Anonymous
06/14/2026 08:01
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
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 disagree with most of the above.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:58
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Well I will be honest part of the issue is the crap the colleges expect from extracurricular. Nobody has time to read for pleasure when they are working 24/7
I agree with this.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:56
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
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 buy this. If conservative men and women to read different novels, then why aren’t they writing them?!
This is also news to me that novels are highly political, and I reject your premise that good literature isn’t being published.
Finally, can you explain why MAGA can’t read thrillers or sci-fi published this year?! Reading increases empathy and any time spent reading is spent offline.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:32
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can we switch the blame from students to educators who defended Lucy Calkins and crappy curriculums - everyone from teachers who bought into it to administrators who selected and enforced the programs.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
I'm a teacher, and I NEVER defended Lucky Calkins. However, it isn't teachers who make decisions about curriculum, and I/we had no choice if we wanted to remain employed. There is a vast, bloated, many-tiered administrative team, many of whom have limited time/interest in actual classrooms, who are making these calls and ramming this nonsense through from the top down.
Certainly FCPS should start with a 50% cut in admin staff working at Gatehouse and similar places.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:32
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Agree with all of this, but I see reading and writing standards being rolled back at every level. In my organization, few people can write and everything is geared toward a TikTok attention span. AI is being heavily pushed. I work in comms at a nonprofit, and my only direct report is a man in his late 40s who cannot write a grammatically correct sentence and makes stupid spelling errors constantly. The newsletter barely has any text and only requires a small amount of editorial judgement to rewrite from press releases (or just cut and paste).
Both my teens can read well, but the younger one has much more interest and reads college level literature and also writes plays. The older one still struggles with punctuation and isn’t a great writer because DCPS doesn’t explicitly teach it well and she’s less inclined, though she his getting an A in AP Lit. She’s a rising senior and has to study punctation rules for the SAT. At least she has that incentive to learn it, hopefully.
Early on, they went to a dual language dcps (title I), where the old school teachers stressed phonics and writing. There was a lot of homework. I’m so grateful to those teachers who didn’t buy into the fads.
Both my teens can read well, but the younger one has much more interest and reads college level literature and also writes plays. The older one still struggles with punctuation and isn’t a great writer because DCPS doesn’t explicitly teach it well and she’s less inclined, though she his getting an A in AP Lit. She’s a rising senior and has to study punctation rules for the SAT. At least she has that incentive to learn it, hopefully.
Early on, they went to a dual language dcps (title I), where the old school teachers stressed phonics and writing. There was a lot of homework. I’m so grateful to those teachers who didn’t buy into the fads.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:18
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Can we switch the blame from students to educators who defended Lucy Calkins and crappy curriculums - everyone from teachers who bought into it to administrators who selected and enforced the programs.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
I'm a teacher, and I NEVER defended Lucky Calkins. However, it isn't teachers who make decisions about curriculum, and I/we had no choice if we wanted to remain employed. There is a vast, bloated, many-tiered administrative team, many of whom have limited time/interest in actual classrooms, who are making these calls and ramming this nonsense through from the top down.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 07:11
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Can we switch the blame from students to educators who defended Lucy Calkins and crappy curriculums - everyone from teachers who bought into it to administrators who selected and enforced the programs.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
Agree the K-12 educational industrial complex and their crap fad curriculums are largely responsible for the current situation.
Need to get back to textbooks, phonics, math facts, learning cursive, reading books, writing (not typing) short stories and book reports. Add in a little discipline and not be afraid to give out letter grades other than A.
School systems are bloated with too many administrative levels that add little to no value to the educational process.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 06:59
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Joan Boaler at Stanford is the Lucy Calkins of the pre-college math world. Suggest avoiding her crap with the same effort that one avoids the plague.
Her math crap was discredited by actual Math Dept faculty. She made many many errors. Could not even compute the statistics correctly in her papers.
Sigh.
Her math crap was discredited by actual Math Dept faculty. She made many many errors. Could not even compute the statistics correctly in her papers.
