Recall the longest book you ever read. Was it War and Peace? Was it the Lord of the Rings? Elon Musk’s Autobiography? Did you read it because of school?
According to Statista in “Reading Habits in the U.S.,” The average time spent reading by American adults is 15 minutes a day. In 2020, this had surpassed 20 minutes, but by Statista’s measurements, reading counts for anything short of highway signs and captions on a video. As long as it’s news, even online or through social media, that counts as reading. When it comes to books (where the substance, and challenge, lies), only 54% of Americans have read one book in the past year, according to the Statista article aptly titled “46% of Americans Didn’t Read a Book in the Last Year.”
In terms of averages, Gallup.com’s article title, “Americans Reading Fewer Books than in Past,” says it all. Americans have read an average of 12.6 books per year in 2021, down from 15.6 in 2016, and 18.5 in 1999. 12.6 books per year is still 1 book per month. Yet another article on Statista, “Average Number of Books Engaged with per Month among Adults in the United States as of November 2020, by Format,” claims that adults in 2020 “engaged with” 3.8 books per month, or 45.6 books per year. This suggests that American adults “engage with” far more books than they end up finishing.
Where do teenagers and kids fall into this? Golden Steps ABA appears to have the answer in their list of 49 Reading Statistics. Only about half of kids aged 6-17 read for enjoyment, and as they hit teenage years, this number plummets. Those 51% of kids report better mental health, and better grades, by the way. Kids ages 8-12 are instead spending an average of 4 hours and 36 minutes on screens, meaning TV, video games, and mobile devices, not work for school.
Much of recent education philosophy has tended towards letting kids focus on choice reading and providing different mediums of expression. ELA teachers at FM High School have found creative ways to engage students. Unfortunately, they have been faced with a difficult dilemma. As high schoolers drop off in how much they read for pleasure, they often don’t even read for school, relying on book summaries. Teachers are left with the choice between hoping their students will have a change of heart and read closely in school, or building analytical skills through reading short texts that can be tackled in school. The latter option leads to a much more definite outcome.
Last year in tenth grade, I took both ELA honors classes, expecting to receive 25-30 minutes of moderately difficult reading a night. Instead, I read an assortment of short stories, a roughly 100 page book, a graphic novel, and a book of my choice at the end of the year. I could have picked poetry and flown through the book in an hour, but I chose a book exceeding 300 pages of prose–finally. Kids were not only able to choose how they expressed what they read, but also what they read, in theory a rather promising prospect.
Yet most teenagers are going to, short-sightedly, not go for the 371-page book, despite greater benefits in the long term. Instead of delving deeper into the poetry book, they will come out with the same level of analysis that the student with the denser book came out with, and have put in less thought in the end. When so many kids are not reading for pleasure, sometimes their only fulfillment from reading, though they likely don’t view it that way, may come from school. It’s not to say that profound conclusions can’t be drawn from reading poetry, but there comes a point when students need to learn how to dedicate themselves to an extensive task as well, like reading a long book.
In a world where it is emphasized to pursue at least a graduate education, high school language arts education, which involves reading long texts, is not as much of an option for those who wish to take this track. Reading proficiency is not just assessed in standardized testing. Kids may not like it, but books are meant to be read, especially in higher level classes. Book summaries may be a major concern, but students are taking shortcuts everywhere they can, and at this point, if they wish to detriment their own education, so be it. At the same time, students who are not actually up for the commitment required in an Honors English class should really not be taking it.
For the learners who take ELA because they want the earned satisfaction of a deep literary analysis of major works, rather than a quick “huh that was interesting” after a two-page short story, our ELA curriculum at the high school needs to be modified; if students can demonstrate their commitment to reading in every way possible, that is the first step to a change in a curriculum so built around students. Reading more for school may not seem like the most tantalizing idea at first, but the benefits have been enumerated above. Students should, and can, resist the tantalizing shortcuts, for the sake of the future of general education.
