Why America's Children Stopped Falling in Love with Reading - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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    I wonder if Fahrenheit 451 is on the banned books list. And if, why.

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      But Florida's parents never know whether one of these classics might contain a picture of Michelangelo's David, warping little Madison's mind forever.

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    If by "books" you mean literal hardcore pornography showing explicit sex, pornographic enough that I can't even post screenshots of here on this site or most others without getting banned, then sure.

    The question is why is it that schools have so little else for kids to read other than literal explicit hardcore pornography that their shelves are bare.

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      Since the school systems are full of so many groomers, FL's law states that books must be approved before being placed in schools. Teachers are also made liable for any sexually explicit material and can be prosecuted like any other pedo that is giving children explicit content. No more special pedo privileges for the left.

      But, this means that the bookshelves will be emptied until after teachers review each book themselves. Nobody wants to be liable after filling a bookshelf with random books. So they will

      • In Queer Theory, an explicit goal is to breakdown childhood innocence. Some of the progenitors of this stuff -- Judith Butler, Michael Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir -- really did advocate for "cross generational sex", more commonly known as pedophilic rape. Queer Theory, at heart, is deeply and intentionally illiberal, and as such, takes advantage of liberal society to push its own brand of authoritarianism. They see other people's kids as theirs to manipulate. For the greater good, of course.
        
        These activists are pushing sexualized material into schools, as part of their "moral" project.
        
        Removing activist books from the library is the least we can do.

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          For starters: there is no Queer Theory. Either you are or are not. If you can not decide: then you are queer. That is wha the word means.

          The rest of your post is utter nonsense. So "liberals", or did you write "libertians"? Are for pedophilic child rape, ah ha...

          Did not know that. Thanx for your insight.

          Hm, joust out of curiosity: did you read at least one book of the authors you mentioned?

        • I've read some of Gender Queer to see what all the fuss is about and I'd agree it's not appropriate for preadolescent children, and it's probably not appropriate for most adolescents merely by virtue of not being applicable to most of them. I'd draw the line that it certainly isn't appropriate as part of any officially sanctioned curriculum, but it should be available to check out to adolescents who wish to do so of their own volition.

          Furthermore, I don't know what tolerance is like on the younger end of the Gen-Z world, but when I went to school there was no way in hell that I'd have checked out a book called "Gender Queer" with all my classmates staring at me. Chances are that if your adolescent is already sure enough of themselves that they're wanting to read that kind of book, you've already got a LGBTQ+ kid and the issue you're faced with is whether or not to be a loving parent to the kid you have, not the kid you wish they were. The book didn't make your kid queer, you already had a queer kid.

          Ironically, my adolescence coincided with roughly the tail end of the dial-up BBS era, so I overcame the lack of any sort of gay representation in my school's books/media by discovering a BBS that actually had genuine hardcore gay pornography. If I had an inclination to be straight it certainly would've been a lot easier just to watch late night Cinemax or ask one of my friends to borrow a Hustler/Playboy mag.

        • Bullshit disinformation

          This is bullshit misinformation.

          I have multiple volumes by Foucault and de Beauvoir on my shelf, and I've never encountered even the slightest whiff of any such topic. I mean, the word "queer" doesn't even appear anywhere on de Beauvoir's Wikipedia page. (I'm not LGTBQ myself, I have their works for other subjects.)

          Cite or STFU.

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        Ahahaha.

        You're a fucking groomer.

      • Since the school systems are full of so many groomers

        That was an invented narrative created by folks who couldn't stand the idea that LGBTQ+ tolerance was being promoted in public schools. Somehow the concepts of "gay people exist in real life" and "please don't bully your classmates for their sexual orientations" got twisted into some delusion that the schools are actively trying to turn your kids gay.

        There's always been LGBTQ+ youth. Before they had representation, they just hid it, and the ones who couldn't handle the mental anguish of hiding it killed themselves [thetrevorproject.org]. Acknowledging that LGBTQ+ youth exist and letting them be themselves isn't grooming, it's being a decent human being to a marginalized minority group. Tolerance and understanding is no more likely to make your straight kid gay than it is to make your white kid turn black.

