Not so great expectations: students read fewer books in English class

Chris Stanislawski didn’t read much in his high school English classes, but it never felt necessary. Students were given detailed chapter summaries for each novel they discussed, and teachers played audio of the books during class.

Much of the reading material at Garden City Middle School in Long Island consisted of short books or online texts and printouts, he said.

“If you’re given a summary of the book that tells you what you’re going to read in baby form, it kind of ruins the whole story for you,” says Chris, 14. “What’s the point of actually reading it?”

In many American English classrooms, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers are focusing instead on selected passages — a concession to perceptions of shortening attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests, and a sense that short content prepares students for the modern, digital world.

The National Council of Teachers of English recognized this shift in a 2022 statement on media education, saying, “The time has come for reading books and writing essays to no longer be the mainstays of English language education.”

The idea isn’t to remove books, but to teach media literacy and add other texts that are relevant to students, said Seth French, one of the statement’s co-authors. In the English class he taught before becoming dean at Bentonville High School in Arkansas last year, students engaged with plays, poetry and articles, but read only one book together as a class.

“Ultimately, many of our students are not interested in some of these texts because they didn’t have a choice,” he said.

The emphasis on shorter, digital texts is not appreciated by everyone.

Deep reading is essential for strengthening brain circuits linked to critical thinking, background knowledge and, most importantly, empathy, says Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA who specializes in dyslexia research.

“We must give our young people the opportunity to understand who others are, not through small snapshots, but by delving into the lives, thoughts and feelings of others,” Wolf said.

At Garden City Middle School, students are required to read several books in their entirety each year, including “Of Mice and Men” and “Romeo and Juliet,” Principal Matthew Samuelson said. Audio versions and summaries are provided as additional resources, he said.

For Chris, who has dyslexia, the audio didn’t make reading more accessible. He was just bored. He transferred to a Catholic school this fall, which his mother thinks will better prepare him for college.

Students also read less outside school

There is little data on how many books schools require. But overall, students are reading less. Federal data from last year showed that only 14% of young teens said they read for fun every day, down from 27% in 2012.

According to teachers, the decline is related to the COVID-19 crisis.

“There was a trend, which started when COVID hit, of stopping reading full-length novels because students were traumatized; we were in a pandemic. The problem is, we haven’t fully recovered from that yet,” said Kristy Acevedo, who teaches English at a vocational school in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

This year, she said she won’t accept that students are too distracted to read. She plans to teach time management strategies and use only paper and pencils for most of the class time.

Other teachers say the trend stems from standardized testing and the influence of educational technology. Digital platforms can deliver a full English curriculum, with thousands of short passages aligned to state standards — all without assigning an actual book.

“If administrators and school districts are going to be judged on their test scores, how are they going to improve their test scores? They’re going to mirror the test as much as possible,” said Karl Ubelhoer, a special education teacher at a high school in Tabernacle, New Jersey.

For some students, reading at all is a struggle. Only about a third of fourth- and eighth-graders achieved reading proficiency on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a significant drop from 2019.

Leah Van Belle, a literacy advocate in Detroit, said that when her son read “Peter Pan” in late elementary school, it was too difficult for most of the kids in the class. She laments that Detroit feels like “a book desert.” Her son’s school doesn’t even have a library.

However, she believes it makes sense to emphasize shorter texts during English lessons.

“As an adult, I use interactive digital text when I want to learn more about a topic and do research on it, whether it’s personal or professional,” she says.

Teachers apply books to other ‘spinning boards’

Even in schools with sufficient resources, there is always a shortage of time.

Terri White, a teacher at South Windsor High School in Connecticut, no longer has her first-grade English class read the entire book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” She teaches about a third of the book and a summary of the rest. They have to move on quickly because of the pressure on teachers to cram more into the curriculum, she said.

“It’s like spinning plates, you know what I mean? Like it’s a circus,” she said.

She also assigns less homework because children’s schedules are so full with sports, clubs and other activities.

“I maintain the rigor, but most importantly, I help students become stronger and more critical readers, writers, and thinkers, while taking into account their social-emotional well-being,” she said.

In the long run, the synopsis approach hurts students’ critical thinking skills, says Alden Jones, a literature professor at Emerson College in Boston. She assigns fewer books than before and gives more quizzes to make sure students read the books.

“We don’t value the thinking time we used to have. It’s all the time we could have spent on our phones doing tasks,” she said.

Will Higgins, an English teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts, says he still believes in teaching the classics, but the demands on students’ time make it necessary to cut back.

“We haven’t given up on ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ We haven’t given up on ‘Hamlet’ or ‘The Great Gatsby,'” Higgins said. But he said they have given up on assigning others, like ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’

His school has had success in encouraging reading through student-led book clubs, where small groups choose a book and discuss it together. Contemporary authors such as John Green and Jason Reynolds have been a big hit.

“It’s funny,” he said. “A lot of students say it’s the first time in a long time that they’ve read a whole book.”

___

Associated Press education coverage receives funding from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded reporting areas at AP.org.

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.