Why do new generation kids hate reading books?
Because schools teach them that reading is boring.
When my first son was little, he loved books. He loved stories from the time he could focus his little eyes on my face. I read to him every night, and it was his favourite thing in the world. By the time he was three, all he wanted in the world was to be able to read by himself because books were the bestest things in the whole wide world.
But, to be clear, I was reading him good books.
I carefully chose picture books based on the story. I wanted books with an interesting narrative. Books with conflict and resolution. Books that engaged his imagination and made him want to live in the world of the story. The pictures were always secondary — they that added to the story, yes, but they weren’t the drawcard.
When he was four, my son’s favourite book was a children’s version of Beowulf. He wanted to grow up big and strong so he could defeat Grendel and Grendel’s mother.
For his fifth birthday I bought him a copy of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When he was six, I read him The Hobbit.
He loved those books so much that when I finished reading them to him, he’d hug the book to his chest as though trying to merge it into his heart forever. (Little did he know that the very process of hearing the story had done exactly that.)
But, despite still loving the books I read to him, he told me when he was five that he didn’t want to learn to read anymore. In fact, he hated reading for the next four years. Hated it with a passion.
Why?
School.
Have you seen the readers they force on poor, defenceless children? They’re B-O-R-I-N-G boring.
The red fox ran. The red fox ran fast. The dog ran. The red fox and dog ran. See the red fox and dog run.
I’m bored just typing the words.
There’s no story in early readers. There’s no conflict. There’s no drama. There’s no stakes. They’re boring.
Sure, they’ve got simple, repetitive words. But they don’t have a story. And do you know what else has simple, repetitive words?
Green Eggs and Ham.
(Side note: Did you know that Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet? A friend bet Dr Seuss that he couldn’t write a full children’s book using only 50 unique words? Guess who won that bet.)
In fact, I could name hundreds of books with simple words that are nevertheless interesting and engaging. The difference is, they don’t use the education system’s list of age-appropriate sight words. But since when in the history of ever has any human being anywhere enjoyed learning something that’s best described as “educationally appropriate but boring”?
People don’t work like that.
My son was a bit of an unusual case, since he associated reading with epic adventures, monsters, and magical worlds rather than seeing Spot run, but all children understand narrative.
Sit and listen to a two- or three-year-old and their play is full of the stuff.
This is my pirate. He’s going to SMASH the ship! Oh, no! The treasure sank! Quick, pirate, swim! Oh, no! The ninja is stealing the treasure!
Even Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol have decent (if predictable) narratives that include some kind of conflict and resolution.
So kids who can’t even tie their own shoelaces, but nevertheless have a better grasp on narrative structure than many adults, go from a magical world of making up well-structured stories and adventures, to being told that reading is actually just boring lists of educationally-appropriate words.
When my son was nine, he was pretty much bottom of the class in reading. He couldn’t read the example text I put above. (I refuse to type it again.) He could, however, read the picture books I had at home without any trouble.
When I pulled him out of school to homeschool him, we went to the library and got a stack of junior fiction books. They were way above the level of both the early readers he’d had at school and the picture books he was reading at home. But, these ones? Oh, these ones were about Batman and Medusa and Sinbad. They were real stories.
It took him three weeks to be able to read them on his own.
Meanwhile, those children who persevere through boring books at school are rewarded with… more boring books.
It feels like our entire world these days is based around “stories on demand”. Choose your narrative poison. What story do you like? Game of Thrones? The Umbrella Academy? Marvel’s Over-Extended Universe? Or perhaps you’re less into the pop culture trends, and you’d rather relax and watch the classics. Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps? Or Stanley Kubrick?
When was the last time you thought to yourself: “Oh, I know what I’ll do. I’ll relax by watching something in a genre that I hate.”
I’m going to bet that, for most of us, the answer is: Not recently.
But what do schools do? They force every child in a class to read the same book. Doesn’t matter what the child likes, or what their interests are, or what their experiences are. And, to be honest, most of the books sent home are as interesting as white bread soaked in water.
I don’t care how “educationally appropriate” a book is. If it’s not interesting to the children reading it, they’re going to make exactly one inference:
Reading. Is. Boring.
When we started homeschooling, we went to the library every couple of weeks. (We still do.) And my son was so excited to choose his own books. He must have read every Marvel and DC junior novel they had. A few months later, he was reading Geronimo Stilton.
A few months after that, he started on the Hardy Boys series. Then he discovered Deltora Quest and The Secret Series and Impossible Quest and… I could go on for pages. Let’s just say that less than a year after he was officially classed as a “slow reader”, he was reading 250 page novels. For fun. In less than a week.
But it’s not just primary school. It’s high school, too. Boring books. Books that are above kids’ reading levels. Or below their reading levels. Books the kids don’t care about.
I remember getting in trouble in high school because I was reading Lord of the Rings under the table in English class (in grade 9) instead of reading the book the class was studying at the time. When I explained that I’d already read the class book, my teacher told me to get it out and read it again. Because that’s what the class was doing.
This is not the way to show young people that books are exciting or interesting or engaging. This is the way to show young people that books are boring at best, and a punishment at worst.
But it’s not just the books themselves. It’s also the way they’re taught. You could take the most interesting, exciting, fascinating subject in the world and when you break it down into a list of strategic educational outcomes, it would turn into something boring and mundane.
If teachers approached reading like it was something interesting…
If teachers taught stories rather than books…
If teachers encouraged students to read things that interested them…
Well, in most cases teachers don’t have those options in this world of standardised testing and bureaucratic oversight. But can you imagine how different it would be if they did?
Can you imagine a world where schools actually taught children that reading was exciting?
My son has just turned twelve, and he reads a couple of novels a week when he can find the time to do it. And we’re talking YA or Adult fiction at this point. His goal is to read 60 novels this year, but he’s currently tracking to read closer to 100.
The other day he said to me, “Do you know why I love reading so much? Because when I’m reading, I don’t even see the words. I just fall into the story so much that it’s like I’m really there.”
That’s the magic of reading. And it didn’t take reading schedules and educationally appropriate books to get him there.
Children love stories. You don’t have to do anything to encourage them to love reading.
You just have to not teach them that reading is boring.
Notes:
- Most teachers do a wonderful job within the system they have to deal with. Likewise, most teachers care deeply for their students. This is a rant about the education system as a whole, not individual teachers. The teachers I know wish they could do many of the things I’ve listed above, but are constrained by bureaucracy.
- Dyslexia is a real thing and can make reading both more difficult and more energy-consuming for people who have it. That severely impacts on a person’s love for reading. Nevertheless, even children with dyslexia will learn to enjoy reading more if they’re not being taught that reading is both difficult AND boring.
Comments
Post a Comment