SATReading scores drop to lowest levels in 40 years

[DixieGal]

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to blame it all on eletronics. There is ALWAYS something more interesting to do besides study. Whether it is the timeless passtime of tossing rocks into the creek, or my own diversion of choice (riding my bike up and down the hill), lessons pale in comparison.

But it seems like kids today are being pushed to step up the pace and intensity of everyting. Sports, lessons, games, they must either excel or fail. Where are the B students? Why does every thought or action need to be focused on the future? Why not be satisfied with the here and now?

I see kids reacting impulsively to situations, rather than fllexing their thinking muscles to understand the situation before acting. They are not called upon to make any thoughtful decision until they have to choose a college. They only know how to react, instead of think.

Finally, this stream of consciousness rambling post comes to this: They can not read and comprehend when the only thing they know how to do is react to a setof immediate circumstances. Test taking skills be damned! Teach them to slow down and consider.

[Lizzie in Ma]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

You lost me there. I can't stand the KJV, and I'd kick anyone in the ankles who tried to make me read it.

I think a lot of this thread is panic-bait. Final Fantasy Tactics taught me more about math than most of my middle school textbooks, and I'm pretty sure that reading Dragonlance and the other fluff I had as a kid didn't make me superior academically to my peers, so I'm sad to see YET ANOTHER "Books Good, Shiny Objects Bad" thread.

Agreed, I love the NLT myself.
My family are huge gamers as well as huge readers. My kids have been playing video gadgets since their first Leapsters as age 3. These games are no mindless "pong". Anyone who plays games like Civilizations and Age of Empires is thinking just as hard and with as much intricacy as someone playing Chess.
Our youngest was playing these at 5 and she is scary smart.
Both our kids were also reading by age 4 and are utterly voracious readers.
Shiny objects GOOD, books, GOOD. Balance, GOOD

[mldavis2]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

With respect, do you have empirical data to back this claim up? As a teacher, I work with many children from 'lower' socio-economic categories (or let's be frank and call out the elephant in the room and call them 'classes'). I don't see a trend in who gets encouragement to read and who doesn't. Plenty of lower class kids are encouraged to read (and some actually do) and plenty of upper class kids don't get that encouragement. The "I'm not gonna read when I leave college" attitude is quite prevalent, but it carries with it the implication that its bearer is going to college.

You will recognize a generality for what it is, and your point is well taken. I taught chemistry, physics and math in a rural midwest high school with a few upper-middle class families and a predominance of farming and mining. My class sizes then were small by today's standards and my sample size was not large.

What I found was that, almost without exception, children of professionals were the better students. It was expected of them by their parents who valued education highly. I had many good students from the rural sector as well. But almost without exception, my academically poorer students came from dysfunctional, lower 'class' (your choice of terminology) families in which education was not valued as highly, or from single parent households in which the student was not adequately monitored (two jobs or graveyard shifts by the parent). No doubt poor students can originate from dysfunctional upper class families and vice versa. I'm not throwing rocks at lower classes by any means - my wife is the daughter of a share cropper who worked his way out of incredible poverty.

My own background is the other side of the coin. I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb devoid of many working class families. There were 576 graduating seniors in my high school class and 97% of us went on to college. High academic achievement was assumed by our parents and failure to turn in homework or study for tests was quickly dealt with by parents who recognized the value of higher education.

The key is parental involvement, as any teacher knows. Without parental support, it is a rare student who can self-motivate and a prized teacher who can fulfill that role in a student's life. In my experience, the observed probability of parental support is higher in families which value education and in which education has had a positive impact on their lives. And, yes, we don't always measure value in terms of money.

I have been out of lower levels of education for many years. But I can tell you that most colleges and universities would never consider a student for enrollment with the average SAT scores we are seeing. It is also telling that a look at the student body enrollment of our best schools is showing an increase in foreign and 'green card' students relative to our own in the U.S. Motivation is still the key, and it begins with reading at the very earliest ages.

Are lower classes more or less likely to encourage reading? Perhaps that has changed in recent years with the advent of electronic devices that are unaffordable to lower classes where books are free at the library. Perhaps the dynamics have changed from my experience and perception of years past. Thanks for your comments. I'm always willing to take another look.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to blame it all on eletronics. ....

I agree, we should blame it on George W. Bush and the Tea Party!

[apbschmitz]

Luckily, the world has been going to hell for a long time.

One thing that doesn't seem to change much as the world goes to hell is the way English is taught in the schools. One of my daughters recently graduated from high school. Her English class featured a two-month session on The Scarlet Letter. Great book if you're a college-level English major. Tough going if you're only moderately interested in reading in the first place. If you intended to design a strategy for failure, I suppose it's a reasonable choice.

Why is it taught at this level? My guess is that it's taught because it was taught. The teacher had to read it as a junior, and her teacher had to read it as a junior, and his teacher… As if not much else had been written in the past 160 years.

I agree that there are a million things wrong with parenting, income distribution, the prevalence of electronic gadgetry and so forth. But I would add to the list the apparent inability of schools to make reading seem engaging and relevant to students who are actually living in the year 2011, and not 1935.

[anamardoll]

@apbschmitz, oh dear god, this. So many times.

When I went to college, I HATED English classes. I "hated" them because I'd hated them in high school and that stuff -- Shakespeare being read, most American novel classics that, I'm sorry, I still don't like; etc. -- was all I knew about "real" reading.

Fortunately, I had a GREAT college intro English teacher and I ended up liking it so much I majored in English. No one was more surprised than I.

