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- cross-posted to:
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Children’s reading enjoyment has fallen to its lowest level in almost two decades, with just one in three young people saying that they enjoy reading in their free time, according to a new survey.
Only 34.6% of eight- to 18-year-olds surveyed by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) said that they enjoy reading in their spare time. This is the lowest level recorded by the charity since it began surveying children about their reading habits 19 years ago, representing an 8.8 percentage point drop since last year.
It is also part of a broader downward trend since 2016, when almost two in three children said that they enjoyed reading.
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So you mean to tell me that when corporations, bigger, richer and more influential than entire governments and countries, are left unregulated to manufacture and advertise products designed by psychologists and behavioural scientists to capture as much of our attention as possible, our attentions are captured and we can’t spend time on beneficial hobbies? That’s really unexpected…
I’m always interested to see exactly what is included and excluded from their definition of reading. On average, most adults actually read more today that we did in the 90s, if you’re purely talking words of text consumed. Are graphic novels being included in these stats? Short stories? Social media threads? Most people even watch videos/tv/movies with subtitles they read now, which was not something that was an option before.
The actual article text never says the word “book” once, but I strongly suspect that is all that’s being counted.
As a teacher in lower secondary school, kids don’t do any of that. They read physical media sporadically, and the main kind of digital media they consume is through IG and TikTok, furtherly filtered by the algorithm to appeal to their interest. The only kind of excitement I see in their eyes when talking reading is when talking manga, but even then it’s mostly because they got there through anime (dubbed, so not even with subs) first. Kids don’t read half as often as we did twenty years ago, and teachers get the blame for trying to push some sense in them through lecture.
The kinds of works that create an educated adult instead of a consumer.
So all of the above?
So there can’t be educational graphic novels, short stories, TV, movies? Hell there is even educational content to be found on social media if you look
Given that there are plenty of pro-consumerism schlocky books (if not the majority, being that most are just entertainment-targeted consumer goods), and plenty of highly educational non-book texts, this doesn’t really mean anything.
Perhaps if children in many US schools were not forced to read to a pre set quota they night enjoy it. Being mandated to do something you may not already enjoy rarely results in future enjoyment of that activity.
lmao, the article is about the UK
if you would like to criticize American teachers anyway, perhaps we could find a nice article about that subject together
Also having teachers that understand the value of literature besides traditional early American/European authors. Those authors are boring (for me) for the most part. If your school district forces that particular genre, let the kids read Frankenstein or other early sci-fi and horror. For the love of all that is enjoyable, don’t force Hawthorne on anyone. Especially when they are, as a purely hypothetical, falling asleep while reading the book in class.
