Do Students in American Schools Read Long Books Anymore

01Teachers in many English classes across America are having students read fewer full-length books.

02Recently, the Associated Press explored the issue in education.

03It reports that students instead are given only short parts of books.

04Educators said this is because they believe current students have shorter attention spans than those of the past.

05The teachers might feel pressure to prepare students for state and nationwide examinations known as standardized tests.

06They also might believe that short pieces of writing will help students in the modern digital world.

07The National Council of Teachers of English is a professional organization for teachers based in Champaign, Illinois.

08In 2022, the group released a statement about reading.

09The time has come to de-center book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education, the group said.

10Seth French helped write the statement.

11French taught an English class before becoming a dean at Bentonville High School in the state of Arkansas.

12He had students read plays, poetry, and articles, but only one book as a class.

13He said, A lot of our students are not interested in some of these texts that they didn't have a choice in.

14Not everyone thinks English reading should only involve short, digital pieces of writing.

15Marianne Wolfe studies the human brain at UCLA in Southern California.

16Wolfe said, Deep reading is important to strengthen connections in the brain tied to critical thinking skills, background knowledge, and empathy.

17She said educators must give students a chance to learn through what she described as immersion into the lives and thoughts of others.

18There is not a lot of information on how many books American students are required to read in school.

19But in general, students are reading less.

20Federal data from last year shows 14% of young people said they read for fun every day.

21In 2012, that percentage was 27%.

22Some teachers say reduced reading has its roots in the COVID-19 crisis.

23Christy Acevedo teaches English at a vocational high school in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

24There was a trend, it happened when COVID hit, to stop reading full-length novels because students were in trauma.

25We were in a pandemic.

26The problem is we haven't quite come back from that, she said.

27Other teachers blame standardized testing and the influence of education technology.

28Some students struggle to read.

29Only one-third of fourth and eighth graders reached reading proficiency in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

30Leah Van Bell is the director of the nonprofit literacy coalition 313 Reads in Detroit, Michigan.

31Van Bell said when her son read the book Peter Pan in elementary school, it was too difficult for most children.

32She said her son's school does not have a library.

33Still, she said it makes sense for English classes to use shorter reading material.

34As an adult, if I want to learn about a topic and research it, be it personal or professional, I'm using interactive digital text to do that, she said.

35Even in schools with many resources, time is always in short supply.

36Terry White teaches at South Windsor High School in Connecticut.

37White no longer assigns the book To Kill a Mockingbird to her class.

38She assigns about one-third of the book and provides a synopsis, or a very short version, of the rest.

39White says the reason is that the class has to move quickly so she can teach all the required material.

40White also assigns less homework because students have sports and other activities.

41She said she wanted her class to be more about helping students become stronger and more critical readers, writers, and thinkers, while taking their social-emotional well-being into account.

42The synopsis method alone, however, can harm student critical thinking skills, says Alden Jones, a literature professor at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.

43Jones assigns fewer books than before, but gives more small tests to make sure students are reading.

44We don't value the thinking time that we used to have.

45It's all time we could be on our phone accomplishing tasks, she said.

46Will Higgins is an English teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts.

47Higgins said he still believes in teaching the classics, but he said students do not have enough time, so teachers have cut back on the number of books they teach.

48We haven't given up on Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.

49We haven't given up on Hamlet or The Great Gatsby, he said.

50But Higgins admitted giving up on assigning a long book, like A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

51I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

52And I'm Katie Weaver.