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          Not sure what you are on about. Where did I say that, and where was any of that stated in the FL laws? This is about sexually explicit material being inappropriately provided to children in schools, PERIOD. If a teacher provided graphic heterosexual material to children, then they will be prosecuted the same. These teachers would have been prosecuted and fired even before this law existed.

          Sorry but I think it's inappropriate for any school instructor to be talking to or providing sexually explicit material

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        You mean the book with that chick that's into horse dicks and the hero figure that wants the kids to come on to him?

  • There is no book banning law. There is only a recent law that says children should not be exposed to pornography before third grade and parents should have a say in the books their children have access to. If that means there are no books in a school library (although those videos have long since been debunked), that should tell you something about the book choices they had before.

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    • • Re: Don't forget Florida

        "Riding the bus" is a euphemism now? Or is it only mention of "riding in the *back*" that stirs the loins?

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          Apparently, the story behind that was that a textbook publisher practiced "malicious compliance" with Florida's new law by removing all mentions of race from the story of Rosa Parks.

          It's kinda like how I received a ban for "hate speech" on Reddit for mentioning that IRL I sometimes get called a "faggot" for being gay. Whitewashing the past and gaslighting the present has become something of a bipartisan thing these days.

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      That's a completely different law, and Florida is in the process of revising that law [myfloridahouse.gov] from specifically covering K through 3rd grades and ambiguously covering higher grades, to specifically covering all grades. [orlandosentinel.com] Much to the surprise of basically no one, except maybe for folks who'll now need a new way to argue in bad faith that it was only about protecting very young children.

      The "book ban" bill is this one. There really wasn't as big of a stink made about the law initially, because I don't think anyone wa

      • Ugh, I really need to not just click preview and then smash submit. The link to the "book ban" bill is here. [flgov.com]

    • So far the theory, but have you pondered what it means in practice?

      What do you think is the immediate consequence if you make someone personally liable for something that they have no reason to want more than their job or personal freedom? Right. They will remove it from existence. Twice so if what they are liable for is something as ambiguously defined as "pornography" (aka "I know it when I see it").

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      Was pornography in elementary schools a problem in Florida?

• I admit, I don't read books for fun, or not fun as defined by others. I read technical manuals and discussions on how to solve problems. Do I like reading for readings sake? No. And I bet a lot of other people are the same even though others would be freaked out that we don't enjoy reading the collective works of >.

  As Scotty said: "This will give me time to catch up on my technical journals!"

  • "Harry Potter movie introduces children to the joy of not reading"

    It used to be in ancient times one actually read science journals. Editors put relevant articles next to each other. And since you had no way to view these online--you had to physically go to the library and hold the printed volume-- scanning through bound volumes for articles to read was natural. Now we just search for things and only get exactly what we searched for and not the serendipitous find

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      Very good point. Some of the best minds were stimulated by a happenstance find.

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    Back in the day we walked through the snow, carried 50 pounds of books, and did not have electricity for TV or a microwave to cook our delivered meals which showed up to door every week.

    Few people read as much as they say they did, And many if the read did not really engage with the book or remember much of it. I read a lot, but only remember a few of the books.

    One this that is true and schools will have to adjust to this, is the novel is over. The need to publish in any long form is over. For those

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    After a certain point, the real world (history, technology, science, philosophy) becomes much more interesting than fiction.

• • Yeah, I don't have to read the article to know the answer to this question. I have a 10 year old, and she'll only read something after she's used up her tablet time for the day. Books simply can't compete with the immediate satisfaction that she gets from watching YouTube or playing Roblox.

    If I didn't set a time limit on the tablet, I doubt that she would be doing any reading at all. That thing is like digital crack for young minds with short attention spans.

    • Books simply can't compete with the immediate satisfaction that she gets from watching YouTube or playing Roblox.

      Also, for about 3% of the population, books simply never will be as entertaining as watching a video/movie because they don't have the ability to imagine the scenes in their mind [cnbc.com]. Some people literally have a lesser experience reading books, so it isn't always necessarily that newer forms of media are a distraction.

