Latest / Rachel Oates / Why Can't Anyone Read These Days?

Transcript

Why Can't Anyone Read These Days? · Rachel Oates

0:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to a new main channel video.
0:03
And today we're going to be taking a look at an article I
0:06
found titled the elite college students who can't read books.
0:10
And I feel this ties in quite well with another video I made
0:13
not that long ago about Tik tokers who just simply don't
0:15
want to read books that have too many words because words are
0:19
hard and they don't want to read things.
0:23
Apologies if there's changing light in this video.
0:25
There's like quite low sun today by my windows and it's a little
0:29
bit blinding at times. It keeps going in and out of
0:31
clouds. But I've done what I can and
0:34
we'll just, we'll just work with it if that's OK.
0:36
So like I say, this reminded me of a video I made not too long
0:38
ago about Tik Tokers angrily ranting about how books had too
0:42
many words, not enough dialogue. They didn't want to read
0:45
anything but action, action, action and gratuitous sex scenes
0:48
every other chapter. Here's a clip of some of those
0:51
videos I responded to if you need a refresher.
0:53
Why the is this book? First of all, the writing is so
0:58
tiny. Second of all, why are the pages
1:00
so filled with so many words Like what the why the everything
1:05
I read is a flashback. I don't give up about your
1:09
previous life. I really don't.
1:12
I just want you to get to fuck. I scored and I just want to.
1:15
Read Action Action action. I don't.
1:17
Care what you did as a child. Does anyone else?
1:20
Scum read their books. And by scum read I mean only
1:24
read dialogue. Like you don't read description.
1:26
Because personally I don't care what someone looks like, I don't
1:30
care where they are, I don't care what they're doing.
1:33
I care about the conversation. I like pages that aren't filled
1:36
with this many words. Like literally every page is
1:39
like. Like look.
1:41
At this. Are you kidding me?
1:43
So what ended up happening is I'm sitting here reading this
1:46
new book and I'm, I turn the page and there's a paragraph on
1:50
the page. This song, it goes from the top
1:52
of my Kindle to the bottom of my Kindle.
1:55
It's not long. And I skipped it.
1:57
OK, I skipped it. OK, you got me there.
2:02
Now, this article is obviously about a very different context,
2:05
but it's still about kind of people's reading experiences and
2:10
preferences, and it's something that's a little concerning.
2:13
So let's take a look. This was written by Rose
2:16
Horowitz. Nicholas Dames has taught
2:18
literature, humanities, Columbia University's required Great
2:21
Books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has
2:26
changed over the past decade. Students have become overwhelmed
2:28
by reading. College kids have never read
2:30
everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels
2:33
different. Games with students now seem
2:35
bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a
2:37
semester. His colleagues have noticed the
2:39
same problem. Many students no longer arrive
2:41
at college, even at highly selective elite colleges
2:44
prepared to read books. And this is what's quite
2:47
concerning. I want to make sure I'm kind of
2:49
like walking a fine line in this video because there's a lot of
2:54
nuance here and there's a lot of stuff that needs discussing and
2:57
I am going to cover multiple perspectives and points.
3:00
So don't worry because you don't want to come across as like
3:02
elitist and like, but at the same time, like, this is
3:06
people's education we're talking about and we can't just be all
3:08
like, uh, whatever, let them do what they want about it because
3:12
education is important, you know?
3:13
So this development puzzled Dames until one day during the
3:18
fall 2022 semester when a first year student came to his office
3:21
hours to share how challenging she found the early assignments.
3:25
The literature humanities often required students to read a
3:27
book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or
3:31
two. But the student told Dames at
3:32
her public high school, she'd never been required to read an
3:35
entire book. She'd been assigned excerpts,
3:38
poetry and news articles, but not a single book cover to
3:42
cover. And that is kind of crazy
3:44
because I know this is talking about America and I'm English so
3:47
there is a cultural difference there.
3:48
And I know I'm quite a bit older now in my 30s, but this is wild
3:53
to me. I remember like back even just
3:55
doing like GCSEs, we had like 2 novels, maybe 30 poems and a
3:59
play to cover, right? A levels were like each year was
4:03
something like, let me think about my final year.
4:05
So final year we did Othello, The Great Gatsby, Why?
4:12
It's like, I so see. And then I also did Carolyn
4:17
Duffy's The World's Wife and Grace Nichols as the fat black
4:20
woman's book of poems. They were my main texts.
4:24
Oh, and then also the Duchess of Malphie and the poetry of John
4:28
Dunn. We had a whole whole book of his
4:30
poems to cover. Like it was, it was a lot of
4:33
reading. So that's a novel, a novella, 2
4:35
plays and a lot of three books of poems.
4:39
And even I thought that was quite light for a literature
4:43
course over a year. Anyway, not the point.
4:46
But The thing is, like when you're studying literature, it's
4:49
important to not just look at things like as excerpts on their
4:52
own and be like, well, this passage suggested you need to
4:55
look at it in context and understand the entire context of
4:58
a book and how the pieces all fit together in order to really
5:01
get the full picture. And not just the context of
5:04
what's in the book. And in like, so the story, if
5:06
you read a novel, but you need to understand the context
5:09
outside of it. What was the historical and
5:11
social context of what was happening at the time?
5:13
What other books had that author written?
5:15
What other books were their peers writing at the time and
5:17
reading and what was popular? And you know, what shaped this
5:20
novel into becoming what it is? That said, I think there's
5:24
always been some concern about this stuff because I just have a
5:26
little anecdote about my own school.
5:29
So my school was not a good school and it was when I was
5:33
there one of the top ten lowest funded schools in the country,
5:37
which is not something anyone wants to brag about.
5:40
And other than a few of us in my year, it was actually a real
5:43
struggle to get a lot of students to even scrape a pass
5:46
at GCSE. I mean there were a lot of
5:49
reasons for that, mostly the kids just weren't motivated and
5:51
didn't want to learn. It's as simple as that.
