Why Have We Forgotten How to Read?
When I was in the fifth grade, my class had book clubs year-round. Every three weeks, we’d get a new book and a new “Book Mosaic” sheet: a four-by-four grid of prompts that pushed for analytical thinking about the book we were reading. It asked us to identify the conflict, analyze characters’ dynamics, and pair a quote and explanation with every “tile.” Within the first week of this project, I learned the importance of the phrase “this shows that…” in writing. I learned how to read critically, and I found how to connect and communicate my thoughts and ideas—I’ve used that skill every single day of my life since then.
I credit my middle school English experience for my love for reading and writing. I was acclimated to reading and thinking deeply about it inside and outside of school—but that’s starting to change.
In the past three years of high school, I’ve read six required books to completion (noting that my third year of English is a writing-centered curriculum). In only four months of fifth grade, it was double that. Disregarding the obvious difference in difficulty, I wonder why it feels so taxing to read and dissect more than a handful of books in a class that is built upon literature and writing? I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with my peers about the character traits and symbolism of a novel. There’s a general lack of interest in reading among students, making it more common for students to find loopholes to skip out on required readings–myself included. There always seems to be an assignment more pressing, a hobby less time consuming, or a SparkNotes summary that’s easier to scan. Education is constantly pulling students in dozens of different directions, and speaking generally, more attention is being leached from English classes and the impacts they have on students’ education.
It’s a two-edged sword: students are less inclined to read, so students lack the skill and discipline to read an entire book. When asked how her teaching has changed over time, English teacher Mrs. Bean Klusendorf remarked that “I have not lowered my expectations for quality of work over the last 20 years, but I have lowered expectations about the amount of work.” She noted that “...students are less willing to put in the time outside of class that students used to…”
Mrs. Klus made a point that SJHS still makes an effort to incorporate reading into the classroom, like through required readings and book clubs. But English curriculums are changing to fit more “modern” standards. Since the SAT was created in 1926, the English portion of the test was based on reading comprehension of required texts. As the test has developed, though, more of the test has been changed to questions on passage-based material. This means that many students are taught how to read small amounts of work quickly—it’s a method that optimizes SAT scores, but hinders a student's ability to actually sit down and read a long work, while still comprehending its content.
This idea of quick information isn’t limited to schools and testing, though. Efficiency and convenience have been a trend in modern life for decades, from the invention of washing machines to the introduction of social media. This and the topic of screen time have been discussed by teachers, parents, and society as a whole–“Phones and social media have created habits of short reading bursts, so we have to help students create habits that take sustained focus,” said Mrs. Klus–but it feels like we’ve been moving in circles. There’s a generation that has lost their grip on the importance of reading, and a generation that can’t understand why this loss has occurred. But we know what our problem is: as scholars, workers, and individuals, we’re losing the ability to read well.
I think that the first step in fixing this problem is to look at why we should care. Over time, the joy of reading has been whittled down to an assignment or chore. The skills that reading grants are indisputable—better comprehension skills, larger vocabulary, emotional richness, etc.
Becoming a better reader sets a person up to be educated, well-spoken, and passionate. I’m not saying everyone has to do cartwheels and set off fireworks for a 19th-century novel—I understand that people want freedom in what they read and that it doesn’t feel exciting to read something that you were assigned. But there needs to be a shift in how reading is approached—I encourage students who find themselves dreading an upcoming assignment to adopt the goal of discovery. Don’t read to get it done—take time to understand the plot, navigate dynamics, seek symbolism, etc. You don’t even have to like the book. Learn to draw your own opinions—it’s easier to find something to build on when you first find how to connect yourself to a topic.
It’s not easy to just learn how to read comprehensively, though. That’s a vague term that many don’t know how to define, and the skills that come with it aren’t regularly taught. So, I think that the key to an increase in adeptness in reading is a change in English curriculums. If more students are given lessons that spend longer amounts of time dissecting reading skills and strategies, they can learn how to properly synthesize what they are reading. It’s more than just getting the reading done—to finish a book properly, a reader has to be willing to dig between each detail and hint in a work.
