Do You Still Read for Enjoyment? Do Your Children?

The National Endowment for the Arts recently released study stating that teenagers, children, and adults are reading for pleasure much less these days.

Not only are Americans reading less... they are also scoring lower on standardized reading measures. The study finds

"less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004." "On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading."

So why are we reading so much less? There are lots of blogs posts about the study trying to explain this trend. Theories range from the pervasiveness of visual media (TV, computers, video games) to the rise sports participation, to the general lack of societal value of highly literate people. Smart people are ridiculed on your average TV show.

Some people even theorize that school, most notably the tests in school, has taken the fun out of reading. Some theorists say we have outgrown reading....we are evolving passed it. For thousands of years we told our stories by word of mouth. By comparison, the written word is still relatively new. With the enhancements of visual media, the theorists explain, we are simply taking communication to a new level. At first I kind of laughed that one off....then I started thinking more about it and wondered if there might actually be a partial truth there.

I read each night before going to bed…as much to wind down as educate myself (I’m more of a nonfiction reader). My own kids read at home most days…but sadly they will almost always pick the computer over a book. Fortunately a read aloud with mom or dad is still a favored activity.
I would like think the reading is simply losing market share in an ever competitive market for people’s time. 20 years ago there were 3 channels on TV. Now people have hundreds of channels as well as a hard drive worth of movies DVR’d to their machine to choose. They receive top rated feature movies in the mailbox on an almost daily basis and can order movies to be streamed to their TV.

20 years ago a child could play baseball in the spring and that was it. Now they can play 2 seasons of outdoor soccer, winter indoor soccer, lacrosse, football, wrestling, and just about every imaginable sport. 20 years ago the Internet was available for research scientists to share their data. There was no YouTube or WebKinz to eat your time. Reading (as entertaining as it can be) is simply losing the battle.

I do have to wonder whether there is time in a classroom to just read a book and talk about it with other people. With the emphasis on standards and NCLB we need to figure out how to teach each and every possible indicator as part of our children's reading activities. Do we sometimes take the fun out of book by wringing out every possible standards tie-in? Do we read anymore just to discuss and share the experience with a peer?

To Read or Not to Read
http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html