5:54
We did have split ability sets for most subjects, especially
5:57
the main ones like maths, English, the sciences, and that
6:01
was helpful for me because it meant that everyone in your
6:02
class was at your ability and you weren't, in the nicest way,
6:06
you weren't being held back by others and you were really
6:08
pushed to, you know, do the best you could in most cases.
6:12
Some teachers went great. Anyway, not the point.
6:15
I did hear stories of some of the kids in lower sets who, like
6:18
I say that they just didn't want to learn and they'd basically be
6:21
assigned the bare minimum possible to just like try and
6:25
get them to at least scrape a pass.
6:27
So say we like at GCSE, we had like a whole poetry anthology to
6:30
read and then there were often short stories and then there was
6:33
a play and then there were one or two novels, right?
6:36
What they do instead for the lower sets was get them to focus
6:38
on like, say two to three poems and then like an excerpt from a
6:43
play or an excerpt from a novel and give them like just enough
6:48
to be able to scrape an answer together while only making them
6:51
read like 3 to 4 pages of text because you knew those kids
6:57
weren't going to read the books anyway.
6:59
Some of them, in the nicest way, couldn't read the books.
7:03
But the school was so worried about funding that they did
7:07
whatever they could to make sure these kids at least scraped a
7:11
pass. They weren't teaching the kids
7:15
to make sure the kids had those skills.
7:16
They were teaching them to make sure they at least got some
7:18
marks to reflect better on the school.
7:21
And I want to make it clear when I'm being critical of this, I'm
7:24
being critical of the teaching strategy and the teachers, not
7:27
the kids who were taught that. Do you know what I mean?
7:29
Well, even then, it's hard to be thoroughly critical because
7:34
ultimately the teachers are in a really difficult position where
7:37
they had to do what they could to make sure the school just
7:41
stayed open and got funding. So it's complicated.
7:44
Even then, I can't be completely against it.
7:48
Anyway, the point is that was still happening even 15 plus
7:51
years ago. It was, it was happening back
7:53
then, but the problem was it all.
7:56
The good thing was it wasn't the norm.
7:58
It was just a last resort for a school full of kids who didn't
8:02
want to be there in an establishment that was
8:04
struggling to even stay open. The worrying thing is the fact
8:07
that that style of teaching, which was a last resort and it
8:10
was kind of like emergency mentions if you want to put it
8:13
that way, is now seeming to become the norm amongst the
8:17
majority of schools, even good schools across the world.
8:21
That being normalised is a little scary for the state of
8:25
education and the abilities of kids today.
8:29
We kind of have to ask, is it a symptom of education being too
8:32
focused on teaching to the exam and not teaching for the sake
8:35
of, you know, and not teaching for the sake of spreading useful
8:38
knowledge and information and helping kids to learn real
8:43
useful skills? Or is it a last resort for
8:47
educators who simply don't know how to reach kids who these days
8:50
have a limited attention span? Maybe it's a bit of both.
8:53
I don't know. The article is on saying my jaw
8:56
dropped. Dames told me the anecdote
8:58
helped explain the change he was seeing in his students.
9:00
It's not that they don't want to do the reading, it's that they
9:03
don't know how middle and high schools have stopped asking them
9:06
to. And to me, this suggests it's a
9:09
little bit of a cyclical problem.
9:11
There have always been plenty of kids who didn't want to do the
9:12
reading, who didn't really want to learn the material they were
9:14
supposed to be studying. So it seems like schools began
9:17
to pander to them more and more at the expense of other kids who
9:21
maybe would have done the reading with a little push or
9:23
who were keen to do the reading. Then those kids who were keen or
9:26
would have done it suffered and didn't learn the skills.
9:29
And now it's a matter of these kids simply not knowing how to
9:31
engage with longer texts, texts, rather than a few of them not
9:35
wanting to, you know, And of course, it's probably not just
9:38
the education system that's lowering their attention spans,
9:41
but everything in general. We have way more of a focus on
9:43
quick, fast, often low ethic. I, I don't want to be like
9:47
sound, but often low effort content that is both low effort
9:51
in terms of what it takes to produce it and also what it
9:53
takes to consume it. People want this constant
9:57
instant gratification now instead of really taking their
9:59
time to consume and enjoy a piece of media.
10:05
And I feel like this is causing short retention spans, and then
10:09
that's having a knock on effect to the education system.
10:11
And then the education system can't deal with it.
10:12
So they're pandering. Well, not pandering, but they're
10:15
adapting to that. But then it's causing more
10:17
problems and it's a big, big bad cycle.
10:21
You know, I also think it's important at this point to
10:23
mention that of course, not everyone has to be good at
10:25
reading and not everyone has to enjoy reading.
10:28
I think it's an important part of education.
10:29
But overall, it's not something that everyone needs to do well,
10:34
if that makes sense. I do think it's absolutely OK
10:37
for people to have different strengths and skills and things
10:39
they enjoy. And we absolutely shouldn't
10:41
shame people with different interests or different learning
10:43
abilities or anything like that. And this is absolutely not all
10:47
about shaming people who struggle with reading, you know,
10:49
maybe they have dyslexia or something.
10:51
Like it's, it's not about shaming people like that.
10:53
Of course not. I feel like this is a point I
10:56
didn't quite drive home enough in that book talk video and I
10:59
should have made myself a bit clearer.
11:00
So that's on me. That video was never meant to be
11:04
about shaming people who need to read, for example, bigger fonts
11:06
or different layouts, layouts of books or they prefer E readers
11:10
because they can change the layout or, you know, they have
11:12
certain different reading abilities.
11:14
It was never about shaming those kinds of people.
