MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - "What Kids Are Reading, In School And Out"

BWinmill · 06-13-2013, 02:10 PM

Argh!

Some of their points are valid, but there are also so many things that are wrong with an article like this one. Take the comparison to literacy levels of high school students 100 years ago: it's not a valid comparison because a lot of people would not obtain an elementary school education, never mind a high school education. Literacy rates were much lower and I'm guessing that the level of literacy was much lower even after you excluded the functionally illiterate. We don't let struggling students drop out like that these days, so they are going to distort the statistics.

The other thing is that people read for different reasons: entertainment, information, interpretation, and likely other reasons. The literary types tend to be heavy on interpretation, which is fine. It's what they do. It's valuable. I'm not going to criticize them for that. Throw a journal article at them, at least one from mathematics or any of the sciences, and they would be illiterate. They would be like that kid who could sound out the words. Heck, they may even be able to read out equations in a recognizable way. But ask them what it means, and they'll have even less comprehension that that child they were criticizing. Almost the same thing can be said for genre literature. Ask that literary type to interpret genre literature, and they may as well answer in one word: trash. Yet their criticism is largely a product of their lack of understanding. For example: science fiction writers explore different themes and use literary devices in different ways, but that doesn't make the writing any less valid. Yet the people praising literature seem to feel that their niches are more important simply because they can understand it.

Yes, literacy levels are important. On the other hand, throwing a middle schooler a reading assessment test and stating what their reading level is based upon the result is misleading at best. Most of those assessments will produce very misleading results because they are targeting reading skills that a particular student may not have, while ignoring reading skills that they do have. It may show that a youth has a low vocabulary because it's looking at words found in traditional fictional writing, while ignoring words found in science (non-fiction) or fantasy. Children who read a lot of science books will probably be able to read better in the passive voice than the active voice, the latter being more commonly used in english courses, so of course they will appear to be failing when given the test. Of course the tests can indicate general issues in literacy, but how many of those issues arise because the tests are saying that the students lack the literacy skills that are being tested for and teachers are foisting inappropriate materials upon the students (thus encouraging them to tune out)?

06-13-2013, 02:10 PM	#13
BWinmill Nameless Being	Argh! Some of their points are valid, but there are also so many things that are wrong with an article like this one. Take the comparison to literacy levels of high school students 100 years ago: it's not a valid comparison because a lot of people would not obtain an elementary school education, never mind a high school education. Literacy rates were much lower and I'm guessing that the level of literacy was much lower even after you excluded the functionally illiterate. We don't let struggling students drop out like that these days, so they are going to distort the statistics. The other thing is that people read for different reasons: entertainment, information, interpretation, and likely other reasons. The literary types tend to be heavy on interpretation, which is fine. It's what they do. It's valuable. I'm not going to criticize them for that. Throw a journal article at them, at least one from mathematics or any of the sciences, and they would be illiterate. They would be like that kid who could sound out the words. Heck, they may even be able to read out equations in a recognizable way. But ask them what it means, and they'll have even less comprehension that that child they were criticizing. Almost the same thing can be said for genre literature. Ask that literary type to interpret genre literature, and they may as well answer in one word: trash. Yet their criticism is largely a product of their lack of understanding. For example: science fiction writers explore different themes and use literary devices in different ways, but that doesn't make the writing any less valid. Yet the people praising literature seem to feel that their niches are more important simply because they can understand it. Yes, literacy levels are important. On the other hand, throwing a middle schooler a reading assessment test and stating what their reading level is based upon the result is misleading at best. Most of those assessments will produce very misleading results because they are targeting reading skills that a particular student may not have, while ignoring reading skills that they do have. It may show that a youth has a low vocabulary because it's looking at words found in traditional fictional writing, while ignoring words found in science (non-fiction) or fantasy. Children who read a lot of science books will probably be able to read better in the passive voice than the active voice, the latter being more commonly used in english courses, so of course they will appear to be failing when given the test. Of course the tests can indicate general issues in literacy, but how many of those issues arise because the tests are saying that the students lack the literacy skills that are being tested for and teachers are foisting inappropriate materials upon the students (thus encouraging them to tune out)?