Sigh.
Anonymous
06/14/2026 06:56
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Can we switch the blame from students to educators who defended Lucy Calkins and crappy curriculums - everyone from teachers who bought into it to administrators who selected and enforced the programs.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
This.
Lucy Calkins' now widely discredited approach was adopted by many public schools and also by many privates schools (including multiple metro DC privates that DCUM often calls "elite" or "top"). Educational fads almost always are bad news.
There were two categorical exceptions to the Lucy Calkins madness. These stayed with tried and true Phonics-centered approach that works for nearly all students.
One was Montessori schools, because Phonics, explicit spelling instruction, and explicit grammar instruction are all fundamental parts of that curriculum.
The other exception was Catholic parochial K-8 schools because they stick with what works and avoid educational fads. (We are not Catholic.)
Anonymous
06/13/2026 22:14
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:First, colleges don’t actually show any respect for the kids who read a lot and write a lot.
My kid went into the college application process with great stats, a passionate love of reading, a lot of stories posted on web-based writing platforms, and two novel-length manuscripts on the writing platforms, and the two highly selective U.S. schools he applied to didn’t even waitlist him.
Second, one thing missing from these articles is that most kids in college now have probably had COVID two or three times, whether or not they were vaxxed. Most professors have also had two or more bouts of COVID.
Researchers seem to have too much brain fog to study whether mild or moderate COVID has any ladders impact on students’ ability to learn or instructors’ ability to teach.
So your answer is to excuse the kids? And what happens to then when they graduate and move into the workforce?
Anonymous
06/13/2026 22:07
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
I have one who loves reading and one who hates it. Grew up in the same house full of books and two parents who love to read.
Anonymous
06/13/2026 21:51
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Starts at home, well before school. Parents either invest the time or they don't.
I feel like this is it. A love for books and reading was instilled in me from earliest childhood by daily storytime with one or both parents, leading to early reading which was strongly encouraged by way of regular trips to library and bookstore.
There is nothing in modern life that prevents this approach but more parents these days are addicted to their phones and giving phones to their kids earlier and earlier to keep them placated.
I’m every day incredibly grateful for a childhood that happened before the internet and mobile phones and social media and hundreds of TV channels.
Anonymous
06/13/2026 21:44
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
First, colleges don’t actually show any respect for the kids who read a lot and write a lot.
My kid went into the college application process with great stats, a passionate love of reading, a lot of stories posted on web-based writing platforms, and two novel-length manuscripts on the writing platforms, and the two highly selective U.S. schools he applied to didn’t even waitlist him.
Second, one thing missing from these articles is that most kids in college now have probably had COVID two or three times, whether or not they were vaxxed. Most professors have also had two or more bouts of COVID.
Researchers seem to have too much brain fog to study whether mild or moderate COVID has any ladders impact on students’ ability to learn or instructors’ ability to teach.
My kid went into the college application process with great stats, a passionate love of reading, a lot of stories posted on web-based writing platforms, and two novel-length manuscripts on the writing platforms, and the two highly selective U.S. schools he applied to didn’t even waitlist him.
Second, one thing missing from these articles is that most kids in college now have probably had COVID two or three times, whether or not they were vaxxed. Most professors have also had two or more bouts of COVID.
Researchers seem to have too much brain fog to study whether mild or moderate COVID has any ladders impact on students’ ability to learn or instructors’ ability to teach.
Anonymous
06/13/2026 21:42
Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Can we switch the blame from students to educators who defended Lucy Calkins and crappy curriculums - everyone from teachers who bought into it to administrators who selected and enforced the programs.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
Shame on all K-8 educators who rolled their eyes when parents complained.
Anonymous
06/13/2026 21:30
Subject: Re:My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
My kids hate reading. All they want to do is watch anime or YouTube shorts on TV, and play roblox on their iPads. They can barely go ten minutes without using electronics. They’re 13, 10, 8, and 5.