11:16
It was about shaming the lazy attitudes and consumerism and
11:21
this whole like reading for aesthetics sake instead of
11:23
because you actually enjoy it as a hobby.
11:26
I don't think I made that clear enough in that video.
11:28
And I want to kind of make it clear here that again, that's
11:31
not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about how like
11:33
amongst the people who simply can't be bothered to read more
11:36
than a couple of short lines, it's the laziness that's the
11:39
problem. And then that becomes a bigger
11:41
problem because they don't have the attention span to read
11:44
anything longer. They don't have the ability to
11:46
read anything longer. They don't have the
11:47
comprehension skills to read anything longer.
11:49
And that does affect their education.
11:52
And when they have a poorer education, they come out of it
11:56
with worse skills. And then that affects people in
11:58
the real world because people can't do their jobs as well.
12:00
The point is, we can't downplay the importance of reading and
12:03
proper comprehension skills because it it's not about being
12:06
elitist yet. It's about making sure people
12:08
have the skills they need to be able to properly communicate
12:11
with others, to properly understand others, and to be
12:14
able to advocate for themselves through communicating.
12:17
You know, people need these basic skills like reading and
12:21
comprehension to be able to understand the world's around
12:23
them, to be able to understand the world around them and the
12:25
things that will affect them. If we don't teach people these
12:28
skills, then people who do have them can and will take advantage
12:32
of it. But at the same time, there's no
12:33
use just like sitting here and complain about who kids used.
12:37
Like we all we have to ask, is there a way to appeal to kids
12:41
with different attention spans these days?
12:42
Do we need to teach them in a different way?
12:45
And also what's caused this? Because it's more than just the
12:48
education system. Surely it's also got to do with
12:50
parenting, tech, social media, media in general.
12:53
You know, it's a bigger picture and it's all worth thinking
12:56
about. This does seem to be an ongoing
12:58
problem as well, because, the article points out, in 1979,
13:01
Martha Maxwell, an influence an influential literary scholar,
13:04
wrote Every Generation at Some Point discusses that students
13:07
cannot read as well as they would like or as well as
13:09
professors expect. Dames, who study the history of
13:12
the novel, acknowledged the longevity of this complaint.
13:15
Part of me is always tempted to be very sceptical about the idea
13:17
that this is something new. And yet I think there's a
13:21
phenomenon that we're noticing that I'm also hesitant to
13:23
ignore. 20 years ago, James's classes had no problem engaging
13:27
in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and
13:30
Crime and Punishment the next. Now his students tell him up
13:32
front that the reading load feels impossible.
13:35
It's not just the frenetic pace. They struggle to attend to small
13:38
details while keeping track of the overall plots.
13:42
It's a huge thing if you're studying literature.
13:44
No comprehensive data exists on this trend, but the majority of
13:47
the 33 professors professors I spoke with relayed similar
13:50
experiences. Many had discussed the change at
13:53
faculty meetings and in conversations with fellow
13:55
instructors. Anthony Grafton, a Princeton
13:57
historian, said his students arrive on campus with a narrower
14:01
vocabulary and less understanding of language than
14:03
they used to have. There are always students who
14:06
read insightfully and easily and write beautifully, he said.
14:09
But now there are more exceptions.
14:12
Jack Chen, a Chinese literature professor at the University of
14:14
Virginia, finds his students shutting down when comforted
14:17
with ideas they don't understand.
14:19
They're less able to persist through through a challenging
14:22
text than they used to be. Daniel Shaw, the chair of
14:24
Georgetown's English department, told me that his students have
14:27
trouble staying focused on even a sonnet.
14:30
So what you can see here from just these anecdotes and the
14:34
pattern that, like I and others have seen, obviously, is that
14:37
this isn't just a handful of students struggling anymore.
14:40
This isn't just a handful of students who have different
14:42
learning abilities or whatever, or who have different needs.
14:46
This isn't just a few kids just, oh, maybe they're not interested
14:49
anymore. This is becoming a wider problem
14:51
that does need to be addressed on a larger scale because it's
14:54
affecting even the people who used to be good students, if you
14:58
want to put it like that. Oh, it's bit of a loaded term.
15:01
It could be easy to sit here and think, oh, they're just not
15:03
reading boring old novels. What's the big deal?
15:06
And just as, you know, like when I've spoken in the past about
15:09
like, the rising, the popularity of poorly written, often
15:11
problematic novels by the likes of Colleen Hoover, I've got
15:15
Penelope Douglas video coming up that I'm working on.
15:18
People like that, the Zodiac twins, you know, And people are
15:21
like, what's the big deal? At least people are still
15:23
reading. But I do think it's a big deal.
15:26
And I think there is more to it than this.
15:28
Again, I'm always going to say there is nothing wrong with
15:30
enjoying an easy to read book, an accessible book, a simple
15:34
book, a fun book. But if that's all you're
15:37
engaging with or you're refusing to engage critically with any
15:41
texts, then you are missing out on a lot of skills and
15:45
opportunities for learning. And there are certain skills
15:47
which you may have had before that you're no longer practising
15:50
which are going to kind of wither away with time, if that
15:54
makes sense. The article here pointed out a
15:57
couple of those issues. Kids can't keep track of small
15:59
details or complex plots. Kids have a limited vocabulary.
16:03
I'd like to add to this that a lot of these books like the the
16:07
ones I've talked about like the Colleen Hoovers and whatever,
16:09
not so much ones that not studying at uni anyway, yeah.
16:15
The other issues with like only consuming those kinds of books
16:18
is that they kind of normalise harmful or abusive behaviours.
16:21
There's a heavy reliance on telling and not showing in the
16:24
writing which which stops readers from ever having to
16:28
critically engage with a book and actually think about or
16:30
assess what they're reading or why.
16:33
People generally have worse comprehension skills, People
16:36
have short for attention spans and so on.
