The ever-worsening reading crisis

Debbie Jacob

Every article I see about the growing reading crisis worries me.

Several academic studies have shattered our preconceived, outdated notions about the problem. Clearly, the decline in reading cuts across socio-economic boundaries and is not confined to children struggling with diagnosed or undiagnosed learning issues like dyslexia and ADHD.

We’re seeing this problem among children everywhere, and it is well-documented.

Last week, I stumbled on a shocking story entitled The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books, written by staff writer Rose Horowitch in the November 2024 issue of The Atlantic, a US-based news magazine.

Horowitch begins her article by saying, “To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.” The article discusses the implications of primary and secondary school teachers not requiring students to read entire books.

When Horowitch interviewed university professors who have taught literature, they discuss how overwhelmed students feel about reading a book. Professor Nicholas Dames said, “University students seem 'bewildered' by the thought of having to finish several books over a semester."

In many ways, this isn’t news. What feels more shocking to me is teachers' cynicism. Teachers complain rather than seek solutions to the problem, and there are solutions. When I taught English, reading an entire book felt daunting to many of my students, but we worked our way through the issue and built reading tolerance through daily practice.

Together, we decided how many pages students could read a night. Usually they opted for 20 a night. I assigned no other homework but reading, promised them a daily quiz to ensure they read and did all writing work in class, where I could monitor how they shaped and wrote their essays.

Writing in class prevented opportunities for plagiarism. In my classes, students developed a lifelong habit of reading. I never lowered my expectations about reading, and those quizzes kept students accountable.

Competition from phones and social media came near the end of my career as a librarian, and still I found exciting and relevant literature along with high interest/low reading level books to engage my readers.

The problem of rewired brains from the excessive use of technology is real, but it’s a challenge educators must learn to solve. The less students read books, and the further they slide into the world of scrolling down a phone or computer screen, the more their brains become hard-wired to switch gears every few seconds. Technology does not help to build concentration.

Students arriving at university say they had never been required to read an entire book in high school. They don’t practise reading for extended periods of time so concentration is poor. In many ways, I blame education for the problem students now face – not their devices.

Even in my day, teachers and questionable academic gurus thought they had a clever solution for reluctant readers or non-readers. They assigned a single chapter or excerpts from a book to individual students, then had them piece the information together in class like a jigsaw puzzle.

Educators pretended this was a viable solution to reading an entire book. It’s not. An excerpt doesn’t help students to develop broad analytical skills necessary for reading longer, complex material.

Teachers and parents who don’t encourage students to read and give them the academic tools to analyse books short-change students.

A professor in Horowitch’s story says, “It’s not (students) don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.” Again, this is not a new problem.

In 1979, Martha Maxwell, an influential literacy scholar, wrote “Every generation, at some point, discovers that students cannot read as well as they would like or as well as professors expect.”

Only those who practise reading get better at it, and if they lag behind age-level reading, they fall by the wayside. All 33 professors Horowitch spoke to noted the same issues. Students are coming to university with a more limited vocabulary and less of an overall understanding of language and how to use it.

Communication skills are poor. Professors report that students shut down when confronted with challenging texts. Students confess to not being able to follow small details or keep track of the entire plot. They can’t focus. They lack perseverance and can’t concentrate on a 14-line sonnet.

Yes, technology is affecting our ability to think, process information and read, but that is no excuse for teachers to lower expectations about reading, which will always be the foundation for education.