People claiming thirteen-year-olds can't be expected to read an entire book clearly haven't encountered middle-schoolers. Your ability to focus and to chew through books is basically unparalleled at that age. Yes, not every kid is going to like reading (that's true in any cohort), but it's insane to claim that none of them does, or even that most of them don't, and especially insane to claim that that should guide educational policy.
And also, Mister Netflix CEO, not to sound like a boomer, but watching Lawrence of Arabia or 2001: A Space Odyssey on your phone screen is only 'a matter of preference' if your 'preference' is for an objectively worse experience.
(I understand that sometimes there are accessibility issues that make watching films at home easier, but that is an argument for greater accessibility of the big screen, not fewer big screens).
My seven-year-old read about 25 short novels (~100 pages each with illustrations) over Thanksgiving break. She got mad at us when we suggested that she should do something that wouldn't allow her to read, like going shopping with us or playing outside. We eventually persuaded her only because she could read in the car on the way to the shops. I was actually starting to wonder if we had a little problem on our hands--the opposite of the not being able to read a novel all the way to the end problem. I remember reading about "an addiction to novels" as something that the Victorians worried about a lot. I definitely remember that was my experience growing up, too: my parents had to make a rule about not reading at dinner.
If anything, it's adults who seem unable to concentrate, probably because of unlimited access to TikTok videos and Instagram posts. I've sat behind a couple of people on planes recently who spent the periods of four or five or even more hours scrolling mindlessly through feeds. I once sat next to some people who nearly caused a pilot to make an emergency landing because they got borderline abusive and violent when the plane's wifi stopped working.
As for the Netflix CEO, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it's difficult to get a man to see the value of the big screen when his salary depends upon him not seeing it.
True of me too! And absolutely I think that social media's a big factor in the hollowing out of attention spans, but again, it's mad for educational policymakers to act like they have no power in trying to combat that.
I suppose what they're thinking is that they've lost the battle already: that making teenagers read Jane Austen or even The Catcher in the Rye is going to be torture for everyone all around, so why bother fighting? It speaks for the need for all of us--parents, teachers, administrators, policy experts--to articulate to ourselves that longform narratives are important and valuable and that children should read them. Maybe more to the point, that social media and AI and other online distractions aren't valuable and shouldn't be tolerated in children's lives. It seems to me like one of these death spiral problems: everyone starts thinking very wearily that they're the only ones who care, so they might as well give up. Then other people see that and think that they should give up, too. Nobody is actually powerless, but everyone perceives that they are. It's difficult to stop this once it gets going, but I see some promising signs (Jonathan Haidt's movement, the Australian ban) that people are finally beginning to acknowledge that no, TikTok videos aren't really a substitute for books--or even a longform, high-quality television drama!
I actually think some paternalism in this regard is beneficial (and within the remit of policymakers) - fingers crossed that experiments like these catch on.
I think the problem arises when reading (which I'd define broadly to mean engagement with longform narrative, whether it's the traditional reading of a book, listening to stories, or watching drama) starts getting bowdlerized into a set of "skills" that are applicable to other things. The truth is that I don't think any of us know what longform narratives are good for in an absolutely scientific way. They might teach empathy. They might help with concentration and focus. They might help us understand complexity. Those are all plausible stories about stories. But what we know for sure is that spending time with imaginary characters over the course of a narrative is part of the deep cultural practice of humans, traceable back to our prehistory. We had a lot of other things to be doing back then to survive, but we still took time out of hunting, gathering, defending ourselves against predators, etc. for the time-intensive art of telling long stories to each other. To me, this speaks to its intrinsic importance apart from any of the discrete skills that we'd associate with post-Industrial Revolution mass literacy. It speaks to its meaning of imaginative leisure for the human soul, even if we can't say precisely what that meaning is. I know that schools don't like to speak in that language because of the religious overtones, but my own definition of a soul owes more to Aristotle than it does to Christianity, and I think it is defensible on wholly secular grounds. And I think we lose (or lost) the battle when we start trying to make engagement with fiction into a means to something else instead of an end in itself. That's where the philistinism creeps in: when we turn something that's just human, full stop, into a job-related skill set.
I mean certainly I agree with you that taking novels off the curriculum is a terrible idea.
I read A Raisin the Sun in 7th or 8th grade; I don't think I've ever actually seen it performed but reading it was excellent, as also To Kill a Mockingbird, read around the same time.
on one hand i agree on the other i can surely say I did not read the books assigned (and neither did most of my classmates)
because as soon as I get a reading assignment it sucks out all of the joy of reading. Reading in school went so far as have me completely stop reading on my own (whereas I was an avid reader before) because it became something I associated with school and not as escape and finding novelty.
Perhaps that's more a case of the joy being sucked out of reading because of the way the teacher taught it. I would think that an imaginative and skilled teacher could foster that joy.
Laurence of Arabia on the phone? Jeez, that person is ruining his eyesight. And missing out on Peter O'Toole - to paraphrase Noel Coward - looking more Florence than Laurence of Arabia on the big screen. Such blue eyes I'm pretty sure T. E. never had...