16:38
And again, this might not seem bad on the surface.
16:40
To Jagu, it's just a novel. It's just a story.
16:42
But it does lead to bigger problems in the real world.
16:46
If people don't have these skills and they're stuck with
16:48
these short attention spans and that sort of thing, then people
16:51
will not be able to critically assess news or other information
16:54
presented to them. People won't be able to remember
16:56
details of things that happened in the real world, either in
16:59
regards to politics or social policies that may directly
17:02
affect them. People might not be able to
17:03
fully understand the policies of people that they're voting for,
17:07
or be more likely to fall for harmful dodgy propaganda.
17:11
See the Brexit vote, see Trump getting into power, see the
17:15
world right now. We're also going to see the
17:17
problem people not having the intention span to engage in long
17:19
form content and therefore missing out on considerable
17:21
amounts of information, only ever getting surface level
17:24
information and not ever diving any deeper.
17:26
It's not just about politics either.
17:28
If people can't fully concentrate on or understand
17:31
long form text then how they can be able to read, I don't know, a
17:35
leaflet explaining a medical procedure or a medication they
17:39
have to take. They might ignore things like
17:41
information about the side effects or the risks and
17:44
therefore they won't be able to get properly informed consent
17:46
before they have that procedure or take a medication.
17:49
And again, not just in regards to medicine.
17:52
Can a person really give informed consent if they can't
17:54
fully understand what is being communicated to them because
17:57
they don't have the skills? It sounds extreme, but it's a
18:01
real problem and it's one that we are seeing day-to-day.
18:06
The article says that failing to complete a 14 line poem without
18:09
succumbing to distraction suggests one familiar
18:11
explanation for the decline in reading aptitude.
18:14
Smartphones. Teenagers are constantly tempted
18:16
by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the
18:19
rigours of college coursework. Then they get to college, and
18:22
the distractions keep flowing. It's changed expectations about
18:25
what's worthy of attention, Daniel Willingham, a
18:28
psychologist at UVA, told me. Being bored has become
18:31
unnatural. Reading books, even for
18:33
pleasure, can't compete with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
18:36
I read while making a YouTube video.
18:38
In 1976, about 40% of high school seniors said they'd read
18:42
at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with
18:45
11.5% who hadn't read any. By 2022, those percentages had
18:50
flipped. So that's 40% of high school
18:53
students in 2022 who just haven't read any books before.
18:57
But even before that, I think this gets to the crux of the
19:00
issue. It's not just about kids not
19:02
reading books. It's about how people in
19:04
general, even students even like, you know, what's meant to
19:08
be higher education top level students just don't have the
19:11
attention spans. And not reading books isn't the
19:15
cause of that. It's a consequence of it.
19:17
It's a symptom of it and those that do want to read for fun or
19:21
for work or school or whatever, they always just go for the
19:25
short quick reads, a dialogue heavy and just tell you what to
19:27
think. So they're still not critically
19:29
engaging with these texts, there's still not any labour
19:33
that needs to be done, which again is fine for every now and
19:35
again when you want to pray, you can relax.
19:37
But when that's all you're reading, you're not developing
19:40
any skills and you're actually letting really useful, important
19:43
skills slip from your mind. The brain is like a muscle.
19:47
You have to keep working out and learning new things and trying.
19:51
Otherwise you will lose a lot of skills.
19:54
And this all comes with some problems in terms of how we
19:56
address education. If we know kids have shorter
19:59
attention spans now, then what do we do?
20:01
Do we adapt our ways of teaching them to suit that?
20:04
Because we can't just complain and let them get left behind.
20:06
We actually have to do something and come up with that.
20:08
I mean, not me, I'm not an educator, but hopefully
20:11
facilitating a discussion for. Educators and other people and
20:15
for you guys to go ahead and think about and consider when
20:18
you vote in your next politicians, you know?
20:20
But yeah, so you can't just complain and let these kids left
20:22
behind. So do we try and adapt our ways
20:26
of teaching to suit their new short attention spans?
20:29
But then in some ways you're just kind of giving up and not
20:31
giving them a chance to develop certain skills in regards to
20:34
engaging with long form content. So how do we make sure they
20:38
still learn those skills? While, I don't know, while
20:45
adapting to, I don't want to say the new problem, but while
20:48
adapting to the new problems. Do you know what I mean?
20:50
It is a really difficult balancing act.
20:52
Like, you might just want to be OK if the students find it too
20:54
hard to concentrate on writing an essay, let's find a new way
20:57
to assess them that suits them better, that suits their
21:00
abilities, that, you know, that suits these new different
21:04
abilities they have. However, let's not forget that
21:08
essay writing is an important skill in itself because it's not
21:11
just writing for the sake of it. It's testing understand.
21:14
It's testing understanding of a text or a scenario or a
21:17
situation. It's testing quality of written
21:19
communication. It is also testing your ability
21:22
to concentrate, your ability to form a cohesive argument, your
21:27
ability to critically engage with, again, a text, a
21:29
situation, whatever, and so much more.
21:33
So if you are saying, well, let's change our approach and
21:37
our ways of teaching and assessing, how do you do that
21:39
while still making sure the kids are learning all those skills
21:43
and testing all those really important skills?
21:47
I think what people forget is that like, they're like, oh,
21:49
it's just a stupid poem. Why do I need to know that?
21:51
The blue curtains me inside and you'll never help me in the real
21:55
world. But it's not about that.
21:58
Like, I mean, obviously I love studying poetry because I love
22:00
poetry. But for me it was about so much
22:03
more than learning about poetry. It was about learning how to
22:05
engage with texts, to see that one piece of text can have so
22:09
many different meanings and symbolism and understanding, and
22:13
then all these different perspectives can come into play.
22:15
One person can read a text in one way, one person can read it
22:18
in another. The social context affects the
22:20
literature and literature effects society and so on.