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        This is neat but the 3% of the population can hardly explain a double-digit decrease that is being observed.

      • Re: Not just American kids

        Nah, thatâ(TM)s not it. I loved reading as a kid and I only recently figure out that I have near complete aphantasia. I read less now as an adult because there are so many other things to do and my attention span is a bit shot. That said, I still manage to read at least a dozen books a year. It helps having someone to read books WITH, and so I have a couple reading partners. But yeah, aphantasia doesnâ(TM)t really slow me down, I just canâ(TM)t visualize the spaces that people are in or what

• Bullshit.
  The article says itself that the percentages have been falling since 1984.

  You can't blame No Child Left Behind (2001) for that.

  I'm a huge reader, my wife isn't. We've raised 4 kids since the 1990s, two turned out to be big readers, two did not...So I'd say we were running to average.
  But we read to our kids constantly. We encouraged reading for fun. My kids saw me reading and enjoying it myself.
  We were shocked by the shitty, shitty approach our local school used to teach kids reading that was in no way like the way we'd learned. Instead of letters-> sounds--> words-> meaning, they were using some new "modern" trendy teaching paradigm that basically just kept exposing kids to words expecting 'eventually' they'd figure it out for themselves.

    I'd say today kids are learning to read despite shitty American teaching methods, not because of them.

  Then after that, they are losing their interest in long form reading because of the internet. I've seen the latter in myself when I've gone a long while without a book - the internet "blurb" style doesn't present information that, like a long book, requires the reader to hold multiple concepts simultaneously for long periods.

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    We've raised 4 kids since the 1990s, two turned out to be big readers, two did not.

    Similar here. My parents (one reader, one not) had three kids, two readers, one not. My daughter had two parents who were both readers, she is a reader.

    Cousins were readers if their parents read, mostly ignored books if their parents didn't read.

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    And in 1984 there was, like, four TV channels and no computers so kids did something else.

    (and if you read too much you got called a 'bookworm' and parents used to try and send you outside to do something healthy)

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        "And in 1984 there was, like, four TV channels and no computers"

        Eh? Computers were around in the early '80s
      In 1984 I had an Apple ][ and a C=64

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    trendy teaching paradigm that basically just kept exposing kids to words expecting 'eventually' they'd figure it out for themselves.
    That is actually how reading works. And I'm confident you learned it the same way, but simply forgot.
    That trend is not modern. I learned like that over 50 years ago.

    And the way you learn reading/writing has most certainly nothing to do with the question if you like reading a book, or not. Except the hours where so much hell for you that you simply: hate reading and/or writing

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      No, that isn't how reading works. We haven't evolved to read (unlike talking) and many kids can't just "figure it out" by being immersed in it. It's a terrible method that leaves something like 30% of kids behind, who could be taught to read if only they used a more structured approach like synthetic phonics.

      Look up "science of reading" - here's one [edresearch.edu.au] that also includes the citations to the studies if you want to go that far - there are many others.

      And yes, the "whole word" and then "balanced literacy" have

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    That is "phonics."

    That is "whole word" learning.

    That "phonics vs. whole word" debate has become politicized, but the preponderance of the evidence is that phonics helps kids learn to read sooner and progress faster, although they later self-transition to "whole word" recognition.

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      I learned to read using phonics and I am fortunate to be able to send my kids to a private school that teaches the way they have always taught, which includes four years of phonics pre-K through the 2nd grade. My 2nd grade daughter reads at the 5th grade reading level and her best friend is way beyond that. My daughter is reading Harry Potter because her friends all are. We have always encouraged reading, but I feel like we have far more results than effort we put into this as parents. Phonics plus the

  • Re:

    Ah - I see you have met "Balanced Literacy". And unfortunately it is not only a thing in the US.

