My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There has been a catastrophic collapse in reading for pleasure. Real reading, not tik tok reading or whatever that is. And it's across the board, young and old. Just look at the new books published today, they're much shorter than the books of the 1980s and 1990s when a 100k word count was normal for even first time authors.

It's a combination of factors. The major one is certainly technology. When you spend all day on computers and phones, it's hard to pick up a book. Attention spans are warped by social media so the ability to sit down and get engaged in a book for a hour and really read it, not just the words but the meaning of what is being said, is dying out.

And it's also changes in publishing itself. There really hasn't been great books published for a while. The quality of the literary output, commercial fiction in general, has collapsed. I have friends who spent decades in and adjacent to the publishing world and they're frank about it, publishers are dominated by specific progressive viewpoints and won't publish anything different or critical. That's why there's no modern Dickens, even if our times cries for one. Tom Wolfe would never be published today. Donna Tartt probably wouldn't be published if she was a first time writer. The biggest reading audience are progressive women, but when you don't publish for other groups, they don't bother reading. So I can't blame people for losing interest in reading. And as they stop reading, the harder it is to develop the habits.

I don’t agree with this. There’s a lot of literary fiction being published. It’s a super competitive field. My BIL is a literary novelist and his last book published was LONG and by a top publisher. Agree that they are looking for lots of different niche audiences but that’s because they are trying to expand readers. It’s a tough financial market like a lot of other things — people just don’t want to pay a lot for anything so the publishers are barely breaking even. I don’t really know what you mean by viewpoints that are “critical” but I think there are plenty of diffferent types of writers published — look at Gary Shteyngart, Amor Towles, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood. Jane Gardsm, percival Everett, Min Jin Lee, Barbara Kingsolver—-those are all authors with very different voices and viewpoints. Also I think it’s weird that in your post complaining that publishers only cater to progressive viewpoints, you reference Hemingway and dickens, both of whom espoused fairly progressive viewpoints in their day and would have been considered their days version of “woke.”

I agree with a different poster that children’s literature has gotten worse. There are still gems out there (the day the crayons ran away, Otis the tractor, dragons love tacos) but a lot of serious crap.

Dragons Love Tacos is the worst book ever written for children. Total slop.

Carry on….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There has been a catastrophic collapse in reading for pleasure. Real reading, not tik tok reading or whatever that is. And it's across the board, young and old. Just look at the new books published today, they're much shorter than the books of the 1980s and 1990s when a 100k word count was normal for even first time authors.

It's a combination of factors. The major one is certainly technology. When you spend all day on computers and phones, it's hard to pick up a book. Attention spans are warped by social media so the ability to sit down and get engaged in a book for a hour and really read it, not just the words but the meaning of what is being said, is dying out.

And it's also changes in publishing itself. There really hasn't been great books published for a while. The quality of the literary output, commercial fiction in general, has collapsed. I have friends who spent decades in and adjacent to the publishing world and they're frank about it, publishers are dominated by specific progressive viewpoints and won't publish anything different or critical. That's why there's no modern Dickens, even if our times cries for one. Tom Wolfe would never be published today. Donna Tartt probably wouldn't be published if she was a first time writer. The biggest reading audience are progressive women, but when you don't publish for other groups, they don't bother reading. So I can't blame people for losing interest in reading. And as they stop reading, the harder it is to develop the habits.

Most people are uninterested in very long reads because most writers, even back then, don't have the chops to keep readers engaged for 600+ pages. Length alone isn't evidence of literary quality. And it's not true that long novels have disappeared: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara(800+ pages), The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese(700+ pages), etc. Fantasy, historical fiction, and literary fiction continue to consistently produce plenty of 500- to 1,000-page books.

The claim that publishers only publish one political viewpoint also doesn't explain why genres with very different audiences—fantasy, romance, thriller, science fiction, literary fiction, manga, and nonfiction—continue to sell millions of copies. If there were a large, underserved audience for a modern Dickens or Tom Wolfe, publishers would have a strong financial incentive to find and promote one. Reading habits have certainly changed because people have more entertainment options competing for their attention. But that's different from saying good books no longer exist. There are probably more books being published today than at any point in history; the challenge is sorting through them, not finding them. If you're looking for a contemporary (Dick)ens, look at David Foster Wallace. The only reason the man isn't marveled as a current critic of the times is because he decided to off himself in Claremont.