22:23
It's a big beautiful cycle of art and life inspiring and and
22:27
forming each other. And it's kind of beautiful.
22:30
And those kind of critical thinking skills and ability to
22:33
critically, critically assess a piece of text isn't just about
22:36
understanding poetry. They're skills that you can
22:39
apply to so many different texts and pieces of media.
22:42
And I think it's really important that we do learn to
22:45
critically engage with the content in the world around us.
22:49
You know, that is a really important skill because
22:51
otherwise you take everything you read at face value.
22:55
You just believe everything being shown to you.
22:57
You don't start thinking, well, why have they written that?
22:59
Why did that person write it in this way?
23:01
Why did they use this word here? What are they trying to say?
23:03
What are they doing with this? Who wrote this and why?
23:07
You know, that's how people end up when you don't critically
23:10
assess like that. That's how people end up falling
23:12
for like dodgy propaganda or just not engaging in critical
23:17
thinking around certain materials and you fall for
23:19
misinformation and, you know, bad stuff.
23:25
Let's go back to the article. Middle and high school kids
23:27
appear to be encountering fewer and fewer books in the classroom
23:30
as well. For more than two decades, new
23:32
educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common
23:35
Core emphasised informational tests texts and standardised
23:39
texts tests. Why is that so?
23:41
Hard to say? Teachers at many schools shifted
23:44
from books to short informational passages, followed
23:46
by questions about the author's main idea, mimicking the format
23:48
of standardised reading comprehension tests.
23:51
Angelo Garcia, a Stanford education professor, is
23:54
completing his term as vice president of the National
23:56
Council of Teachers of England and previously taught at public
23:59
school in Los Angeles. He told me that the new
24:01
guidelines were intended to help students make clear arguments
24:04
and synthesise texts. But in doing so, we've
24:07
sacrificed young people's ability to grapple with long
24:11
form texts in general. And this is what I was saying
24:13
earlier about teaching kids to pass exams rather than teaching
24:17
them the actual skills they need.
24:18
And also what I was saying about like, OK, well if we adapt our
24:21
teaching skills and are we missing out on teaching them
24:23
certain things and then learning certain skills?
24:27
I also feel like when you just teach to the test, rather than
24:31
teaching them to actually engage in books and content and stuff
24:33
like that, you are kind of demonising books a little bit
24:36
and you are kind of being like, Oh, well, you don't need the
24:39
whole context. It's not important.
24:40
And you're downplaying the beauty of the novel, the
24:43
importance of the novel. You're not really allowing kids
24:46
to fully understand or enjoy what it's about.
24:50
And I feel like as we're seeing in more and more countries
24:53
especially, and like states in America as well, which is crazy,
24:55
more and more places seem to be banning books these days and
24:58
banning like beautiful, gorgeous, lovely books, but
25:02
they're being banned for absolutely stupid reasons.
25:04
And while that's bad for its own reasons, I also think it plays
25:07
into this idea of demonising the idea of reading in general.
25:10
And so if now we're seeing kids don't have reading comprehension
25:14
skills, they don't critically engage with texts.
25:17
And some of them are being banned, but they don't have the
25:19
ability to engage with why they're being banned and why
25:22
that's the problem. It's genuinely concerning and it
25:27
feels like it feels like the whole education system is
25:33
working against young people to make them more vulnerable to
25:37
misinformation and propaganda and listening to terrible
25:42
people. I'm trying trying not to get too
25:47
political here, but anyway, alternatively, with the whole
25:49
banning books, I think it would actually be really cool if you
25:51
could try and get kids to be rebellious these days by
25:53
reading, you know, like, oh, challenge the status quo.
25:55
Read a book, go against authority, read a book.
25:58
The new punk is to read a book. Actually, that's a little bit
26:02
punk, hasn't it? But you know what I'm trying to
26:03
say. I don't know how realistic that
26:05
is, but I just think it'd be quite fun.
26:07
I like it. If you're a young person, go out
26:09
there, be crazy, read some books, create a scene.
26:13
Still a thing. I love scenes.
26:14
I feel very 90s but go create some crazy Zine about like the
26:18
best banned books you need to read and how you can read them
26:21
and do that. Be rebellious kids.
26:26
Actually adults. Be rebellious too please.
26:28
Love it. Everyone be a bit rebellious.
26:29
It's fun. OK, back to the article.
26:31
In a recent Ed Week Research Centre survey of about 300 and
26:35
3rd to 8th grade educators, only 17% said they primarily teach
26:39
whole texts. An additional 49% combine whole
26:43
texts with anthologies and excerpts, but nearly 1/4 of
26:46
respondents said that books are no longer the centre of their
26:48
curricula. One public high school teacher
26:50
in Illinois told me that she used to structure her classes
26:53
around books but now focus on skills such as how to make good
26:56
decisions in a unit about leadership.
26:59
Students read parts of Homer's Odyssey and supplement it with
27:01
music articles and Ted talks. She assured me that her students
27:05
read at least two full texts each semester.
27:08
An Advanced Placement English literature teacher in Atlanta
27:10
told me that the class used to read 14 books every year.
27:13
Now they're down to six or seven.
27:15
So a bit in the middle here about like, you know, teaching
27:19
good decisions and that sort of thing.
27:21
Like, that doesn't sound so bad on its own.
27:23
It really doesn't. You know, teaching, teaching
27:26
kids useful skills, using literature and books and texts
27:30
to exemplify certain points, That's all really, really good,
27:33
and I think it's absolutely fantastic.
27:35
I just think it needs to be done in context, too.
27:37
A passage from a book you've never read, or really no brief
27:40
summary of can be useful. But sometimes it's important for
27:43
a kid to learn and explore the context on their own and to pick
27:46
out the key passages for themselves and learn that an
27:49
excerpt from a piece of text can mean one thing on its own, but
27:52
mean an entirely different thing in context.
