Posted on 08/21/2026 10:25:08 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
The kids can’t read. Such has been the implication, even the declaration, made by a wave of articles in recent years. But the statement needs some qualification: the kids in question are American; what they can’t read is entire books, especially literary fiction; and it isn’t just the kids in the first place. It would be the rare reader, especially of a site like Open Culture, who could resist feeling any despair when confronted with, say, a study finding that only five percent of college English majors tested could understand the opening of Bleak House. But the real problem is broader, as reflected by the framing of the Jared Henderson video above, “Why Everyone Stopped Reading.”
Henderson points to several explanatory factors. The first is the way many American schools teach reading: for a time, they abandoned the method of phonics, which starts with basic individual sounds and builds from there, and went all in on something called “whole language learning,” which was based on teaching students to “infer the meanings of words from context.” The idea was that, rather than relying on rote drilling, the new system could cultivate a natural love for reading in young students. “The only problem is that whole language learning didn’t work,” and the resulting drop in literacy rates surely has something to do with the dramatic falloff of reading in general.
(Excerpt) Read more at openculture.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
I have slowed down my reading the last few years because new books basically suck. I have gone back to re-reading classics and older titles. Also new history-based books are hit and miss on citing real history and not made-up crap, most themes are men are evil and/or stupid, and lots of new books have queers or other perverts in them (just like movies).
Yeah, older titles are much higher quality. Even if you didn’t care for an updated audio version, we have a ton of old books that get people’s attention and they go download and then read them.
I still read daily. I’ve transferred to newer technologies, but I still read. I’m a history buff, so there are tons of historical texts that have been scanned and are completely free. I’m currently reading a text about the reign of William and Mary. Which also gives me info on the Irish punitive laws and the nine years war.
CC
It isn’t just reading. I’m seeing a lot of things written on forums (fortunately not FR) that have such poor grammar and spelling that it is only partially comprehensible. (There is no way to gauge the age span, but the topics are such that one would reasonably expect them to be roughly middle age). Sad.
Every time I look at a year-end list of novels, it’s just “feminist and immigrant experiences.” I would read more if there were more authors like Louis L’Amour out there now.
They learn their crappy language arts from tv (mainly those stupid reality shows and “gangsta” movies) and pop music.
I believe a sociology-minded person could come up with a pretty comprehensive list of reasons for this. It would involve not just the education as it is practiced, but also the culture that constrains the mind. Reading a book, cover-to-cover takes a commitment of time with minimal distractions yet provides a reward of experiencing the perspective, thoughts, and intent of the author(s). How many younger people today could wade through one by James Michener?
Mr. Dewey's method was known not to work by 1930. All but one of John D. Rockefeller's sons were dyslexic.
Because the schools have been deliberately sabotaged starting decades ago.
We didn't get where we are overnight or since the last election.
My experience as a teacher of 33 years is kids’ attention spans have decreased notably.
Hard to get them to pay attention, get interested in - to or stick to anything for any amount of time.
And in the next breath, the folks on this thread will be screaming that we need to shut down more English Departments!
None of this is accidental. The agenda needs an illiterate population.
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
- Ray Bradbury
I denied our girls TV at all for their first two years, teaching them instead the fascinating complexity of simple seemingly dull things. By the age of 12, both had self-taught college calculus.
Much of our short attention span can be blamed on Desi Arnaz.
He came up with the idea of filming a situation comedy using multiple camera angles. I think they used three cameras and spliced the scenes together in editing.
Prior to this, a scene was often several minutes long using a single camera. He got it down to a minute or so. Now, it’s down to seconds or less.
Guard your old books! The latest outrage is AI developers buying up old books by the ton, destroying them as part of the digitization process, then pulping the remains. There’s a facility near Las Vegas that receives used books by the pallet-full, day in and day out. They’re scanned and then destroyed.
What they won't read - because it's poorly written slop promoting the leftist agenda.
The other issue is that fiction can't keep up with bizarro world reality we're living in.
History is his story. Never before has it been possible to rewrite the past, the present and yes, the future. Control of the schools at the federal level centralized that power even more. They controlled the next generation of educators through their certification at college level. The airwaves are centralized and controlled so that no unmanaged, unmanipulated information leaks out.
Feelings replaced facts. Shouting and fixing replaced reasoned argument. No child left behind, meant all were slowed to a snail’s pace. No standouts. Gifted was condemned and then redefined by ethnic diversity instead of inherent strengths and tents.
Libraries removed books in favor of computers and play back machines so that reading was no longer required. And Tue control shrank again.
Short of living an entirely isolated existence after being homeschooled, the future looks bleak. But wait, there’s more. Through knowledge coercion and control they can reduce population numbers by sterilizing the next generation during their most confused time, through vaccinations that do something very different, through engendered violence and hatred resulting in deathly violence and even ridiculous tik tok videos that promote dangerous activities.
In short, we have an uneducated, violent, manipulated future to look forward to with no escape valve.
My experience as a teacher of 33 years is kids’ attention spans have decreased notably.
I inherited a set of books printed in 1877 aimed at what we’d call junior high students, The Boy Travellers. Besides being a very interesting look at the state of the world at that time, including French efforts at building the Panama Canal, and surfing in Hawaii, they are quite long. But the expected reading level would baffle most college students today.
Of course it must be remembered that finishing 8th grade was considered a worthwhile achievement. Schools’ main job was not ‘keeping kids off of the streets’ back then.
I have shelves and boxes of the older stuff. My kids come get some from time to time so they are passed along.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.