I guess parents have to help too... my 8th grade son decided on his own to read To Kill a Mockingbird in the last month. He's blazed thru all Madeleine L'Engel's novels and now he's on CS Lewis' Space trilogy. (Incidentally his school is unique, fabulous and not philistine at all—they have a rigourous program in class hours, but the amount of homework still leaves time for self chosen reading. ... we are so fortunate.)
How much poorer I would be had I watched films like The Darkest Hour on my phone - not least because of the ever present cracked screen protector.
I had been thinking about this ludicrous suggestion earlier when Frankie Goes To Hollywood's song The Power of Love from 1984 came on the radio. I was immediately hit with the closing scene from the film All of Us Strangers which haunted me for ages after watching. I would not have felt the same had I watched that on my phone. Going to the cinema was one of the things I missed doing most during the pandemic.
But I suppose so many people dangle mobile phone screens in front of children to keep them quiet that they are going to grow up with the phone screen being the most natural way of viewing anything.
Is this for real? When literacy is at an all time low already. By the age of 13 I had read at least a hundred books, including Lord of the Rings and lots of old classics. I attribute a lot of my success in life to reading. Whether it is fiction or fact doesn't even matter. With so many distractions today, the ability to read, to really read, must be something that is taught at school from an early age. I worry about the future as I see so many school leavers who can't as much as write a cover letter to got with their AI created CV.
I feel compelled to comment on today's post. At thirteen I was fortunate to have a good library in my small town that had no decent bookstore. I found Balzac's novels, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allen Poe (just remembering a few) in the stacks. I'd say I read more novels at that age --when one is becoming curious about the world--than almost any other time. A habit that led to my life-long love of literature. My husband was an academy-award winning cinematographer. His art was carefully designed for the big screen; hours of work went into perfecting the final prints of the Hollywood features he photographed. Cinematic art reached a high peak just as digital capture (faster,cheaper) came into play. Seeing a great film on the big screen while sitting in the dark with an audience is one of the most exciting and moving experiences I know of. It is market pressure (sell more devices!, pay to subscribe!) that has created this situation--not individual preference.
Shame shame shame indeed! What comes to mind is Iain Mc Gilchrist's thesis about the dominance of left-brain thinking/living in our world (The Master and His Emissary, The Matter With Things).
People claiming thirteen-year-olds can't be expected to read an entire book clearly haven't encountered middle-schoolers. Your ability to focus and to chew through books is basically unparalleled at that age. Yes, not every kid is going to like reading (that's true in any cohort), but it's insane to claim that none of them does, or even that most of them don't, and especially insane to claim that that should guide educational policy.
And also, Mister Netflix CEO, not to sound like a boomer, but watching Lawrence of Arabia or 2001: A Space Odyssey on your phone screen is only 'a matter of preference' if your 'preference' is for an objectively worse experience.
(I understand that sometimes there are accessibility issues that make watching films at home easier, but that is an argument for greater accessibility of the big screen, not fewer big screens).
My seven-year-old read about 25 short novels (~100 pages each with illustrations) over Thanksgiving break. She got mad at us when we suggested that she should do something that wouldn't allow her to read, like going shopping with us or playing outside. We eventually persuaded her only because she could read in the car on the way to the shops. I was actually starting to wonder if we had a little problem on our hands--the opposite of the not being able to read a novel all the way to the end problem. I remember reading about "an addiction to novels" as something that the Victorians worried about a lot. I definitely remember that was my experience growing up, too: my parents had to make a rule about not reading at dinner.
If anything, it's adults who seem unable to concentrate, probably because of unlimited access to TikTok videos and Instagram posts. I've sat behind a couple of people on planes recently who spent the periods of four or five or even more hours scrolling mindlessly through feeds. I once sat next to some people who nearly caused a pilot to make an emergency landing because they got borderline abusive and violent when the plane's wifi stopped working.
As for the Netflix CEO, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it's difficult to get a man to see the value of the big screen when his salary depends upon him not seeing it.
True of me too! And absolutely I think that social media's a big factor in the hollowing out of attention spans, but again, it's mad for educational policymakers to act like they have no power in trying to combat that.
I suppose what they're thinking is that they've lost the battle already: that making teenagers read Jane Austen or even The Catcher in the Rye is going to be torture for everyone all around, so why bother fighting? It speaks for the need for all of us--parents, teachers, administrators, policy experts--to articulate to ourselves that longform narratives are important and valuable and that children should read them. Maybe more to the point, that social media and AI and other online distractions aren't valuable and shouldn't be tolerated in children's lives. It seems to me like one of these death spiral problems: everyone starts thinking very wearily that they're the only ones who care, so they might as well give up. Then other people see that and think that they should give up, too. Nobody is actually powerless, but everyone perceives that they are. It's difficult to stop this once it gets going, but I see some promising signs (Jonathan Haidt's movement, the Australian ban) that people are finally beginning to acknowledge that no, TikTok videos aren't really a substitute for books--or even a longform, high-quality television drama!
I actually think some paternalism in this regard is beneficial (and within the remit of policymakers) - fingers crossed that experiments like these catch on.
You may be right. Someone's got to make the first move.
