OPINION: Students are losing out on creativity, technology that’ strong reading’ may develop
Growing up, I tended to keep paying piles of publications on my best bunkbed — significantly to my sister’s anger, she was on the backside. But, hey, I did n’t want to limit myself to just one genre if I struggled to sleep, as I often did.
I’d stay up late until I discovered the hero was in distress, often kicking back with heavy eyes. And I was never one to go back in time, which is a form of cheating in my opinion.
I ca n’t imagine never having read a good, thick novel with the excitement and anticipation. But too many children are now, to their detriment.
Recent reports at The Hechinger Report, the Associated Press, The Atlantic, and various outlets indicate young adults are struggling to learn much passages of books– including students accepted to America’s top universities.
As The Atlantic reported this year:
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books sure, since 1998. He loves the work, but it has changed. Over the past decade, individuals have become overwhelmed by the checking. College kids have always read everything they’re assigned, of training, but this feels different. Students at Dames ‘ now seem perplexed by the idea of finishing several books in a semester. His coworkers have experienced the exact issue. Many students no longer appear at college—even at very careful, wealthy colleges—prepared to study books. …
It’s not that they do n’t want to do the reading. It’s that they do n’t know how. Middle and high institutions no longer do so.
However, Douglas Fisher, an executive at San Diego’s Health Sciences High and Middle College, pointed back in time, even earlier in the learning process.
” We have ]incoming ninth-graders ] that on our benchmark knowledge assessments are scoring what is the equivalent of second grade, first grade, fourth grade”, Fisher told The Hechtinger Report.
It is worrying. And the problem is n’t just that reading has become a passé form of entertainment. Reading books teaches abilities that interactive technology ca n’t.
According to a scholar, the Associated Press was informed.
According to Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA with a focus on dementia research, heavy reading is necessary to develop circuits in the brain that are related to critical thinking abilities, background knowledge, and most importantly, empathy.
” We must give our young people an opportunity to understand who they are, not through small snapshots, but through immersion in the lives, thoughts, and feelings of others,” Wolf said.
Another benefit is the self-discipline it takes to get through those first few chapters to get to the” good parts”– or sometimes even a whole book (” Crime and Punishment”, anyone? ).
A book also gives you the opportunity to reflect and pause, which society seems to do a lot in these days, or to look up a word that is unfamiliar to you in the dictionary. One summer, just for fun, I decided to” translate” Shakespeare’s” A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into modern English. Although I only had about a third of the way through, I did learn a lot and was in middle school.
Finally, and this is far from an exhaustive list, “deep reading” builds imagination, a foundation for creativity and innovation, in ways that modern alternatives do not.
With video, you’re watching someone else’s interpretation of a story. With a book and a bit of imagination, that world becomes your own. As a reader, you have a say in what people look like, what they might be thinking or feeling, and what their future holds. Characters turn into friends and enemies because of how we relate to them and how we take the time to incorporate some of our own experiences into theirs.
And yes, yes, that probably sounds corny and cliche, but it truly saddens me to learn how few young adults today experience the profound joy of “deep reading.”
Technology makes things easier, but easier is n’t always better. And we are losing a lot if we do n’t properly teach our young people to read. Still, the media’s focus on the issue is a sign of hope. It is, as always, the first step toward making things right.
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