Education is FUBAR!!!!!

[Elixir]

So you've also been seized with the attempt to cram more education in than there is school.

Yep! And that isn’t heir excuse - not enough time for frivolous things like reading for enjoyment.

IME nothing is more educational than reading for enjoyment.
I discovered dinosaurs at around age 5 and by age 9 had read everything that Roy Chapman Andrews had written, mostly illicit reading late at night with a flashlight under the covers. By seventh grade I was enthralled with science fiction, and in that year devoured everything I could find written by Bradbury, Asimov, AC Clarke and several others. All that rabid consumption stoked curiosities about sciences that I'd never have had, and let me develop my own writing styles emulating the material I most admired.

How the hell is a kid supposed to learn to write creatively or read for comprehension when someone else is choosing all their reading???? That's like expecting a kid to become a great musician while giving him only a piano and forbidding him to play anything other than scales.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So you've also been seized with the attempt to cram more education in than there is school.

Yep! And that isn’t heir excuse - not enough time for frivolous things like reading for enjoyment.

IME nothing is more educational than reading for enjoyment.

My teacher didn't buy that thirty years ago, even when I insisted I was just reading the articles!

 

[Playball40]

My kids read outside of school. At least one of them does - they all sort of 'lost the love' of reading sometime around middle school sadly - when it was more forced.

Schools cannot control what kids read outside the school.
But the plain fact is that kids DON'T read outside the school.
They never learned that reading can be done for reasons other than to find answers on a test or a jobsheet.
They only read as part of directed curricula. And now gmb is saying that they can't even say 'read a book you think you might like and tell me about it' for a grade. It has to be 'read this book that illustrates life in Elizabethan times before we do a unit on Shakespear' or 'read THIS book, a novelization of a movie you've probably already seen so we can talk about sacrifice.'

My wife is directed to say 'Read this bland, inoffensive book about characters you can't relate to, doing things that maybe one in ten of you might consider a career choice some day when your other dreams die.' Or the novelization of a movie you've already seen.'

So to the last few generations, reading is a burden. MAYBE a tool to achieve something. Never fun. Fun involves their phones and instant feedback from 100 followers they've never met. Or getting fakeinternetpoints. And schools don't see a problem with a few generations of bibliophobes.

 

[Playball40]

But the plain fact is that kids DON'T read outside the school.

I wouldn't doubt that this is a trend, a lot of kids don't read for entertainment and prefer other media. But I'm not sure why this is a problem. Why MUST they read books for entertainment ? And the types of books read for school probably vary widely. I know my kids went through a few classics at school as part of the curriculum, Animal farm, 1984, Shakespeare etc. And of course it depends on the kids. Both my kids rattled through the entire Harry Potter and Hunger Games series of books and some others I can't quite remember. It was quite common for kids their age to read popular books like Harry Potter, Hunger Games etc.

Yup, mine too. The Maze Runner series and Divergent series too. And EVERYTHING John Greene.

 

[Keith&Co.]

There are far reaching benefits to reading. They see other viewpoints. Even if they don't share them, they come to understand other people exist with differing opinions. They also learn new words. They learn to read for content because they have to. No one's going to tell them at the end of the chapter what the chapter just told them.

The kids in my wife's classes who do not read outside of the classroom have difficulties thinking, spelling, grasping anything outside their direct experience, and have no imagination.
The kids on the college-prep pipeline have difficulty answering the daily prompt, true. She throws up a quote like, "Give a man a fish, he eats...etc." Then asks them, "What does this mean to you?" These kids read, and may have an idea what the aphorism means, but that class is afraid to get the answer wrong.

The non-readers just shrug, "I don't know." They can't parse the phrase and see no reason to try.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The kids on the college-prep pipeline have difficulty answering the daily prompt, true. She throws up a quote like, "Give a man a fish, he eats...etc." Then asks them, "What does this mean to you?"

Means the British should have taught the Irish how to fish?