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Reading's new chapter?
A study paints a grim picture of U.S. reading habits,
renewing the debate on literacy and learning in the digital age
Article by Sarah Williams, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, November 20, 2007

One side: "The new technologies -- for all of their power and richness -- contribute to a highly distractible, entertainment-oriented culture (fueled by a disintegrating print media) and provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading."

The other: "I can show them things I could never show them before. I can give them access to readings from all over the globe. I can get them into databases. I can take them on [virtual] field trips. All of those things make life incredibly richer. Whereas before, the only access we had was sitting down around the fire with the Victorian father reading a book and sort of raising the educational level of the family to a higher plane of sensibility. Now we have all of these different sources, so why is it so bad that we use them?"

To Read or Not To Read gathers and collates the best national data available to provide a reliable and comprehensive overview of American reading today. While it incorporates some statistics from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2004 report, Reading at Risk, this new study contains vastly more data from numerous sources. Although most of this information is publicly available, it has never been assembled and analyzed as a whole. To our knowledge, To Read or Not To Read is the most complete and up-to-date report of the nation’s reading trends and—perhaps most important—their considerable consequences....

The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.

These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear, the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.

How does one summarize this disturbing story? As Americans, especially younger Americans, read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they have lower levels of academic achievement. (The shameful fact that nearly one-third of American teenagers drop out of school is deeply connected to declining literacy and reading comprehension.) With lower levels of reading and writing ability, people do less well in the job market. Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement. Significantly worse reading skills are found among prisoners than in the general adult population. And deficient readers are less likely to become active in civic and cultural life, most notably in volunteerism and voting.

Most Canadians, but especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, experience "significant" literacy loss as adults, a Statistics Canada report shows.

The decline in skills begins at age 25, peaks around 40 and then tapers off around 55 years old. For example, adults aged 40 scored an average of 288 on a standardized literacy test in 1994, but in a second survey nine years later, that had dropped to 275 -- a loss of reading ability equal to half a year of schooling.

"Here's a fascinating fact," according to Judith Kleinfeld, director of the Boys Project and professor of psychology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "There is no literacy gap in home-schooled boys and girls."

Her statement appears in the online article "Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls," by Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com, July 18, 2006.

Additional information is presented in an e-mail sent to the Boys Project listserv by Kevin Killion.

Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 17:24:58 -0600
From: Kevin Killion <kevin@illinoisloop.org>
Subject: [BoysProject-L] boys, reading and homeschooling
To: Communication among Board Members <boysproject-l@lists.uaf.edu>

Judith, what more can you tell us about this? That truly is fascinating! Seems to me that a very likely reason for that result is that homeschooling families overwhelmingly favor the use of traditional phonics. If so, that would reflect the same results in Scotland as reported in a flurry of articles. The sample article below tells more.

The poor performance of English boys in relation to girls, particularly in reading skills, is a relatively new phenomenon. Various surveys show that, formerly, where sex differences did occur at the age of 7 or 8, they usually disappeared by the age of 11. Today, significant differences between girls and boys are still dramatically apparent in English tests at the ages of 14, 16 and 18. These differences do not occur in other countries, such as Germany and Austria, even at the ages of 7 or 8. One might imagine this is due to the greater regularity of their language or to differences within their culture. However, there is one English-speaking country that is very similar to England but where no sex differences in reading exist.

As late at 1992, when sex differences in England had become the norm, no sex differences in reading scores existed among Scottish eight-year-olds. Furthermore, a comparison of the results of Scottish and English children on the Edinburgh Reading Test showed that, compared to all English children, Scottish boys were reading at a level four months in advance. Compared to English boys, their level was 10 months in advance.

A number of reasons have been put forward to explain boys' poor achievement. With these reasons in mind, one might wonder whether 1)boys mature more slowly in England than in Scotland, or 2) Scottish boys' brains are different from English boys' brains, or 3) boys are better behaved in Scotland.

