Academics across the country are talking about the reading problems they are seeing among traditional-age students. Many, they say, don’t see the point in doing much work outside of class. Some struggle with reading endurance and weak vocabulary. A lack of faith in their own academic abilities leads some students to freeze and avoid doing the work altogether.
And a significant number of those who do the work seem unable to analyze complex or lengthy texts. Their limited experience with reading also means they don’t have the context to understand certain arguments or points of view.
please understand that i mean no offense to lucas when i say this, but i think the way the post sets up the article is kind of disingenuous. the quotes are real and this is stuff the article touches on, but it set me up in thinking that this was going to be yet another thinkpiece on the decline of phonics education from the chronicle of higher education, of all places. what i instead came away with was an incredibly understanding and considerate piece that acknowledges that, yes, this is a problem, but also that the problem is complex, that the causes are multifaceted, and the solutions are varied.
a failure of reading education is too big to have a single cause, because a failure in reading education is also a failure in all education. when we look at reading education, we are not looking at the entire story; we are looking at a case study. the story of “why can’t students do the reading anymore?” is also the story of the entire american education system, and the article acknowledges that. Is This the End of Reading? is, at the present moment, the definitive work on the topic, and it handles the topic so masterfully that it makes every other article on the decline of reading ability seem almost uninformed in comparison.
here’s the quotes that i would’ve included if i was the one who first shared it to cohost:
Blum recently discussed the argument of Kotsko’s Slate article with her students, who objected to the idea that their generation has lost the ability to read critically. “We have narrowed the definition of reading to a certain kind of material,” she says — namely, textbooks and academic articles — “and then we have drawn the conclusion that they can’t read or they won’t read.”
As for why they may not show up for class or do the work, Rubin thinks it’s part social anxiety and part cynicism. “I think they see school very transactionally,” he says. “Schools also see students more transactionally than they did in the past. It’s not the deep relationship educators want it to be.”
i have so much more to say about this piece, but i’ll hold off on it because what i currently need is more of people’s reactions to this article. especially from people who are in education, either students or faculty. please comment them down below, or if you don’t feel comfortable sharing them then you can send me a private message on discord or through cohost’s asks feature (just state that you would like this ask to remain private and i will not publicly respond to it).
