Every week, my four kids and I go to our local public library and check out dozens of books. We’re certainly not alone: The library is usually packed with kids, parents, babysitters, and grandparents. Our public library is a vital community resource, and it is more than doing its part to get kids reading books. Unfortunately, it’s fighting an uphill battle: The statistics are pretty grim. In 1984, 70 percent of 13-year olds said they read for fun at least once or twice a week. By 2023, that number had dropped to 36 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics—and college professors are increasingly befuddled by students who arrive on campus unable to tackle lengthy and complex reading assignments.
Doubtless a complex interaction of causes is at fault in these trends: The impact of short video on attention spans and the long-term impact of learning loss due to the COVID pandemic remain topics of debate. Some schools have failed to adequately teach students the fundamentals of phonics, leaving them struggling with the basics of reading. For older students, reliance on AI may decrease their motivation to do the reading formerly needed to get a passing grade. Educators and social scientists will be struggling for years (if not decades) to pick apart this tangled web of issues.
One significant factor, however, may be remarkably straightforward: Many schools are simply not assigning entire books to their students. Instead, they are focusing on shorter passages and excerpts. As Rose Horowitch, the author of the viral Atlantic essay, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” explained: “At the prep school that I graduated from five years ago, I took a Jane Austen course my senior year. I read only a single Austen novel.” If we are at the point where one Jane Austen book is all advanced high school students are expected to handle, it is not surprising that many arrive at college unprepared to dive into hundreds of pages of reading … or that their adult reading life is anemic.
To better understand this issue, I spoke with Karen Vaites, founder of the Curriculum Insight Project, which “is a collaborative effort to illuminate the K-12 curriculum landscape and advance the conversation about curriculum quality.” According to Vaites, “reading stamina is a muscle,” and just like “we would never ask anyone to go get up and run a marathon,” children need to be taught to read longer and harder texts gradually over time.
“If schools have one job, it is to produce successful readers,” Vaites added.
Why is that the one job? As someone for whom books have always been important, I’ll make a pitch that one reason is simply enjoyment. But there’s also a deeper reason. The education expert Doug Lemov recently explained the issue beautifully: “Books are the medium in which people have been doing their best long form thinking for hundreds of years. They are the storehouses of almost every idea that is important to us.” Lemov continued: “Whether it is the seeds of democracy or the foundations of science, chances are it has been communicated and passed down in the form of a book.” Put another way, if children are not gaining the ability and stamina to read entire, complex, and challenging texts, they are losing out on important knowledge and critical reasoning skills.
However, too many schools are failing to transform their students into competent and enthusiastic readers. Part of the blame, Vaites said, is the laser focus by many schools on state testing. When schools have students focus primarily on short passages with accompanying comprehension questions, in hopes of improving their test-taking skills, it comes at the expense of spending significant time delving into whole books.
Large education publishers also share the blame. Vaites told me that curricula built around shorter passages are more profitable than curricula built around whole books. As it turns out, it’s more lucrative to excerpt a passage from Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and add in comprehension questions than it is to direct schools to purchase that book elsewhere and thoughtfully design education modules around a book published by another company. In other words, when schools spend more money purchasing books, they have less to spend on purchasing curricula.
According to Vaites, literacy researchers have determined that a type of program called “knowledge-building curricula” is the gold standard. These programs emphasize “the crucial role of background knowledge in comprehending what you read.” For example, for a kid to read and understand a passage about tennis, it helps a lot to have some background knowledge about the sport. A teacher using this program might provide historical background about the American Revolutionary War before assigning a text about the Battle of Bunker Hill.
I reviewed a few of these programs, and they seemed more like the English classes I remember from my public school days. In other words, you read books. One popular free curriculum—Core Knowledge Language Arts—assigns seventh-grade students texts like The Tempest, H.G. Wells’ dystopian novel The Time Machine, and a book by the modern popular author Erin Entrada Kelly, Hello Universe. Students reading The Tempest using this program will learn, for example, important background knowledge relevant to understanding the play, and also read an abridged version aloud in class and at home, to aid their comprehension and analysis. Unfortunately, according to Vaites, only a minority of schools use these curricula.
In the meantime, what can a parent do to encourage their kids to read whole books if schools aren’t doing so? Sara Nardo, a homeschooling mom with five children, told me that when it comes to older children, it is important to keep in mind that screens are always competing for their attention. This echoes a theme discussed by Lemov in a recent podcast: “The book is in a death struggle with electronic and social media. And right now, it’s losing.” While limiting screens can help, Nardo suggests striving to make reading a “positive, appealing experience,” including by reading aloud, listening to audiobooks, and joining book clubs.
First, while we often think of reading aloud as something to do with little kids who can’t yet read for themselves, older kids also benefit tremendously from participating in read-alouds. Sitting with a preschooler on your lap to read a board book is fun, but probably not intellectually challenging. By contrast, reading aloud with older kids offers the opportunity for families to dive deep into complex topics, and it can provide a fantastic way for families to bond, even as teens start getting ready to fly the family nest. Nardo also noted that older kids “can get through much more difficult books when they have an adult to help with some of the unfamiliar vocabulary and background knowledge (even if that means the adult has to look up an unknown word or allusion themselves).”
I’m personally familiar with this benefit of reading aloud. In our household—where I read to my 10- and 8-year old sons almost every day—making it through a book chapter often takes a long time. We pause to talk about what a word means or to provide some context for something happening in the book. The other day, we were reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which won the Newbery Medal in 1968. Part of the plot involves one of the main characters mailing a letter to her parents, letting them know that she and her brother had run away. Why, my 8-year old son wanted to know, didn’t she just send a text message? Giving an impromptu rundown on the widespread adoption of cell phone technology made me feel old, but that son now has a deeper understanding of the book’s setting.
As Nardo suggests, audiobooks are also a fantastic way to get tween and teen readers engaged in literature. The car is a particularly good place to listen to audiobooks together, since there’s not much else to do. Nardo told me that during a cross-country road trip, her family listened to a superb narration of The Fellowship of the Ring by Rob Inglis—and when they got home, some of the kids found hard copies of the books and reread their favorite parts. For younger children, the beloved book Charlotte’s Web is available narrated by its author, E.B. White.
Finally, book groups are a fantastic way to get teens involved in talking literature with their peers. Nardo told me that a woman in her community runs a summer book club for high school students that is very well attended—and as a kind of a capstone, they watch a movie version of the book together. Our local public library has special teen programming for tweens and teens to “share … favorite books, chat about our latest writings, and get those creative juices flowing with fun activities.”
Questions about the nature of evil, our moral obligations, our understanding of the reach of space: These and more cannot be tackled in an Instagram video. For generations, humans have been exploring our most pressing questions through books. Indeed, the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths—Jews, Muslims, and Christians—have historically been called “people of the book” because of their religions’ central emphasis on written text. What does it mean for us if we no longer share unifying traditions around the long-form written word? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect nothing good. Take heart: We do not need to abandon our kids to receive the bulk of their knowledge from short snippets of text (electronic or otherwise). Schools, teachers, and libraries can do their part, and in many cases, are stepping up to the plate. But even if they aren’t, parents can pull a good book off the shelf, crack it open, and pass on the joy of reading to their kids.
