[ti:Do Students in American Schools Read Long Books Anymore?]
[al:Education Report]
[ar:VOA]
[dt:2024-10-09]
[by:www.voase.cn]
[00:00.00]Teachers in many English classes across America are having students read fewer full-length books.
[00:09.88]Recently, the Associated Press explored the issue in education.
[00:16.43]It reports that students instead are given only short parts of books. 
[00:24.01]Educators said this is because they believe current students have shorter attention spans than those of the past.
[00:35.96]The teachers might feel pressure to prepare students for state and nationwide examinations know as standardized tests. 
[00:47.40]They also might believe that short pieces of writing will help students in the modern, digital world.
[00:56.16]The National Council of Teachers of English is a professional organization for teachers based in Champaign, Illinois. 
[01:07.68]In 2022, the group released a statement about reading.
[01:13.35]"The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education," the group said.
[01:25.68]Seth French helped write the statement.
[01:31.08]He said the idea was not to remove books but to teach media literacy and have students read things in which they are interested. 
[01:44.03]French taught an English class before becoming a dean at Bentonville High School in the state of Arkansas.
[01:53.53]He had students read plays, poetry and articles but only one book as a class.
[02:04.58]He said, "A lot of our students are not interested in some of these texts that they didn't have a choice in."
[02:15.26]Not everyone thinks English reading should involve only short, digital pieces of writing.
[02:22.93]Maryanne Wolf studies the human brain at UCLA in Southern California. 
[02:31.25]Wolf said deep reading is important to strengthen connections in the brain tied to critical thinking skills, background knowledge and empathy.
[02:45.73]She said educators must give students a chance to learn through what she described as "immersion into the lives and thoughts of others."
[03:00.50]There is not a lot of information on how many books American students are required to read in school. 
[03:09.83]But in general, students are reading less.
[03:14.41]Federal data from last year shows 14 percent of young people said they read for fun every day.
[03:26.02]In 2012, that percentage was 27 percent.
[03:31.83]Some teachers say reduced reading has its roots in the COVID-19 crisis.
[03:41.41]Kristy Acevedo teaches English at a vocational high school in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
[03:50.99]"There was a trend, it happened when COVID hit, to stop reading full-length novels because students were in trauma; we were in a pandemic.
[04:03.82]The problem is we haven't quite come back from that," she said.
[04:10.13]Other teachers blame standardized testing and the influence of education technology.
[04:19.01]Some students struggle to read.
[04:22.35]Only one third of fourth and eighth graders reached reading proficiency in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
[04:34.88]Leah van Belle is the director of the non-profit literacy coalition 313Reads in Detroit, Michigan. 
[04:45.04]Van Belle said, when her son read the book Peter Pan in elementary school, it was too difficult for most children.
[04:57.02]She said her son's school does not have a library.
[05:02.50]Still, she said it makes sense for English classes to use shorter reading material.
[05:10.65]"As an adult, if I want to learn about a topic and research it, be it personal or professional, I'm using interactive digital text to do that," she said.
[05:26.39]Even in schools with many resources, time is always in short supply.
[05:33.90]Terri White teaches at South Windsor High School in Connecticut. 
[05:40.79]White no longer assigns the book To Kill a Mockingbird to her class.
[05:47.31]She assigns about one third of the book and provides a synopsis, or a very short version, of the rest.
[05:58.79]White says the reason is that the class has to move quickly so she can teach all the required material.
[06:09.90]White also assigns less homework because students have sports and other activities. 
[06:18.36]She said she wanted her class to be "more about helping student become stronger and more critical readers, writers and thinkers, while taking their social-emotional well-being into account."
[06:38.68]The synopses method alone, however, can harm student critical thinking skills says Alden Jones, a literature professor at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
[06:55.63]Jones assigns fewer books than before but gives more small tests to make sure students are reading.
[07:06.20]"We don't value the thinking time that we used to have. It's all time we could be on our phone accomplishing tasks," she said.
[07:17.65]Will Higgins is an English teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts. 
[07:24.45]Higgins said he still believes in teaching the classics.
[07:30.08]But he said students do not have enough time, so teachers have cut back on the number of books they teach.
[07:39.62]"We haven't given up on Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.We haven't given up on Hamlet or The Great Gatsby," he said.
[07:52.38]But Higgins admitted giving up on assigning a long book like A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
[08:02.69]I'm Mario Ritter, Jr. And I'm Caty Weaver.