at universities all around the country
professors are reporting a problem
students can't read books this is true
even at Elite colleges and universities
in one required class at Colombia
students are often expected to read
about a book a week but in the past
couple of years students have started
telling their professors that they can't
do it one student told her professor
that she had never been required to read
an entire book this is part of a larger
Trend people aren't reading anymore this
is true for men and women people who
went to college and people who didn't so
what's going on it turns out that there
are many pieces to this puzzle but it
all begins with how we teach kids to
read for a very long time we taught kids
to read in a very particular way we
called it phonics with phonics you start
with individual sounds you work your way
up from those sounds into more complex
sounds and then you see how those sounds
build words if you come across an
unfamiliar word you're told to sound it
out but starting around the 1960s a new
approach to language education emerged
and we called this whole language
learning in whole language learning and
some successor ideas like balanced
literacy the idea was that you should
learn to read at the level of a word
using a method called three queing
students were taught to infer the
meaning of words from Context this whole
approach was Pitch as a very natural
almost kind of organic way to teach kids
how to read the idea was that actually
that kids had a natural propensity to
read and that all you need to do was put
them in the right context and maybe give
them a few small techniques or nudges
and they would basically teach
themselves how to read you wouldn't have
to go through a kind of boring process
like learning phonics it's actually kind
of a romantic idea right it'd be lovely
if kids just had this natural ability to
read as long as we just put them in the
right environment and it makes reading
feel more like an art than a science the
only problem is that whole language
learning didn't work literacy rates fell
and in the countries which had adopted
whole language learning that would be
parts of the United States Canada the UK
New Zealand Australia more and more kids
weren't able to read at grade level it
was a systemic failure of Education
systems across multiple countries and if
we're trying to explain why people don't
read anymore well this has to be part of
the story if you weren't taught how to
read properly reading is never going to
be something that you do for fun it's
never going to be pleasurable it's going
to feel really difficult and like a lot
of work and so if more and more people
find reading difficult then they're just
going to stop reading now whole language
learning and balance literacy these were
never uncontested ideas despite the fact
that they were adopted in so many
countries they were always people who
were pushing back and this was something
that became known as the reading Wars in
some states it was described as the most
vicious debate in politics journalists
and scientists have been reporting on
the damaging effects of whole language
learning and actually we might be able
to say that covid-19 is going to lead to
a change in how kids learn to read
Because during the pandemic when more
kids were learning at home their parents
got to see how ineffective whole
language learning really was and that
added a lot of political will to solving
the problem more and more States and
even countries are bringing back phonics
into their reading programs and while
some of the insights from Whole language
learning might stay in the classroom at
least kids are going to be learning
those basic building blocks which the
data do seem to indicate actually would
help them so maybe we'll see a turn in
the future where more people want to
read for pleasure again for the students
who were never taught phonics though
much of the damage is already done and I
don't know how to fix that problem now
this is speculation but I would be
willing to bet that kids who make it
into a school like Colombia or other
Elite universities are probably able to
read at grade level but they were still
telling their professors that they
didn't feel capable of reading a book in
even a week and these are kids remember
who are mostly full-time students they
have a lot of free time and actually
their studies should be their main focus
so just pointing out sort of the
disastrous effects of whole language
learning isn't going to adequately
explain why fewer people are reading but
part of the explanation does still seem
to come from the way that these kids
were taught in school and it has to do
with education reforms most infamously
things like No Child Left Behind and
Common Core those are at least are the
names for Education reforms in the
United States other countries have
different systems I'm not talking about
those here the push to reform education
in the United States emphasized two
things informational text and
standardized testing when students were
being taught how to engage with the text
they were learning how to extract
information from it you would even see
people say that books were outdated and
that we needed to to teach kids about
the text that they would actually
encounter in real life like articles or
web pages so as an exercise a student
might be presented with an excerpt from
a longer text they would be asked to
analyze the argument or talk about what
evidence was presented in the text or
even what the thesis statement was and a
lot of this would happen in English
classes where traditionally you would be
first exposed to reading longer and more
difficult books so instead of learning
things like analyzing symbolism or theme
or being able to practice your close
reading of text you were mostly focused
on extracting information from those
excerpts doing that traditional English
stuff like close reading builds
something that we could call your
reading stamina and when a student who
is fully capable of reading says that
they can't read a whole book in a week
it's likely because they haven't had a
chance to develop their reading stamina
in fact some professors and teachers
even in high schools or middle schools
say that kids reading stamina has been
