Kids May Not Be Reading Full Books at School Anymore—Pass or Fail?

Experts say the "tl;dr" approach is impacting kids in more ways than one.

According to a recent story in The Atlantic , educators from universities around the country say kids are coming to campus not ready to read full books. So, no school reading lists containing Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Flies . Instead, the middle school and high school curriculums are centered around shortened passages and understanding the main ideas.

Many professors, even at elite colleges, also report that today’s college students have limited vocabularies compared to earlier generations, and they cannot analyze complex concepts.

“By the time they get to college, these students have developed workarounds for reading full-length novels or texts to access information, and they have lost the habits required to sustain reading as a meaningful practice,” Louise Baigelman , founder of Storyshares , a mission-driven publisher that is addressing global illiteracy, confirms to Parents .

We asked experts about what may have contributed to the decline in reading among kids , and if the decrease in associated skills acquired from reading is inevitable.

How We Went From Full Books to Bite-Sized Learning

Curriculum and learning evaluation have fundamentally changed since many parents were in school. L’Taundra Everhart, M.Ed , a wellness and education expert, tells Parents , “In recent years, there has been a push to make learning more digestible by ‘chunking’ information into bite-sized pieces.”

Lightning Jay , an Assistant Professor at the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership at Binghamton University, State University of New York, explains that it has been more than 20 years since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in the United States. This aimed to improve academic achievement for every student.

“A multiple choice test is better at measuring whether students comprehend a short section of a non-fiction text than whether they really understand The Odyssey ,” Jay says, adding, “Unfortunately, what is easy to measure and what is valuable to learn are often opposites.”

Theresa Rosenberg , Assistant Professor of English and Director of First Year Experience at Lebanon Valley College, concurs. “It seems that our public education system has deprioritized reading long novels in favor of concepts that can be easily assessed on standardized testing ,” she tells Parents .

And Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System—and How to Fix It , says, “In an attempt to prepare students to do well on those tests, instruction started to mimic the format of the tests: Give students an excerpt or a brief passage and then have them answer comprehension questions. Obviously, this wasn't the intent of No Child Left Behind—the tests were never meant to be guides to instruction—but it was an unfortunate side effect.”

The introduction of Common Core has only exacerbated the issues, even if not intentionally, according to Wexler. “One of the messages that educators took from the Common Core was that they should spend a lot of time having students do ‘close reading’ of brief texts.”

Meanwhile, teachers are struggling with the fortitude to push already-resistant kids to accomplish goals outside of the Common Core curriculum, which stresses a focus on excerpts that help them pass state tests, according to Jethro Jones , former middle school principal and author of the book How to be a Transformative Principal .

“Because it is hard, and takes so much instructional time to read a whole book, it was easily dropped to support testing goals,” he says.

Social media has a hand in this too

In addition to the learning loss kids experienced during the pandemic, social media has trained today’s youth to absorb information quickly—or their attention spans will wane.

“It is much more enjoyable to have our endorphins firing off because we are engaging with anything on the internet, then settling into a good book,” Jones says.

Jay agrees, adding, “Reading is a form of extended concentration and many of our homes are wired for distraction.”

Jones also points out, “This is not only a student issue, but also a teacher issue.”

How Reading is Directly Connected to Other Soft Skills

In addition to the downturn in reading, experts also say they have noticed a sharp drop off in associated skills such as writing, vocabulary, and even math.

“In my last 25 years of teaching in higher education, I have seen a dramatic decline in the expansiveness of vocabulary in the typical college student,” Rosenberg says, adding the decline has been even more stark in the last five years. “To me, this loss can directly be attributed to the decline in reading.”

“Routinely, if I ask college students the last book they read, they will often cite books commonly read by fifth to seventh graders. By the time they hit seventh grade, they seem to stop reading,” Rosenberg continues.

Meanwhile, Eric Tipler , a college admissions expert and the author of Write Yourself In: The Definitive Guide to Writing Successful College Admissions Essays , says that even at elite colleges, he’s seen that students are writing less, too.

“Whereas five to ten years ago [students] may have been asked to write two to three essays per semester, now they're only writing one full-length paper per semester—sometimes even one paper per year,” he says, adding, “This is important because reading and writing skills are very interconnected.”

Tipler blames technology in part for having a detrimental impact on writing and vocabulary, highlighting the autocorrect function on Google Docs for example.

Everhart adds that softer skills such as empathy, concentration, and critical thinking are lost when reading isn’t being valued. This is in addition to grasping things like subtext, symbolism, and context.

“Engaging in conversations about literature can open up new perspectives and deepen our understanding, fostering lasting connections with others,” Everhart says.

Reading fewer books, in tandem with learning loss from the pandemic, has also hindered collaborative problem-solving and critical thinking necessary for math proficiency, according to Tyler Sgro , CEO at Mathnasium, The Math Learning Center.

How Parents Can Help Bridge the Reading Habits Gap

Wexler feels that the emphasis on testing in schools has made reading a chore for students, and the proof is in the statistics. According to the long-term version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2023, just 14% of 13-year-old students reported reading for pleasure every day. In 2012, it was 27%, and in 1996, it was 32%.

“We know that reading for pleasure is correlated with all sorts of positive educational outcomes,” Wexler says, pointing to other NAEP report numbers that show over half of high-scoring students read for fun at least once per week.

However, she says instructors at both the high school and college levels may be forced to adjust their expectations to meet students' capabilities.

Alice Davidson, PhD , Director of the Hume House College Child Development and Student Research Center at Rollins College explains that a love (or at least a healthy practice) of reading starts in early childhood education .

“In a high-quality preschool environment, your child is getting exposure to print and stories throughout the day through play, small group, and circle time,” she says. “In order to ensure that young children experience reading as a fun and pleasurable activity—and not a dreaded or boring task—parents should avoid forcing them to meet specific reading targets before they are ready.”

With that in mind, here are some ways parents can encourage reading, according to the experts we talked to:

• Read aloud to young children regularly, and have emerging readers read aloud to parents.
• Institute family reading time .
• Set up a quiet space for your child to read without distractions.
• Offer a wide variety of books throughout your home.
• Model reading for pleasure yourself.
• Celebrate reading accomplishments.
• Visit your local library to take part in reading programs, and get help picking books that align with your child’s interests.
• Pair books with outings and activities .

Jay encourages parents to remember that despite anecdotes and evidence, “In many classrooms students are diligently working their way through tough texts and in many homes, families are finding delight, meaning, and connection through books.”

Baigelman adds, “I don’t believe that reading for pleasure will ever become a thing of the past. It is the most timeless pleasure and it has the ability to endure.”

For more Parents news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on Parents .