But, yeah, I don't like The Scarlet Letter that much. I suspect most people don't. Why aren't we teaching a variety of new literature that kids can relate to? I liked The House On Mango Street a LOT but I never would have gotten to it if I hadn't stuck with lit through college.

[abookreader]

I can tell you as a parent I attempted to "fight" the school reading programs a couple of times until I finally just threw up my hands in defeat and stocked the bookshelves in my kids rooms and hoped for the best.

The Pizza Hut rewards program? .... don't even get me started.

The AR "tests" that cost an arm and a leg for the PTA and taught every child the value of scamming the system for the reward of a pencil with a fuzzy troll on top?

The fabulous reading program our school system bought into that had .. not literature but cliff notes type summaries of real books ... with accompanying multiple choice tests for the teacher to give? I literally sat at that curriculum night with my mouth hanging open as I was told that my child wouldn't exactly be reading White Fang by Jack London, he'd read an abbreviated version - and then children who were especially interested could check out the full books for themselves. Because yeah, as we all know White Fang is such a long book to begin with how could we possibly expect all the kids to read the whole thing?

One of the many reasons I will always love JK Rowling for the rest of my life is that she once again brought to light the fact that yes indeed, children can read big long books if they want to - and you don't even have to bribe them with pizza to get them to do it.

I think I myself was really lucky in Grade and High School because I mostly had teachers who allowed children to choose from long lists of books for literature. I hardly ever got stuck reading something I absolutely hated.

[anamardoll]

Ah, I loved the Pizza Hut program when I was a kid. I double-dipped on that: we had a "Missionary Reading" program at church, so the books I read counted towards both a pizza AND an ice cream treat.

[mldavis2]

Reading a long book that you were assigned that you don't want to read is called self-discipline. We seem to have lost it in recent generations.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

Reading a long book that you were assigned that you don't want to read is called self-discipline. We seem to have lost it in recent generations.

Everyone read all their school assignments back before the Wii was invented.

Just ask Laura Ingalls Wilder.

[apbschmitz]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

Reading a long book that you were assigned that you don't want to read is called self-discipline.

Yeah, but once you're out of high school it's called masochism.

[crich70]

There was a news story by John Stossel just this evening about the decline in education here in the U.S. Apparently there are a lot of problems in education. For example if a teacher is shown to be less than good at their job they can't be let go because the teaching union won't allow it. There was one example given where a teacher was known to hit students and it took 4 yrs & thousands of dollars to terminate his contract with the school. Not only were there thousands of dollars spent in court fees etc. but he still got paid I think they said and they also had to pay for a substitute teacher to come in and teach in his place. I'm sure there are some great teachers out there but when someone is incompetent at the job they should be able to be let go and someone else given the job so that the kids won't suffer. Teachers are supposed to be there for the kids benefit not the other way round. I still remember struggling with Algebra in regular high school as a teenager. If you missed a lesson you had trouble catching up because each lesson built on the one before. Later I finished my high school education through Blackhawk tech. (due to a bullying problem) and they had a retired math teacher (Mr. Cooper his name was I think) come in and cover the maths section (including Algebra) and the man had a real gift for teaching. He made things comprehensible for me and my fellow students (one of which was 75 yrs old). Later when I went on to college (at another Blackhawk Tech campus) I took college math and I actually managed a B+ for my final grade. A first for me since I'd had trouble with math since I started school. I think a good part of that was I had some good teachers who actually made sure I understood what I was supposed to be learning. Of course I also had good reading comp. I was tested on it and other things when I was 13 and I already had a High School Senior's reading level at that time.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Everyone read all their school assignments back before the Wii was invented.

Just ask Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Yes but didn't she finish her own education by age 16 or so? Then after some time go on to teach? Our knowledge has grown a lot in the past century. No doubt not everyone has been able to keep up with all the new developments. I mean round the turn of the last century few people understood Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" for example and now many have at least an idea of what it's about even if they don't always understand the math behind it. Sometimes I think knowledge expands faster than our ability to process it. And everyone still has to start with the basics before they go on to the more advanced stuff. Do the basics even get the time they need to be taught anymore?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by abookreader

I can tell you as a parent I attempted to "fight" the school reading programs a couple of times until I finally just threw up my hands in defeat and stocked the bookshelves in my kids rooms and hoped for the best.

The Pizza Hut rewards program? .... don't even get me started.

The AR "tests" that cost an arm and a leg for the PTA and taught every child the value of scamming the system for the reward of a pencil with a fuzzy troll on top?

The fabulous reading program our school system bought into that had .. not literature but cliff notes type summaries of real books ... with accompanying multiple choice tests for the teacher to give? I literally sat at that curriculum night with my mouth hanging open as I was told that my child wouldn't exactly be reading White Fang by Jack London, he'd read an abbreviated version - and then children who were especially interested could check out the full books for themselves. Because yeah, as we all know White Fang is such a long book to begin with how could we possibly expect all the kids to read the whole thing?

One of the many reasons I will always love JK Rowling for the rest of my life is that she once again brought to light the fact that yes indeed, children can read big long books if they want to - and you don't even have to bribe them with pizza to get them to do it.

I think I myself was really lucky in Grade and High School because I mostly had teachers who allowed children to choose from long lists of books for literature. I hardly ever got stuck reading something I absolutely hated.

We didn't have that kind of thing where I grew up, but we did have a good reading program through the local public library. You set a goal for yourself for summer time reading and got a nice certificate if you managed to make your goal. I always went over. Might have been other things along with the certificate like a party or something I guess but I really don't remember.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

Yeah, but once you're out of high school it's called masochism.

So, after high school there is no need to learn new things I guess. Live by the pleasure principle.