declining steadily over the years as
well if you're trying to build your
reading stamina one of the things you
can do is just read books just sit down
and try to see how many pages you can
get through before you have to go and do
something else but students increasingly
aren't actually being given those
opportunities in the classroom or even
in assignments in one survey only 177%
of Educators said that they were
teaching primarily with whole text so
when it comes to those students at Elite
colleges and universities or even just
colleges and universities in general who
say that they can't read a whole book I
think it has more to do with this than
it does with problems with whole
language learning I think this is the
better explanation for why students at
columia or other great universities
aren't able to read whole books these
students were able to get into some of
the best colleges and universities in
the world but they were never taught how
to be great readers they were taught how
to be great test takers so when these
students get to college and they're
asked to read whole books they can't do
it because this is a completely
different skill than they've been told
that they need to develop in high school
so much of their education has been
about optimizing themselves for
standardized tests and then eventually
to take something like the SAT or the
act and if you're just trying to do
really well on a standardized test you
need to focus on reading excerpts and
being able to answer multiple choice
questions or maybe write a five
paragraph essay about what you just read
you don't have to focus on analyzing
themes in Tolstoy dfki Dickens you don't
have to worry about reading great books
so then if you have a required freshman
class that's about great novels in the
western tradition well this might be
your first time being exposed to many of
those great novels in the western
tradition and it's going to be hard
because you're not used to it so when we
look at the big picture we have some
students who were never taught how to
read properly because of things like
whole language learning and then we have
students who were never taught how to
read books because of an emphasis on
standardized testing but when we want to
talk about why other people have stopped
reading for fun or just stopped reading
in general there's one more thing we
have to talk about and it's the phones
so something that gets overlooked in a
lot of these discussions is that many
people actually do spend their days
reading it's just that they're not
reading books if you're scrolling on
YouTube or Twitter then you are actually
encountering an endless stream of text
more text than many people throughout
history would have encountered in a week
or a month Tik Tok is maybe the most
addictive of these platforms and
practically every video has burned in
captions so people are constantly
reading something when they are online
and if you're driving you're seeing road
signs you're seeing Billboards you're
seeing
advertisements the world wants you to
read it just doesn't really want to give
you the time that it takes to read a
good book so this is my backyard and
occasionally I'll come and I'll bring a
book and I'll try to get some reading
done it's peaceful and it's quiet and
it's one of the places that I really
love so maybe I start reading the book
and I'll feel really good and then
within just a few
seconds this thing wants my
attention so if I want to get any
reading done I have to be disciplined
and I have to decide that my phone needs
to stay inside some place where it can't
distract me now imagine that you're a
college student and you've never read a
full book in a week or really ever been
asked to read a hard or long book for
your education and your professor says
Hey I want you to read Homer's Iliad in
a week let's say you're a good sport too
and so you go to your dorm room you get
your book and you say you know what I'm
going to do it but now think about all
the things that are there ready to
distract you other people or your phone
or your laptop anything with the screen
really is there and it's ready to just
make you feel more stimulated because
let's face it even if we're people who
really like to read compared to doing
other things the act of reading is
really boring it is the antithesis of
our sort of constant need to be over
stimulated a lot of schools high schools
middle schools things like that have
decided to start Banning smartphones
from the classroom and my reaction of
course is like what took you so long of
course students aren't going to be able
to read or learn properly if they're
constantly distracted by their phone so
not only have we systematically failed
students as we've taught them to read or
not taught them to read in some cases
we've also just designed a world that is
there to constantly demand our attention
and that takes us away from those deeper
reflective sort of focus heavy practices
like reading good books so when adults
try to say why they don't read anymore
they usually site three things they
don't have time they can't pay attention
long enough or they blame social media
and I suspect that all of these are
related the fact that we don't have time
or that we can't focus is in part
because of things like social media
other forms of Easy Entertainment are
there to take up all of our time I often
like to read before bed and occasionally
I'll tell myself that I need to check my
phone before I start reading and I'll
find that I end up scrolling for an hour
without even realizing it time seems to
flow differently when I'm on my phone
compared to when I'm trying to do
something more demanding like reading
it's easier it's more instantly
pleasurable even though at the end of
the day I feel terrible about it so I
expect that a lot of the things that I
found are true for me could be true for
you or for many other people and are
part of this broader explanation of why
nobody reads anymore so the result of
all this is that fewer and fewer people
read books you have your super readers
who read tons of books and they keep the
average numbers up but you have more and
more people who decide that reading just
isn't for them I don't know exactly what
we're supposed to do about that but
that's where we are