Before dealing with these questions, it is important to note there is one major difference in educational policy between the two countries. While 1960's child-centred methods of instruction have radically reshaped the teaching of reading in England, in Scotland methods have remained more traditional and phonics-based. It may be that code-based methods of reading instruction are more advantageous for boys than other methods.

There are just two crucial skills all children must possess if they are eventually to become readers. They must be able to detect the separate sounds in spoken words, and they must have some knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. Traditional, direct instructional approaches teach these components systematically, sequentially and comprehensively, and these skills are emphasized right from the start of instruction.

First, boys do mature at slower rates than girls. Australian research shows that young boys are eight months behind girls in their ability to remember some letters in a word. At the age of five, boys can remember on average only one letter in a word. Yet in England, boys of this age are expected to remember words such as "crocodile" or "slippers."

In Scotland, where teaching focuses more on phonic-processing skills, boys are given the opportunity to process letters one at a time and to transfer visual information to auditory memory (an area where they are not at such a disadvantage). Thus their low visual memory skills become relatively unimportant.

Second, boys and girls do appear to use different areas of the brain when reading. Areas predominantly in the left hemisphere are activated in boys, whereas areas in both hemispheres are activated in girls. Evidence suggests that methods that encourage the use of pictures, word shape and word length as reading strategies (largely activating right-brain processes) put boys - who have all their eggs in one basket, so to speak - more at risk of failing to use the appropriate left-hemisphere skills.

Third, it would not be surprising if English boys behaved badly compared to Scottish boys. If a boy is fed a teaching diet heavy on guessing and the use of minimal phonic cues, when faced with a word such as "bark," the two letters that he may be capable of holding in visual memory are just the end letters b**k. Possible guesses will include book, beak, back, bake, buck and so on. If the boy is only 5, he will remember the initial 'b' at most, and the possible guesses become almost endless. Boys' ensuing frustration and boredom could easily lead to lack of motivation and bad behaviour.

Boys and girls have the same teaching requirements when it comes to learning how to read. The reading achievement of all children can be enhanced with the appropriate instruction; without it, the reading progress of all children will be curbed. However, since the factors described above may make boys more susceptible to developing reading problems than girls, it seems likely that the lack of appropriate instruction will take more of a toll on boys.

In England, there may be the fear that phonological and code-emphasis methods of instruction represent a return to all that is old-fashioned, to didacticism, competition, ilitism and selection. This need not be the case. Instead, the simple policy one must adhere to is that no practice should be embraced without evidence to support its effectiveness. Rather than increase differences among children, differences will diminish if all children receive good instruction.

"Where's the Content?"
Article by Will Fitzhugh, Educational Leadership, October, 2006

"Learning and Gender"
Cover story by Michael Gurian, American School Board Journal, October, 2006
Note: this article is now in archives for October, 2006;
you must subscribe to the journal or pay $5.00 for the article

"On the day your district administrators look at test scores, grades, and discipline referrals with gender in mind, some stunning patterns quickly will emerge.

"Girls, they might find, are behind boys in elementary school math or science scores. They’ll find high school girls statistically behind boys in SAT scores. They might find, upon deeper review, that some girls have learning disabilities that are going undiagnosed.

"Boys, they’ll probably notice, make up 80 to 90 percent of the district’s discipline referrals, 70 percent of learning disabled children, and at least two-thirds of the children on behavioral medication. They’ll probably find that boys earn two-thirds of the Ds and Fs in the district, but less than half the As. On statewide standardized test scores, they’ll probably notice boys behind girls in general. They may be shocked to see how far behind the boys are in literacy skills; nationally, the average is a year and a half.

"The moment an administrator sees the disparity of achievement between boys and girls can be liberating. Caring about children’s education can now include caring about boys and girls specifically. New training programs and resources for teachers and school districts are opening cash-strapped school boards’ eyes, not just to issues girls and boys face but also to ways of addressing gender differences in test scores, discipline referrals, and grades...."

