Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Reading levels of assigned books have declined

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/11/190669029/what-kids-are-reading-in-school-and-out
What Kids Are Reading, In School And Out
by LYNN NEARY
National Public Radio
June 11, 2013

hold me, i'm scared.

This literally made me cry. I'm not kidding. My DS7 just finished 1st and since our school uses the AR program I've been more aware of reading levels. He's tested at a reading level of 6.6 for the end of the year (which, obviously is a very superficial testing, so I'm not taking it to heart), but what seems to have happened since I was a kid is that the people writing fiction for young adults have dumbed down their style so much that many of the books that are entirely inappropriate for him, content-wise, are actually easier to read than such classics as Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan(and I haven't actually checked this last one so I can't be sure, but I'm guessing...). He won't touch Winnie the Pooh with a ten foot pole, because it's not cool, but my word, the Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy kid are pathetic.

I'm rambling, I know, and probably not even making my point. My son grew by two full years on the AR standard last year, and it has nothing to do with anything he studied in school and everything with the books I helped him choose. At least reading is "easy" to after school, but he then misses the wonderful experience of discussing a psychologically or historically important book. I'll never forget the chills up my spine in 11th grade (regular) English when we discussed "The Turn of the Screw". I know I wouldn't have picked up on half of the creepiness without the help of discussing it with others. And can you tell me that learning to recognize an unreliable narrator is not an important life lesson??? Please. We learn about our humanity from Art and Literature. Hey- Maybe that's why they call them the Humanities.

Saritz--there are still wonderful new book being written for children (not DOAWK or Captain Underpants). I use Goodreads pretty heavily now to look for books for DD. I know the old classics quite well, but am not familiar with books written after about 1985, so I need to catch up. Newbery award-winners are a pretty easy way to go, of course, but there are lists of Newbery contenders out there, too. A good children's librarian is a great asset. DD reads some schlock, but I obsessively strew her path with good-quality stuff, too.

I agree. There are some wonderful books being written for kids now as there are some atrocious ones written years ago (Try reading The Hardy Boys aloud without tripping over the excessive adverbs).
Colin Meloy's Wildwood series has some beautiful language and sentence structures which make the books a joy to read aloud.

One of the reasons so many of the classics are higher level is they employ complex syntax. Getting through a Dickens novel requires not only a strong stomach for misery but tenacity (I love Dickens and loved him as a kid, too. All those kids so much worse off than I.)
Many adult novels today are written in a lower lexile level. My non-fiction writing (book reviews) are written in a much higher Lexile Level (college level, or at the least, 11th grade) while my fiction most often is not. I've made a choice, though I certainly didn't have Lexile leveling in mind when I wrote, to sacrifice syntax complexity and bedazzlement for clarity.
We supplement ds's reading with classics and we make sure he understands the magic of Shakespeare, or Faulkner, or the political context of Animal Farm or of Kafka, or Chekov. We also don't worry too much about what he's reading as long as the joy is still there. He's starting to show discernment all on his own anyway.

I'm not sure what the issue is with DOAWK for a younger kid. Our DD8 just took the SB5, and one of the results that had us curious was her lexile level. So we plugged that into a search, and were immediately provided three recommendations. Two of them were Harry Potter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which caused DW and I a good laugh, because those are the things DD's reading most these days. It looks like that test nailed her.

The third book was The Hobbit, which I did in 9th grade AP English a quarter century ago.

Now, if she was still reading DOAWK in 9th grade, I might be concerned.

Personally, I don't care what kids are reading for pleasure, as long as they're reading. The only problem I have with this topic is what they're reading in school. Reading, dissecting, and discussing important literature is one of the most effective means for teaching critical thinking skills... a skill set that is disappearing from our society.

I'm with you, Dude.

(And with UM on the subject of the value of a great children's librarian.)

We have had quite a few struggles with DD's reading level given that her reading level topped "college level" before she was 10, and clearly most content written at that level is flatly inappropriate for a child that age. Interest is also a problem-- she simply lack(ed/s) the life experience to really appreciate some of the material that she CAN read, and then again, 99% of her peers aren't reading at a high level for fun, either...
really, even adult fiction isn't written at a college level. Everything "popular" is at about 6th-8th grade, it seems like.

It's frustrating as all get out for me personally. Not that I worry about her reading Captain Underpants or anything else-- we don't control what she is permitted to read in any way.

