliff hanger until v.Goethe gets to write Faust II at the end of his live. * Antigone Famous greek drama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone * Die Räuber Famous play from the other famous German poet Schiller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robbers * Hamlet Shakespeare, original available in English * Der Besuch der alten Dame "The visit of the old Lady" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visit_(play) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visit_(play) The old (now rich) lady visits her home town, which has seen better times and demands the death of her youth lover for a huge amount of money for the town. In the beginning all swear loyalty to the guy, in the end all demand his death, inviting the international press. In between the slow transition is described being framed by the protagonists as the most ethical thing ever. * Im Westen nichts Neues "No news from the West (front)" describes the trauma of soldiers in the first world war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front * Woyzeck Soldier Woyzeck gets exploited by both his superior and his doctor. The doctor puts him on a only beans diet, he becomes crazy. The doctor comments his mental struggles with "Very interesting, very good, should also try this ..." Ends up killing his spouse due to jealousy and later maybe himself. Never got completed by the original author, and the order of the acts is disputed, which makes for a quite different ending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoWe have at least a whole generation of kids that were taught to read using "whole language" methods instead of phonetically. None of this really surprises me.
- apparent 11mo agoThey're axing honors classes in our high schools so they can mix all the kids together for equity. But because some of the students can't read very well (even in 10th grade), they have to read the books aloud during class, since it would be inequitable to require the kids to read on their own at home. Not surprisingly, when you're rate-limited by read-aloud speed, you can't get through that many books and excerpts are a natural response.
- techjamie 11mo agoProbably has to do with the method for teaching reading being terrible for several years, depending on if the school dropped phonics. I saw some stuff about literacy dropping because they went from teaching to sound out words, to, as I understand it, basically just showing the word and teaching how it's said, hoping kids would naturally pick up the rules. This did not have good outcomes, and last I checked, there was a movement of schools going back to phonics.
- lelanthran 11mo ago> I saw some stuff about literacy dropping because they went from teaching to sound out words, to, as I understand it, basically just showing the word and teaching how it's said, hoping kids would naturally pick up the rules. I've read a lot on this; it's "phonetics" vs "look-see". For a really depressing read, read "Why Johnny can't read", then the sequel "Why Johnny still can't read", and then look at the dates of those two essays. We already knew decades ago that some methods never worked in the past, and don't work now, but we still hope that they will work in the future, so we keep them around because there are powerful and mostly invisible (to the parents) interests in keeping these discredited methods around.
- mmooss 11mo agoCan't parents have their child read to themselves at home?
- Cornbilly 11mo agoWho is "they"?
- koinedad 11mo agoMy kids read tons of books. But we homeschool and actual books are the main course of our education.
- sixtram 11mo agoWhen I started high school in the early '90s, there was a compulsory summer reading list of 10–12 books, each ranging from 300–800 pages. Then we had to write essays about them. This was just our summer homework before the new school year started. I didn't enjoy it at all; at the same time, I read lots of easy fiction, sometimes several hundred pages a day. My six year old (who is still in kindergarten) reads about 70–100 pages per week of books aimed at eight to nine year olds.
- quasigod 11mo agoPeople rarely read whole books anymore. I know very few adults in my life who read books, lots of people are put off by reading in school and never give it a try in their adult life. I think the biggest offender is summer reading assignments. I never knew a single person that actually read their book, and being expected to spend time during break reading for a school assignment definitely creates a negative association. I loved reading as a child, up until high school. Once I graduated, it took years before I enjoyed it again.
- Aerroon 11mo agoThe same thing happened to me. Required reading in school killed my interest in reading. When I graduated I was very happy that I wouldn't have to read books ever again. It took me about 5 years or so until anime and manga got me to try another fiction book. That eventually led to reading more books. But when school was done I really did think that I wasn't going to touch a (fiction) book again. --- It makes me wonder if kids in the future will have "required reading" where they have to play certain old video games. Will that make them hate video games?
- dybber 11mo agoIn our local highschool (near Copenhagen, Denmark) they have scheduled reading time for all pupils while in school - weekly as part of their normal schoolday. That is, instead of normal class everyone needs to bring a book of their own choosing and read in it. No phones allowed during this time, so they can either read or stare out the window. The local library helps them find books of their own interest. The idea is to get them find genres and books they like and find joy reading it, while not taking time out of their free time.
- Aerroon 11mo agoIronically this wouldn't work for me because I do almost all of my reading on my phone these days. It has become the main use of my phone at this point. It is a good idea though, as long as they can find things they want to read. I've been sucked into the "bleeding edge" of reading (web novels), so it can be a bit more challenging to find things I really want to read. They are still out there though. Eg The Martian and Project Hail Mary (the former actually started as a web novel) .