27:54
And I think it should be less about like telling a kid this is
27:58
what this means and this is what to think.
28:00
I think we should be focusing more and more on teaching kids
28:03
to discover this for themselves and have fun with it.
28:06
You know, one of my favourite things about writing essays back
28:09
at like sixth form and stuff like that, like about literature
28:12
and whatever, was when you'd get an essay title, you'd be like,
28:15
oh, I'm thinking of all these ideas and you.
28:17
I used to write a lot of feminist essays about like, so I
28:20
think in Yeah, when I was doing the Duchess of Malfi and the
28:24
John Dunn poems, it was like how to Webster and Dunn.
28:26
I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something
28:28
about exploring the portrayals of women and their sexuality
28:35
alongside like religion and religious imagery.
28:38
So it's really, really fun. And basically I had to be like,
28:40
oh, OK, here are my key ideas. And then go through the play, go
28:45
through the poems and be like, well, these show this idea, then
28:49
these show this idea and then this and this.
28:50
And then you're comparing and contrasting.
28:52
And then you bring in some like historical information from the
28:54
times they were written and some like a literary theory about it
28:58
all and be like, oh, you know. And then at the time this critic
29:00
said this, but today readers think like this and this critic
29:02
can say it was really fun. And it because it wasn't just
29:06
about reading a text and regurgitating some stuff.
29:09
It was like investigative and you went out there and you're
29:12
like, oh, what are all these differing opinions?
29:14
And then finding the passages in the text and dissect like that
29:17
was the fun. And I feel like kids today, I've
29:21
got a Sonic, such an old person, kids these days and back in my
29:24
day. Oh God, sorry, old woman here.
29:28
I'm only 3120. God, I'm nearly 32.
29:32
I don't even know my own age anymore.
29:35
Where's it even going with this? Yeah, I do worry that kids these
29:38
days aren't being allowed to explore in that way because they
29:43
aren't being taught the skills to do it.
29:45
That's what's concerning. The article goes on to say that
29:48
the issue Dames and other professors have observed is
29:50
distinct from the problem at community colleges and non
29:52
selective universities, where some students arrive with
29:55
literacy and comprehension deficits that can leave them
29:57
unable to complete collegiate courses.
30:00
High achieving students at exclusive schools like Columbia
30:02
can decode words and sentences, but they struggle to muster the
30:05
attention or ambition required to immerse themselves in a
30:08
substantial text. And I think that that latter bit
30:11
there, that's what the problem is.
30:13
It's not when kids or students don't have these skills because
30:17
that is something that you can work around.
30:18
As long as they've got the willingness to learn, they can
30:22
learn in different ways, they can approach it in different
30:24
ways. That's not a problem.
30:25
The issue is even when you have these like smart kids, they
30:29
don't have the attention span or the ambition or the willingness
30:32
to learn, and that's what the problem is.
30:35
Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel
30:37
they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower
30:39
their expectations. Victoria Cahn, who has taught
30:41
literature at UC Berkeley since 1997, used to assign 200 pages
30:44
each week, which nothing really is it.
30:47
Now she assigns less than half of that.
30:49
I don't do the whole Iliad. I assign books of the.
30:53
I assign books of the Iliad. I hope that some of them will
30:55
read the whole thing. Khan told me.
30:57
It's not like I can say, OK, over the next few weeks, I
30:59
expect you to read the Iliad because that's not going to do
31:02
it. And again, this just kind of
31:04
epitomises what I was saying earlier.
31:06
How far do we go in lowering our standards and expectations to
31:09
help students before that just starts hindering them?
31:12
And let's be honest, when you're studying at university level,
31:14
200 pages a week should not be a lot.
31:17
I can smash that out in less than a day when I'm working on a
31:19
video that I'm inspired by. And that's the thing.
31:23
I think it's because I'm inspired and interested and want
31:26
to engage. And that's something that a lot
31:29
of students today don't seem to be feeling or finding.
31:32
I think that's what the problem is anyway.
31:35
I just have such like conflicting feelings about this
31:38
because on the one hand, education is super important and
31:41
should be accessible to everyone.
31:44
But then again, things like further education, especially at
31:47
a university level, that isn't a right, that is a privilege and a
31:53
privilege that should be earned through hard work, right?
31:57
And I feel like up to 18, the age of 18, accommodation should
32:01
absolutely be made to ensure that everyone is achieves a
32:04
certain standard of knowledge and skills.
32:06
But post 18, people have options.
32:09
And I think it should absolutely be OK for a person to be like,
32:12
well, actually I don't have the skills I need to complete this
32:16
degree. I don't have the motivation to
32:19
do it. I don't enjoy doing it.
32:22
I'm going to go do something else instead.
32:24
And I think it should be OK for them to seek a different career
32:26
path instead of the university having to make accommodations
32:29
and therefore lower their overall standard of teaching.
32:32
Like, if a university student can't read 200 pages a week,
32:36
maybe university isn't right for them.
32:39
Of course, it's more complicated than that.
32:41
Don't. Don't just listen, don't just
32:44
stop listening there. So of course that doesn't
32:47
account for people who genuinely do need a bit more help.
32:51
You know, there may be health concerns, there may be different
32:54
learning abilities and there's people who have that stuff going
32:57
on that can still achieve amazing things with just a
32:59
little bit more support. And we absolutely should make
33:01
accommodations for them. That is not something I'm ever
33:04
going to be against completely believe that.
33:08
I just, I want to make it clear that there's a huge difference
33:10
between like, hey, I have this different ability here, but I
33:13
really want to learn and do this.
33:15
Is there a way we could make some accommodations so I can
33:18
learn these skills and have these great achievements versus
33:22
wah, I have a short attention span.
33:24
I don't want to read 200 pages. Make it easier for me.
