Reply to the Atlantic: The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have younger kids (elementary age) and this conversation is interesting to me because of what I see at our elementary and among families (all upper middle class families with well educated parents -- many working in academic or policy fields where deep reading is a part of the job).

We often feel out of step with others at the school. I often feel like we are the only family that does not allow our kids to do unlimited iReady app use at home for instance. I'm not even comfortable with how much the school uses iReady in class but we definitely aren't going to hand our kids tablets at home for hours of iReady on top of that. When I talk to other parents about it they don't get my concern at all. They like the apps because they can track progress and because it engages kids better than books or paper and pencil. But that's specifically what I don't like about it -- yes it's easier to get a kid to engage with reading comp or math when it's delivered by little characters on a screen with little dopamine rewards for every right answer and each "level achieved." But I worry about what happens when kids are asked to do these things without that interface. So we barely do any iReady at home and instead we encourage reading of all kinds (including on a kindle sometimes but also magazines and lots and lots of physical books) and we supplement math with Singapore math books at home. I think other families think we're weird luddites whose kids will fall behind. Both our kids had to get special training from the school on tablet use in order to take assessments because the school won't offer them by hand and our kids don't get enough tablet time at home to know how to use them by the time they got to K.

I have no idea if this will result in my kids being able to read better than others when they get to college. I'm largely doing this because of my own personal attitudes about screens and knowledge acquisition. But I'd be really sad if my kids got to high school or college and lacked the patience or ability to sit down and read an entire book and then discuss it intelligently. To me that's a fundamental academic skill. It's what most of my career is based on (I'm a lawyer turned subject matter expert). Reading and discussing books is a key component of my marriage and family life.

Anyway -- following with interest.[/quote]

[b]Reading for pleasure will be easier to keep going with girls than with boys after middle school years. [/b]That being said, tablet stupidity is something that is harming our kids. The only reason we got tablets was because our school required it, and it made me so mad. Our district finally completely banned cell phone use this year, so there is hope of some reversal.[/quote]

This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes them stop assigning books in school. “It’s not fair to the boys!” I have a teen girl and boy and they both read a lot. Stop lowering expectations for the boys. They can manage just fine. [/quote]

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