But I sure would like to encourage her to read for pleasure at a level more commensurate with her literacy level, and I'm at sea as to how to do that. Her interest level is fairly normative for 14-18 yo, but it's clear that her literacy isn't-- and going "older" (in publication dates) no longer works, because too many of the great works of fiction are definitely dated in ways that don't allow a teen to identify with them very well in the context of today's environment. I didn't realize just how profound that shift has been until I was skimming back through Catcher in the Rye this past year-- and I realized that the book (which I read at my DD's age and found timeless) is more or less a mid-20th century historical novel. It's becoming Pride and Prejudice, that novel.

The publishing industry, unfortunately, sees all too clearly that the economics of publishing contemporary works at a high literacy level is.... not lucrative. In fact, teen-interest novels written at a 10th grade (or beyond) level? Losses. Right from the start. There's quite literally only a sparse handful of those books since 1990. Why would my teen want to read books that don't speak to teens, but to mature adults? She certainly doesn't want to read books with sexual content, and that eliminates about 65-75% of adult contemporary fiction, too.

I've also been distressed by a phenomenon related to that in the posted article-- that of eliminating textbooks from instruction.

This is evidently aimed at what is considered the "typical" learning style of modern students-- to reach them with short little multimedia clips and text no more than a paragraph or two in length. I only wish that I were kidding about that, unfortunately. So if students are not seeing larger amounts of text, why on earth would they become consumers of it as they get older? They won't, of course.

Is it just me, or does all of this seem to be feeding a trend toward developing shorter and shorter attention span? My DH and I have found it both maddening and appalling. Maddening since this is not how our DD entered school, and appalling because we can see that it is WORKING to affect change in that same child. We really DID give them a 6yo with a two hour attention span, and they really have successfully reshaped her into an easily bored teen with a 5 minute attention span, who fixates on whatever seems entertaining.

I admit that I've only thumbed through DOAWK, but it struck me as pretty lowest-common-denominator. Also, the attitude towards school and authority wasn't one I was thrilled with for my 7yo.

I just sounded like a total uptight snob. Oh well. I totally let my DD read the whole series anyway, but I was glad when she was done. I guess I see the books as a great choice for older reluctant readers and a peer-pressure thing for kids like ours.


I have to confess that I do care. Important caveat: I have kids who already love to read. If they didn't, then I would definitely say--well, for the love of god, let's get them reading however we can.

But I want them to read great literature. Not just because it's edifying, blah blah, but because I want them to see how incredibly beautiful and life-changing great literature can be. Also, I do think that reading great writing makes you into a better writer. If all you ever read was Magic Treehouse (KILL ME NOW), you would write some damned terrible prose.

They also can read junk books for fun, of course. But just as we shouldn't eat McDonald's for every meal, we should not subsist solely on junk series books written by teams of monkeys chained to computers. ("Daisy Meadows," I'm looking in your direction.)

Dude - well I agree, but good look with critical thinking skills, reasoning, and writing in college.

I just read Jeff Selingo's book, College (Un)bound and then Academically Adrift which he based his book on. Well, both give startling statistics on the lack of critical thinking skills, reasoning, and writing in college. Few seem to read today in college. Both studies say 70% of students reported that social learning was more important than academics.

Reading has been on the decline for years (not to paint an even bleaker picture). But it's only getting worse, I feel, with Common Core, testing, and other factors (e.g. time). Readership in libraries is down in general and has been for years. On the other hand, the numbers for movies and audiovisuals are up with libraries (in general) and many librarians grumble that they feel like the library has become a NetFlix.

Textbooks are often written well below level. Many high school textbooks are written at a 5th grade level or so. Many college textbooks are not written at a college level. The expectations are low across the board.

Publishers have contributed to the reading problem. Good literature seems hard to find, especially in YA section. I also think, though, Harry Potter didn't help either. There's a push to move children quickly away from picture books to chapter books so kids will eventually be able to handle long tomes like Harry Potter. However, this does many kids a disservice and puts many off reading entirely.

School does not have the monopoly on reading (or learning) as Kio Stark's book, Don't Go to School, recently reminded me. Reading take a a degree of self-motivation as well as time, effort, and patience. School can help you master reading or gain valuable reading skills, but it doesn't have sole license on it.

We don't censor DD's reading at all either. Just...strew, strew, suggest, strew. If all else fails, have her dad read it in her view (this is what worked for Harry POtter!)


I may have mentioned before that we have a joke (that isn't really a joke) that our children's "problem" is that their attention spans are too long. I can't tell you how many times I have seen my children get upset because "This project is over! I mean, you had all of 10 minutes to do it! What?? Move along, cattle!" I feel for them, truly. How frustrating.