33:27
And that means they won't learn the required skills, but they
33:31
still get an achievement. You know, there's a big, big
33:34
difference there. And of course it gets more
33:38
complicated when you look at society as a whole, because
33:40
it's, it's easy for me, entirely hypothetically, to be like, OK,
33:44
well, maybe, maybe university is not for you.
33:46
If you're not enjoying this, if you don't have the motivation,
33:48
maybe it's not for you. But the problem is in my we'll
33:52
try a different career path argument.
33:54
The problem is that the state of the economy in so many
33:56
countries, especially places like the UK and America these
33:59
days is so damn crap that without a degree, and even in
34:03
many cases with a degree, people won't be able to learn a living
34:07
wage. So while that might sound good
34:10
in theory for me to be like hey if you're not enjoying it just
34:12
go try another career path, get another job.
34:14
But that's not always possible for people because our economy
34:18
is screwed. Minimum wage is far too low,
34:21
It's not a living wage, work has already been screwed over.
34:24
So it's complicated and it's one that I don't have an ideal
34:29
solution for. I I genuinely don't know, but I
34:32
do think it's something that needs thinking about.
34:34
I don't know. Like I say, I also don't want to
34:36
sound like elitist with this stuff.
34:37
I'm just trying to present possible alternatives.
34:41
But we're in a position where sadly not ultimately viable.
34:47
Yeah, I don't know anyway. And the article goes on say that
34:52
the Columbia instructors who determined the literature
34:54
humanities curriculum decided to trim the reading list for the
34:57
current school year. It had been grown in recent
34:59
years, even while students struggled with the reading as
35:01
new books by non white authors were added.
35:03
Like Del Banco, some see advantages to teaching fewer
35:06
books. Even the best prepared students
35:08
have probably been skimming some of their literature humanity
35:10
assignments for years. Joseph Howley, the programme
35:13
chair, said he'd rather students miss out on some of the
35:15
classics. Crime and Punishment is now off
35:17
the list, but read the remaining texts in greater depth.
35:20
And crucially, the change will give professors more time to
35:23
teach students how they expect them to read.
35:25
And this does seem to be a really good solution to me.
35:28
Maybe get students read fewer quality books, or fewer books
35:31
that will actually pique their interest and make them want to
35:33
keep reading instead of being like, Oh well, this is a
35:35
classic, you have to read it when maybe it's just not as
35:40
interesting to students these days.
35:42
Maybe it's not as relevant to where they are in society.
35:46
I think there are ways that we can maybe change what some of
35:49
the texts are to get them more engaged with it.
35:52
And this, this seems like a good solution.
35:54
You know, I feel like the issue here isn't necessarily how many
35:58
books they're reading, but how closely they're reading the
36:00
books. So in many cases, it might be
36:03
better to, you know, get students to really closely read
36:05
one book instead of skimming passages of 10 books that
36:08
they've never actually read in full.
36:10
You know, again, though, not a perfect solution.
36:13
And it's not clear that instructors can foster a love of
36:15
reading by thinning out the syllabus.
36:17
Some experts I spoke with attributed the decline of book
36:19
reading to shifts in values rather than in skill sets.
36:23
Students can still read books, they argue.
36:25
They're just choosing not to Students.
36:28
They are far more concerned about their job prospect, job
36:30
prospects than they were in the past.
36:32
Every year, they tell Howley, despite enjoying what they
36:34
learned in literature, humanities, they plan to instead
36:37
get a degree in something more useful for their career.
36:39
And again, I think this is kind of missing the point of what
36:41
skills studying literature teachers, because it's not just
36:45
about like, oh, it's just about enjoying books.
36:47
It's about having those critical thinking skills.
36:50
So maybe we need to address how we teach literature and
36:54
humanities to make sure that kids are aware that these are
36:56
the skills they're supposed to be learning.
36:58
And taking away from it, you know, the same factors that have
37:00
contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities
37:03
might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses
37:05
they do take. A 2023 survey of Harvard seniors
37:09
found they spend almost as much time on jobs and
37:11
extracurriculars as they do on academics.
37:13
And thanks to years of great inflation, in a recent report,
37:16
79% of Harvard graduates from the A Range College students can
37:20
get by without doing all of their assigned work.
37:22
So Muslim regards that first bit I spoke about about people not
37:24
studying humanities anymore. Like, I think this brings up a
37:27
good point and it comes back to the issues with the job market
37:30
that I touched on earlier. But I still don't think it
37:32
addresses the major problem here.
37:34
The issue here isn't that kids aren't reading big novels, it's
37:37
that they're not reading and critically engaging in long form
37:39
content in the field they want to study.
37:42
It's clear that the same problem happens among students studying
37:45
in other subjects too. So this isn't just about the
37:47
decline of the novel, but it's about a decline in attention
37:50
span, a decline in expansive vocab, a decline in critically
37:54
reading texts, a decline in a decline in motivation to learn,
38:00
really. And that's what the problem is.
38:03
The economic survival of the publishing industry requires an
38:05
audience willing to be able to spend time with an extended
38:08
piece of writing. But as readers of a literary
38:10
magazine will surely appreciate, more than a more than a
38:14
venerable industry is at stake. Books can cultivate A
38:16
sophisticated form of empathy, transporting a reader into the
38:19
mind of someone who lived hundreds of years ago, or a
38:21
person who lives in a radically different context from the
38:23
reader's own. A lot of contemporary ideas of
38:25
empathy are built on identification, identity
38:28
politics. Khan, the Berkeley professor,
38:30
said. Reading is more complicated than
38:32
that. So it enlarges your sympathies.
38:35
Yet such benefits require staying with a character
38:37
throughout their journey. They cannot be approximated by
38:40
reading a 5 or even 30 page excerpt.
