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Why doesn't my generation enjoy reading?

sonataro

sonataro

Member
I've come to notice something, something very important, I've found children in my age group will not read unless there is a prize or they are forced. I graded a paper of a now 9th grader. He speaks English fine, his writing in English though is unbelievably irritating. As an assignment we had to grade last years Fcat papers. May I say this student has the worst spelling for an average 9th grader. Spelling things such like money as mony, our as ower, and nation as naon. I have never been afraid of grading a paper of anthers before this. So the question is why don't children enjoy reading like adults, I take my kindle everywhere and read, read, read.
 
I am not sure if there has ever been an abundance of young readers but for now, I think it may have something to do with all the other competing media. When I was younger I don't know if we all loved reading but on a rainy, boring day it was all you had to do, we didn't have cable, Internet or video games really.

If anything, it seems the market for YA books has grown, which you would think would indicate growing interest in reading, but my own teen will read only books that everyone else is reading usually. He used to read quite a bit but sadly as he hit high school Facebook, computer and video games slowly took over his reading time. Occasionally a book will come around, that is being talked about and/or made into a movie and he'll want to read it.

I do believe this has some impact on spelling and grammar but I think computers and texting did more damage than lack of reading. I read a few books a week but have noticed a dip in my written communications, since all the autocorrect and what not came along to make me lazy :)
 
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Well we could start with asking why parents don't instill a love of reading at an early age, something that is proven to be profoundly affected by early exposure to books and reading. Then we could talk about the failure of the educational system to teach basic reading skills to a horrifyingly large percentage of school leavers. And we could move on to discussing the impact of music videos and television on attention span. Books don't come in 4 - 6 sec quick edits. And we could also discuss the impact of IM's on the inability to write whole words and sentences in grammatically correct English and the tolerance of that kind of English in class.... take your pick.
 
Lots of good ideas thrown around! I normally am called a nerd about always reading, and or writing poetry in my purple book. I don't know. Yet, something I do know is that most the time if a word is over 3 syllables my class won't understand the word in use.
 
sonataro said:
Lots of good ideas thrown around! I normally am called a nerd about always reading, and or writing poetry in my purple book. I don't know. Yet, something I do know is that most the time if a word is over 3 syllables my class won't understand the word in use.
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Well I guess we could add peer pressure to that list :) I hope you well and truly ignore them!
 
I try my hardest everyday, peer pressure is the reason a lot of kids do a lot of stupid things. -_-
 
Well yes, but just think of it this way, you are responsible for your life, your decisions, and the consequences of those decisions. Who of those kids applying pressure in any shape of form whether its 'friends' saying 'oh go on we are all doing it' or other kids' harassment will stand in your shoes for even 2 minutes when there is a price to be paid in bad grades, or punishment for doing something wrong, or a wrong life choice that ends up in unhappiness of some kind?

And by calling you a nerd for reading and writing all they are doing is displaying their own ignorance. I'd take it as a compliment!
 
I try to switch it around I guess after a while it will get to me, I agree though that your actions are your responsibility. A cause and effect without one the other perishes, so if the cause is not doing homework, the effect will be a zero, yet if you were to change the cause you would get a different effect. Some kids are easily persuaded for popularity, dependency, or be like me so you can keep your only friends. I wouldn't do anything childish, or immature though just because a couple of kids told me too. All people have a weakness they always want to over come, mine being my past. Find a persons weakness to use against them, they will do anything so that you don't inflict them using that weakness. This leads into peer pressure of they gossip about it leaving everyone knowing it, finally after x amount of time with that being used against you, you snap and follow the line of never ending persuasion. There are a lot of different ways to see it, none exactly right, none exactly wrong. Yet, if it came down to it I wouldn't do something that would reflect poorly on the outcome of life itself just because some of my peers told me to do so.
 
We all want to be loved and accepted - this is a universal truth with no upper or lower age limit, but the very best person you need to win onto your side is yourself. If you can forgive yourself your mistakes, and learn from them (that is the key part!) and like yourself, cheer yourself on (in a non-arrogant way) then you are less tempted to do something stupid to win the approval of people who actually can't like you all that much in the first place if they are either putting you down, or trying to persuade you into a foolish action :)
 
Decline of money for public education, pervasion of "stupid is cool" philosophies pushed by major media outlets (much easier to entertain someone you have rendered dumb), take your pick really.

It's not the kids I'm worried about. They are supposed to be enjoying silly nonsense. It's the 35-year-olds reading Harry Potter and Twilight. That is far more disturbing.
 
I'm new here but I loved Harry Potter. :p

I think it's all the media available and low attention span society. Even I have issues with that but no entertainment beats a good book in my humble opinion. I'm a guy who discovered reading at 14 all by myself.. I was kinda forced into it but I feel like kids nowadays don't even bother to try new things. They like what they like and that's it.
 
I feel like I'm going to be berated if I give the obvious answer of "people don't care about reading," so I'll say the following instead:

Reading is hard work. I can't say anything about adults who don't read (perhaps it is part of that same common childhood trauma) but children may closely relate reading to school and intelligence. You read at school. You read aloud at school. You are graded on your reading and comprehension. Fast-readers are smart, confident, they get good grades, and are seemingly favoured and praised by the teacher. Slower-readers, in comparison, feel humiliated when they don't match up to their grade level, and in the end just stop trying.

Reading for school (IMHO) ruins any book (whether or not it is in your taste). You are given a time-limit. You are asked to analyze and give your opinion. Then you're told that your opinions are wrong and that you've failed English (well, maybe not failed, but your grade isn't proportional to your effort. Further, you've wasted all that time reading a book you didn't want to read when you could have read something else instead!). And (if you think about it) reading by itself isn't that rewarding (There's nothing tangible. Your "rewards" are far-off and aren't tremendous.) You always hear about people who can finish a book within days; a book that would take you months to read... By then the story is drained of all colour and you move on to something readily gratifying or more productive.

So, of course some children will not read without incentive. But books do not gain much (or any) publicity, and most kids have neither the patience or the care to go through the shelves to find something they might want to read.

I don't think this is attributive to lower literacy, though. If anything, with all children getting standardized schooling (which could be good or bad depending on who you ask) the literacy rate has never been higher. Ever. In all of human history. Yes, the education system can be better. Yes, media and technology is a huge distraction. So many factors to consider, yet the student who can't spell seems to be more an anomaly in this whole mess than the product of a lack of reading.

P.S. When people say they don't really like reading anything that's out today, I can't really say that I blame them. There was a time when authors "once knew better words, but now only use four-letter words." ;) ......... I'm kidding... Geeze, I'm so bad at jokes.
 
Well if you view reading as 'work' then I guess it will be. If however your attitude is different, then you might regard it as fun and I think at a certain point in a person's life they can no longer blame school or whatever for their attitudes. Books educate, elevate, and entertain. And the rewards are longer lasting than the instant gratification ADD generation brought up on a diet of instant everything can appreciate until / unless they decide to take responsibility for their own selves and discover books for themselves, for their own enjoyment and enlightenment.
 
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Dmitri Dmitriev said:
I don't think this is attributive to lower literacy, though. If anything, with all children getting standardized schooling (which could be good or bad depending on who you ask) the literacy rate has never been higher. Ever. In all of human history. Yes, the education system can be better. Yes, media and technology is a huge distraction. So many factors to consider, yet the student who can't spell seems to be more an anomaly in this whole mess than the product of a lack of reading.
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I agree with that, as far as literacy is concerned books are not important.
 
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