    Screens absolutely compete for attention, but the shitty reading methods means lots of kids **can't** read - not because they are unable, but because someone was sold a story on whole word literacy, so rather than focusing on teaching kids phonics (so they can sound out words they don't recognise) the learn to recite books by wrote, until the texts get too complicated, or the teachers don't have time to read them

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    Around 1979 Texas started in on the whole accountability thing. This was largely motivated by racism. The goal was to have legal reasons to send less money, not more to struggling schools. Up until this time the state had been allowed to have neighboring school districts with wildly different school funding. The first thing they did was switch from student-age population to attendance to gauge school funding. Various testing stratagems followed. No Child Left Behind is just the latest in a long series
• Kids have learned helplessness because 'phones' think for them. My kids told me. No need to remember anything. "just google it". Now with "AI".
  
  In all seriousness, we've become dependent on phones, in the most pernicious ways. The more they do, the less we have to do. People are lazy, so now, the idea of "doing things" is considered to be for "losers".
  
  Look! I typed 3 words, and it wrote an essay for me. Why bother thinking anymore?

• In 7th and 8th grade I would devour books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and others. By high school I didn't read for recreation. What changed? I was forced in my spare time and as homework to read insipid stupid "classics" for a grade. Instead of reading adult level material about the end of the world (The Stand) I had to read sanitized books about some asshole that burns his hand in Revolutionary times, or some other dickhead and his goddamn dog. It made reading books such a chore that I only did it w

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    I thought "To Build a Fire" was instructional. You see what that dickhead did? Yeah, don't do that. The dog had more brains than he did. What's not to like?
• I agree with others here. There's SO much available that a kid can do these days. I remember the frequent summer question we'd say, living in our distant suburb, "Mom, I'm sooo bored... what can I do?"
  
  One can spend a lifetime on the Internet alone (some of it is reading of course), not to mention the number of TV/movies and the video games can be played for a much longer time before being completed; and on-line play can even go indefinitely.
  
  The libraries, in my opinion, aren't helping. One here ho

• Books are long winded and largely uninteresting. I have ADHD and I've always struggled to stay motivated enough to finish a book. It always seems like the author just kept adding long winded crap to artificially extend scenes or add useless information to get page numbers up.

  I much prefer reading Wikipedia or other sources of dense information. For fiction I prefer a short story, TV, movies. Some books can capture my imagination, but most just seem to ramble on.

  • Re: Unpopular opinion

    I suppose I find TV, movies and such too noisy and filled with advertisements.

    I find books more full of substance, willing to actually explore things instead of just trying to look cool and seel things.

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    They do, but not always. Shakespeare didn't. He's still worth reading.

  • Re:

    There's a fair point here, even if I don't have exactly the same experience.

    As a fantasy reader, I've found that the golden age was pulp fantasy where the core works were short stories published in monthly pulp magazines. They're dense, snappy, and risk-taking. The problem is that as a publishing concern the industry found you needed a certain 200-300 page count to make it worthwhile binding and putting something on the shelf. So yes, writers commonly took popular short stories and bloated them up (or paste

• It could be demographics. The US has gone from an overwhemingly European majority nation to one vastly more culturally and genetically diverse. It all depends on which cultures/ethnicities value education and reading.

• The fruits of disinformation have ripened and are on full display in this thread.

  These are very ugly times, uglier than I can remember in my 5 decades in this rock. I've never seen it this bad, the divide in the population, the way a full half of you have been successfuly re-programmed.

  There's more to life than 10 second sound bites and cleverly edited footage of empty libraries and cleverly-steered interviews with a pee-determined agenda.

  Maybe if you goons spent more time reading the books in question rat

• I've taught English/Literature to high schoolers for nearly 30 years. The push for STEM in the curriculum is killing Humanities. Art budgets: Slashed. English Textbook budget: Slashed. My school hasn't ordered new Textbooks for english classes in 23 years. We are to teach Informational Analysis, Media Awareness, We hand out pdfs of texts that we can find online. THe schools will subscribe to Kahn Academy for ACT/SAT prep because tests are important in order to prove the children learn. But the real learning
• Books used to be a way to explore the universe as a child; to get a taste of the grown up world. After I had mastered reading 'The Hungry Hungry Catepillar', I hated books until I stopped looking in the children's section.

  Now we have adults still reading children's books... I think most children want to read above their age level, and so it's no wonder why they aren't engaged by the same nostalgia as adults who consume children's content today.