"You’ve got a bright child on your hands! As a preschooler he loved books, drawing, and creating with blocks. He was excited by the things around him and was a bundle of energy, wanting to explore, handle, and figure out his world.

The Disconnect

"When he started school he was enthusiastic and looked forward to the wonderful adventures you told him were in store. In elementary school you started getting notes from his teacher indicating that he was “having some problems.” The list included comments like: doesn’t stay on task, fails to turn in homework, doesn’t complete projects on time, can’t seem to stop fidgeting and sit still. In middle school your bright, gifted son is getting by with mediocre grades and an attitude that you find disheartening. He just doesn’t seem motivated to succeed in school the way you and his teachers know he could.

"....Perhaps, in that not-too-distant future, we might wake up one morning to read an editorial like this:

"December 25, 2025 — Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.

"The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once more being used to flail an education trend that is in fact going in just the right direction. Today’s young people are not able to read and understand long stretches of text simply because in most cases they won’t ever need to do so.

"It’s time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don’t need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers...."

"...In the last decade, the earliest years of schooling have become less like a trip to "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and more like SAT prep. Thirty years ago first grade was for learning how to read. Now, reading lessons start in kindergarten and kids who don't crack the code by the middle of the first grade get extra help. Instead of story time, finger painting, tracing letters and snack, first graders are spending hours doing math work sheets and sounding out words in reading groups. In some places, recess, music, art and even social studies are being replaced by writing exercises and spelling quizzes. Kids as young as 6 are tested, and tested again—some every 10 days or so—to ensure they're making sufficient progress. After school, there's homework, and for some, educational videos, more workbooks and tutoring, to help give them an edge.

"Not every school, or every district, embraces this new work ethic, and in those that do, many kids are thriving. But some children are getting their first taste of failure before they learn to tie their shoes..."

"There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data. Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic, caring communities. Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them. Homework continues to be assigned—in ever greater quantities—despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases."

Note: Alfie Kohn is the author of "The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing,"
Da Capo Press, 2006.

"Why Thinking 'Outside the Box" Is Not So Easy"
(And Why Present Reform Efforts Will Fail)
Commentary by Marion Brady, Education Week, August 30, 2006

"Of all the education-related unexamined assumptions, none is more deeply embedded than the belief that the main business of schooling is to teach the “core curriculum”—math, science, social studies, and language arts. Supporting that belief is another assumption: that these four fields of study are the only, or at least the optimum, organizers of general knowledge.

"That last assumption is so powerful it shapes education worldwide. At all levels, from middle through graduate school, the four areas of study are the main institutional organizers. So taken for granted is it that they are the fundamental building blocks of education, that reform movements don’t question their centrality. Separate sets of “standards” reinforce them. “Measures of accountability” are keyed to them. Even those who know that knowledge is seamless, who know that the walls between fields of study are artificial and arbitrary, tend to assume that the four are the ultimate organizers of knowledge....

School, finally, isn’t about disciplines and subjects, but about what they were originally meant to do—help the young make more sense of life, more sense of experience, more sense of an unknowable future. And in that sense-making effort, math, science, social studies, and language arts simply aren’t up to the challenge. They’ve given us a curriculum so deeply flawed it’s an affront to the young and a recipe for societal disaster."

Her statement appears in the online article "Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls," by Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com, July 18, 2006. Click here to view the article.

In preparation for a recent meeting, I had to read half a dozen documents. Among them was a copy of Lauren Resnick’s brilliant presidential address to the American Educational Research Association in 1987. Titled “Learning In School and Out,” it focuses on what I view as perhaps the central issue in education: the gap between the real world and the world of school.

Resnick, now a distinguished researcher and education reformer who heads the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, offers a clear premise in her opening sentence. “Popular wisdom,” she writes, “holds that common sense outweighs school learning for getting along in the world—that there exists a practical intelligence, different from school intelligence, that matters more in real life.”