38:43
According to the neuroscientist Marianne Wolf, so-called deep
38:46
reading, sustained immersion in a text stimulates a number of
38:49
valuable mental habits, including critical critical
38:52
thinking and self reflection in ways that skimming or reading
38:55
short bursts don't. So again, this is coming back to
38:59
the issue that I've had with like a lot of book talkers and
39:02
other books and stuff like that and the mass consumption of poor
39:05
quality writing. And there's such a focus on this
39:09
like consumerist idea of buying as many books as possible and
39:12
quickly reading as many books as possible and just skimming
39:14
through them and getting through it and only reading the action,
39:16
action, dialogue, action bits. These books that are poorly
39:20
written and focus on surface level dialogue and tell the
39:23
reader how to feel. And they often encourage toxic
39:26
behaviour, toxic relationships, abusive behaviour.
39:29
Again, looking at you, Colleen Hoover, Zodiac twins, Katherine
39:32
and Kingsley. And it's like junk food.
39:34
You know, consuming that stuff every once in a while isn't
39:36
going to harm you, but if it's all you're consuming constantly,
39:39
then you're not going to gain any of those aforementioned
39:41
benefits. Learning empathy, understanding
39:43
others, learning critical thinking or self reflection and
39:46
so on. And that is what I think the
39:48
problem is. So that's the last bit of the
39:51
article that I want to talk about.
39:52
I know I've given you a hell of a lot to think about here and I
39:55
don't have any solid ideas about how to improve things or make
39:59
things better. But I hope that at least this
40:01
has started a conversation and got you thinking about how you
40:03
engage with longer form texts and long form media, how you
40:06
engage with short form media as well, and how maybe it's not so
40:09
healthy for you or your attention spans or your critical
40:12
thinking skills. And also like if you have kids
40:15
or young people or students in your life, then maybe just have
40:18
a think about like, you know, what they're learning.
40:21
Why have a chat with them, see what they think about it.
40:24
I don't know. I think it's just a lot of stuff
40:26
to think about. And yeah, it's an important,
40:29
it's an important one to keep discussing.
40:31
So please let me know your thoughts down in the comments.
40:34
Try to stay kind to everyone down there and be respectful of
40:37
each other's opinions. That'll be really good.
40:40
But yeah, for now, I appreciate you guys watching.
40:42
Thank you so, so much. I also did this thing recently
40:45
where I released a really cute little pack of bookmarks and I
40:48
posted about it over on my community tab and I put a video
40:51
over on Instagram and they sold out straight away within like 2
40:53
hours. And I only had like 20-4 packs
40:56
of these available. And I'm getting them all posted
40:59
and sent out over this weekend. But although I'm not sure when
41:02
I'll be able to go to the post office because that's, that's
41:05
always a trek for me. But yeah, they sold out really,
41:09
really quickly and I didn't realise there would be that much
41:12
demand for them. So I do have an option to maybe
41:15
get another 50 or so in if that's what people want.
41:19
But I just kind of want to know if this is something people are
41:21
interested in. It's like £5 for a pack of the
41:23
full bookmarks and sticker. And then it's like 2 LB postage
41:27
and packaging to the UK and 4 LB to the rest of the world, which
41:31
just covers postage costs and envelopes and my time getting to
41:35
the post office basically. And I try to keep it all as
41:38
cheap as possible, but yeah, obviously postage is quite
41:40
expensive and because Royal Mail.
41:43
But yeah, I'm rambling. I'm so about the self emotion
41:46
thing. And so these books marks are
41:48
something you like and you missed out and you want me to do
41:50
more of them. I can do another like 50 or so
41:51
packs on my website if people want that.
41:53
But I just want to see what the demand is before I go and pile
41:56
any more of my own money into it and order any more because yeah,
42:00
anyway, time is hard, right? OK.
42:03
But for now, thank you so much for watching.
42:05
And if you are new here, it'll be wonderful if you want to
42:07
subscribe. I talk about everything from
42:09
like books to social commentary to feminist issues to kind of
42:12
like atheist stuff and deconstructing harmful religious
42:16
practises and beliefs and things like that.
42:18
It's a little bit of everything here on this channel.
42:20
It's quite fun. And if you want to join me as a
42:22
channel member, I started doing these really cute little like
42:25
trivia quizzes over on my members tab, which is really fun
42:27
where you can go and learn some fun facts and have a little
42:29
guest at the quiz. And that's great.
42:31
And you also get little custom like emojis and stuff that you
42:34
can use in comments and stuff like that.
42:37
I'm going to try and do a few more live streams this year as
42:38
well, so you can use them in there as well.
42:40
But yeah, I've been struggling with the confidence with live
42:43
streams recently, but I do want to try some again soon, so I'm
42:46
trying to give that a go. And also, if you go and spot me
42:50
over on Patreon instead of memberships, then I post.
42:53
I've got some really cute little art videos over there that I've
42:55
just posted for you guys. I've got lots of photos and
42:58
behind the scenes stuff over there.
43:00
I've got some script notes. I've got book recommendations.
43:02
So a little bit of everything really.
43:04
And on Patreon as well, you can get this really cute thing where
43:06
I think it's at the five and $10 tiers.
43:09
I don't quote me on that. I'll have to check.
43:12
But also all the tears are named after Kyra.
43:15
So you have like Team Pickle. It's very cute.
43:18
But yeah, at some of the higher tiers, you can get these
43:20
exclusive stickers and art and photography prints sent out to
43:24
you every three months, which is really fun.
43:26
So and that's a nice reason to join over on Patreon.
43:30
And also it just helps support my channel and helps me keep
43:32
making these videos and I appreciate it ever so much.
43:35
But I'm rambling. I'm bad at the self promotion.
43:37
Thank you for watching, thank you for listening.
43:39
I appreciate you guys and I will see you again very, very soon.
43:42
Bye.