- charles_f 11mo agoThe article seems to be centered around reading assignments. I was reading entire books often when I was in school, yet did my best to avoid reading assignments because they were so dull. I don't know how they sourced respondents, anecdotally all my kids a reading books as I type that. They read much more than I did at their age; and their friends read as well. They'd probably spend all their time on snapshat or brawlstars, were they to have a say. Isn't that the characteristic of each generation to feel like education of the next generation is decadent?
- physicsguy 11mo agoI’m in my 30s but the UK English reading choices weren’t very inspiring when I studied and you could pass the exams without ever reading full texts so of course that’s what schools encouraged. I remember doing sections of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth but we never did the whole thing. We did read Of Mice and Men and An Inspector Calls but that was it for books/plays. Poetry we had a book called Anthology where we had to read and re-read many poems for analysis.
- rawgabbit 11mo agoYou should be thankful. I had to read the whole canon of Shakespeare and hated it. I learned about the great vowel shift and more about English trivia than I cared to know. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/language/pronunciation.html https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/l...
- credit_guy 11mo agoHow about us, the adults? In the latest "War on the rocks" podcast [1], Ryan Evans asked his guest, Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson, what books he has read lately (he often, maybe always, asks that question). The guest answered basically that, as a politician, he does not have time to read books anymore, because he is very busy with other things. I think most listeners of the podcast are absolutely ok with this. Pål Jonson is an important guy, who has a job to do. That job is to keep Sweden safe, and, as Sweden is now part of NATO, by extension to keep NATO safe as well. If he does his job well, then Sweden and NATO together might be able to deter aggression by Russia. If taking time to read books means he has less time to do his job well, then he should not read books. But if you replace Pål Jonson with somebody else, who are we to say that their job is less important? And if we take a kid, the way the kid understands their jobs is that they need to get ready for life,for their actual, paid, job when the time will come. And if in doing that, they are more efficient by using ChatGPT, then why should they read entire books? [1] https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/getting-faster-stronger-ready-swedens-defense-minister-on-reform-and-resolve/ https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/getting-faster-stronger-re...
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- j7ake 11mo agoLiterature is like classical music. One can argue Beethovens 9th symphony is one of the greatest pieces of music of all time, but that doesn’t mean we all have time to sit through 70 minutes a day listening to it. I bet important people don’t even have time to sit and watch a full movie.
- chung8123 11mo agoMy main concern here is attention span. I think books are good for improving the muscle of attention span. There are other places that you can improve your attention span but I fear they are not being taught in school either.
- BigParm 11mo agoMost books could and should be condensed by about 100x. Poor communication skills and zero respect for people's time.
- kccoder 11mo agoLord of the rings: A human-like individual leaves his house to drop a ring in some lava.
- prennert 11mo agoThe headline should have been ...especially in English Class. Even in the 90s most people got book summaries to get through the curriculums. I would say, the highest performing language students and teachers pets at school did exactly that. School unfortunately is largely about reciting of the teachers knowledge, so there is no need to read the source and think for yourself.
- nothercastle 11mo agoSeattle public schools does not read full books in elementary. Just short form publisher slop. Can’t do reading as a group and discussion because not all kids understand and that wouldn’t be inclusive.
- pineappletooth 11mo agoWhat i found is that there is an aversion to knowledge, there is a ever increasing group of people (not only kids) that refuses everything that involves reading, learning or reasoning. You present them a game that involves a bit of investigation and they just don't try, you think well they want to shutdown their brains at the moment of relax, but no they just never use their brains. They can't follow a manual to assemble anything no matter if they only have to connect two pieces clearly marked as put them together. And they reach adult stage in this condition, they can't do anything else that following verbal very precise instructions, and some of them are not stupid, i found very capable people that just reject trying to read anything but have incredible reasoning skills, they just never notice because they never exercised.
- eudamoniac 11mo agoI lost the post I meant to reply to, but here is the reply: I tend to see literature, especially fiction, as a way to practice empathy. A lot of people mentally stagnate later in life, and books help break that. Empathy isn't some magical trait, it's something you can actually train. Think Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep even if the animal is fake, the act of caring still has meaning. Practicing empathy like that helps you understand other people's worldviews. You don't have to agree with them, but if you want to function in life, you at least need to understand why people think the way they do. You can also take Paul Schrader's view that art is a vessel for emotion. It's a place to purge or process uncomfortable feelings. Watching Taxi Driver, for example, gives you a space to confront isolation, violence, and male nihilism. Instead of becoming Travis Bickle, the film lets you observe him and put those thoughts into words. That's Schrader's defense when people say the movie glorifies Bickle; the art itself is the safe space, not the man.
- tsoukase 10mo agoTwo book series that hit the nail for us are the series of Enid Blyton, like Famous Five, (we read to them at age 8-9) and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (they read by themselves). Especially the later is a masterpiece for (pre)puberty age. Days upon days of intellectual and emotional satisfaction.