This week’s “Daily Journal“ guest columnist is Kristen Blair, a North Carolina Education Alliance Fellow.
Few issues have received more attention and funding in K-12 education than has reading literacy. Reading skills matter. Educators and lawmakers from all political persuasions know this. But there’s more to reading well than just know-how. Instilling a love of reading in students is equally important. As Mark Twain said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
Twain’s words were prescient indeed: In modern America, even when the proverbial Johnny can read, he often chooses not to. A new report, released in November by the National Endowment for the Arts, highlights this alarming trend: Reading has declined precipitously as a national pastime, with far-reaching educational and economic implications.
To Read or Not to Read, the “most comprehensive report ever done” on reading, according to NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, examined more than 40 studies on the reading skills and habits of children, adolescents, and adults. Results were strikingly similar: American teens and young adults are engaging in recreational reading at historically low levels.
This is no trifling development. Frequent reading, according to NEA data, correlates strongly with reading comprehension and academic achievement. Reading competency enhances workplace marketability: 63 percent of employers say reading comprehension is “very important” for high school graduates. Proficient readers are more likely to be employed, achieve professionally, and earn higher wages than their less-literate peers do.
Even so, the NEA reports that only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day for fun; 13 percent “never or hardly ever read” for pleasure. Among 17-year-olds, 22 percent read almost every day for enjoyment. Nineteen percent rarely, if ever do so. Test scores show it: Barely more than one-third of high school seniors read proficiently. Only 31 percent of eighth-graders are proficient readers, according to the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Why don’t we read? Some say our digital culture is to blame. E-mail, computer games, instant messaging, and television all vie for attention. TV occupies a singularly prominent place among leisure activities: On an average weekday, 15- to 24-year-olds spend two hours watching TV and only seven minutes reading (including online material), the NEA reports.
Our pedagogical approach emphasizing classroom time over substance doesn’t make for a better, or more joyful, reader. According to the recently released Progress in International Reading Literacy study, the United States leads the world in reading instructional time: 68 percent of American fourth-graders receive more than six hours of reading instruction per week. Yet 17 countries and jurisdictions outscore America in reading literacy.
The Literacy Study data, released after the NEA report, also spotlight what might be an emerging and disheartening trend: Many young children are indicating that they don’t like to read. Only 40 percent of American fourth-graders score high on reading enjoyment scales, placing the nation close to the bottom of the heap internationally. Yes, these kids still perform better than their older peers on national tests, but this could change if attitudes about reading continue to worsen.
What will relieve literary lassitude? Schools should focus more on content-rich, culturally relevant reading material and less on clocking in hours of instructional time. “We expand the time spent on reading but don’t examine what is being read,” Educator E.D. Hirsch said.
Some education leaders are already revamping content: Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has pushed for reading materials infused with substance about the arts, science, and history.
But curriculum changes alone won’t turn kids and teens into cheerful and regular readers. As parents, we need to model and encourage the habit in our children of reading widely and often. If that means temporarily setting aside our digital diversions, then so be it. Our children’s minds, and their future vocational prospects, will be the better for it.