Nonsense. There are plenty of long reads of absolute excellence to keep the most active and engaged readers busy for a lifetime. Most of us are simply lacking the intellectual curiosity that we profess to admire so much, or the attention span required to engage for sustained levels. And I don’t think DFW would care one bit if he were revered. He would hope to be both wrong and obscure.

You wrote your comment as if you disagreed with me, but largely said the same thing.

I also don’t think DFW cared much about being revered, but his fan boys are in the same tool house of the type of people
Who think we have no modern Charles Dickens (why that’d even be a goal is beyond me)

[Anonymous]

I switched my kid to Catholic school in 3rd grade after seeing the meh education in public. He started reading novels in 4th grade. Read 2-3 chapters each night and answer questions. He had midterms and finals staring in 3rd grade. By 6th grade, he had a midterm and final in every class. Required summer reading and essay writing along with math work. The education and expectations were like night and day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There has been a catastrophic collapse in reading for pleasure. Real reading, not tik tok reading or whatever that is. And it's across the board, young and old. Just look at the new books published today, they're much shorter than the books of the 1980s and 1990s when a 100k word count was normal for even first time authors.

It's a combination of factors. The major one is certainly technology. When you spend all day on computers and phones, it's hard to pick up a book. Attention spans are warped by social media so the ability to sit down and get engaged in a book for a hour and really read it, not just the words but the meaning of what is being said, is dying out.

And it's also changes in publishing itself. There really hasn't been great books published for a while. The quality of the literary output, commercial fiction in general, has collapsed. I have friends who spent decades in and adjacent to the publishing world and they're frank about it, publishers are dominated by specific progressive viewpoints and won't publish anything different or critical. That's why there's no modern Dickens, even if our times cries for one. Tom Wolfe would never be published today. Donna Tartt probably wouldn't be published if she was a first time writer. The biggest reading audience are progressive women, but when you don't publish for other groups, they don't bother reading. So I can't blame people for losing interest in reading. And as they stop reading, the harder it is to develop the habits.

Most people are uninterested in very long reads because most writers, even back then, don't have the chops to keep readers engaged for 600+ pages. Length alone isn't evidence of literary quality. And it's not true that long novels have disappeared: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara(800+ pages), The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese(700+ pages), etc. Fantasy, historical fiction, and literary fiction continue to consistently produce plenty of 500- to 1,000-page books.

The claim that publishers only publish one political viewpoint also doesn't explain why genres with very different audiences—fantasy, romance, thriller, science fiction, literary fiction, manga, and nonfiction—continue to sell millions of copies. If there were a large, underserved audience for a modern Dickens or Tom Wolfe, publishers would have a strong financial incentive to find and promote one. Reading habits have certainly changed because people have more entertainment options competing for their attention. But that's different from saying good books no longer exist. There are probably more books being published today than at any point in history; the challenge is sorting through them, not finding them. If you're looking for a contemporary (Dick)ens, look at David Foster Wallace. The only reason the man isn't marveled as a current critic of the times is because he decided to off himself in Claremont.

I would say Barbara Kingsolver is kind of a modern day Dickens. Big sweeping epics looking at the drama in lives of people at different economic strata. But she’s not the only one writing that kind of stuff. Pachinko has that same vibe, and probably others I can’t think of now.

I do think dystopian stuff is having a particular moment because people feel like dystopia might be around the corner.

I’m not sure who the modern day Hemingway would be. It’s possible no one because the first few decades of the 20th century was its own sort of moment that hasn’t been repeated recently.

Our economic condition is not serious enough to espouse the world wars era doomerism that cans from that time. Also a lot of young writers today are extremely practical: full time lawyers, doctors, etc make up a decent amount of writers today. The Iowa creative writing crowd often come from very privileged backgrounds. The born-poor political writer/visionary is basically dead.

[Anonymous]

Fairfax county can start by having school five days a week.

[Anonymous]

Schools would be so much better if we followed international standards and models that work. Start with converting many schools to the IB, even in low performing schools. Then, look at the curriculum plan publicly posted by Singapore and work with higher ed bodies to see where it falls short for the American context. The fundamental principle is to RAISE standards: kids tend to arise to challenges, not fall to the wayside. We have too many independent curriculums that aren’t vetted and show no actual sign of helping student comprehension