I think the problem arises when reading (which I'd define broadly to mean engagement with longform narrative, whether it's the traditional reading of a book, listening to stories, or watching drama) starts getting bowdlerized into a set of "skills" that are applicable to other things. The truth is that I don't think any of us know what longform narratives are good for in an absolutely scientific way. They might teach empathy. They might help with concentration and focus. They might help us understand complexity. Those are all plausible stories about stories. But what we know for sure is that spending time with imaginary characters over the course of a narrative is part of the deep cultural practice of humans, traceable back to our prehistory. We had a lot of other things to be doing back then to survive, but we still took time out of hunting, gathering, defending ourselves against predators, etc. for the time-intensive art of telling long stories to each other. To me, this speaks to its intrinsic importance apart from any of the discrete skills that we'd associate with post-Industrial Revolution mass literacy. It speaks to its meaning of imaginative leisure for the human soul, even if we can't say precisely what that meaning is. I know that schools don't like to speak in that language because of the religious overtones, but my own definition of a soul owes more to Aristotle than it does to Christianity, and I think it is defensible on wholly secular grounds. And I think we lose (or lost) the battle when we start trying to make engagement with fiction into a means to something else instead of an end in itself. That's where the philistinism creeps in: when we turn something that's just human, full stop, into a job-related skill set.
like suggesting it'd be okay to listen to great music played with 8 bit Atari synth sounds
A Raisin in the Sun is a play not a novel.
I mean certainly I agree with you that taking novels off the curriculum is a terrible idea.
I read A Raisin the Sun in 7th or 8th grade; I don't think I've ever actually seen it performed but reading it was excellent, as also To Kill a Mockingbird, read around the same time.
on one hand i agree on the other i can surely say I did not read the books assigned (and neither did most of my classmates)
because as soon as I get a reading assignment it sucks out all of the joy of reading. Reading in school went so far as have me completely stop reading on my own (whereas I was an avid reader before) because it became something I associated with school and not as escape and finding novelty.
Perhaps that's more a case of the joy being sucked out of reading because of the way the teacher taught it. I would think that an imaginative and skilled teacher could foster that joy.
hm no my teachers were great but knowing I have to read is just something that always annoyed me to no end and lead me to just not doing it
it’s like when you are cleaning your room or about to and then someone tells you to clean your room (idk if that’s just a neurodivergent thing)
Laurence of Arabia on the phone? Jeez, that person is ruining his eyesight. And missing out on Peter O'Toole - to paraphrase Noel Coward - looking more Florence than Laurence of Arabia on the big screen. Such blue eyes I'm pretty sure T. E. never had...
so agree
I guess parents have to help too... my 8th grade son decided on his own to read To Kill a Mockingbird in the last month. He's blazed thru all Madeleine L'Engel's novels and now he's on CS Lewis' Space trilogy. (Incidentally his school is unique, fabulous and not philistine at all—they have a rigourous program in class hours, but the amount of homework still leaves time for self chosen reading. ... we are so fortunate.)
How much poorer I would be had I watched films like The Darkest Hour on my phone - not least because of the ever present cracked screen protector.
I had been thinking about this ludicrous suggestion earlier when Frankie Goes To Hollywood's song The Power of Love from 1984 came on the radio. I was immediately hit with the closing scene from the film All of Us Strangers which haunted me for ages after watching. I would not have felt the same had I watched that on my phone. Going to the cinema was one of the things I missed doing most during the pandemic.
But I suppose so many people dangle mobile phone screens in front of children to keep them quiet that they are going to grow up with the phone screen being the most natural way of viewing anything.
I had nothing but my nose in a book daily from age 3 all through my teens! Absolutely let kids read real books, novels, poetry; the whole gambit!
Is this for real? When literacy is at an all time low already. By the age of 13 I had read at least a hundred books, including Lord of the Rings and lots of old classics. I attribute a lot of my success in life to reading. Whether it is fiction or fact doesn't even matter. With so many distractions today, the ability to read, to really read, must be something that is taught at school from an early age. I worry about the future as I see so many school leavers who can't as much as write a cover letter to got with their AI created CV.
I feel compelled to comment on today's post. At thirteen I was fortunate to have a good library in my small town that had no decent bookstore. I found Balzac's novels, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allen Poe (just remembering a few) in the stacks. I'd say I read more novels at that age --when one is becoming curious about the world--than almost any other time. A habit that led to my life-long love of literature. My husband was an academy-award winning cinematographer. His art was carefully designed for the big screen; hours of work went into perfecting the final prints of the Hollywood features he photographed. Cinematic art reached a high peak just as digital capture (faster,cheaper) came into play. Seeing a great film on the big screen while sitting in the dark with an audience is one of the most exciting and moving experiences I know of. It is market pressure (sell more devices!, pay to subscribe!) that has created this situation--not individual preference.
They really want us to be slaves who eat chum, don't they?
Heads must roll.
Shame shame shame indeed! What comes to mind is Iain Mc Gilchrist's thesis about the dominance of left-brain thinking/living in our world (The Master and His Emissary, The Matter With Things).
Wrong "it's".
Gah!
Thanks for fixing it!