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From: "PUBYAC: PUBlic librarians serving Young Adults and Children" <pubyac@prairienet.org>
To: "PUBYAC: PUBlic librarians serving Young Adults and Children" <pubyac@prairienet.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:01 PM
Subject: PUBYAC digest 978
PUBYAC Digest 978
Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: Kids turned-off reading (LONG)
by Julie Linneman <juliel@wichita.lib.ks.us>
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From: Julie Linneman <juliel@wichita.lib.ks.us>
To: pubyac@prairienet.org
Subject: Re: Kids turned-off reading (LONG)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 15:01:42 CST
I am thoroughly enjoying hearing people's ideas about what turns kids off
to reading.
When talking about what boys like to read, however, remember that these
are generalizations. Some girls could make the same claims about what
makes for interesting reading. In 8th grade, our English teacher divided
the class into boys and girls for one unit. The girls read "Wuthering
Heights" and the boys read "Fanstastic Voyage." I was so
mad I could
spit. I hated "Wuthering Heights" thoroughly, did not really
understand
it, and what was worse, I was totally jealous of the boys who got to read
Fantastic Voyage. The other girls loved WH, and the boys loved FV, but I
was completely at odds with the whole assignment.
The other generalization is that kids hate Accelerated Reader. Not so
with all kids. Some kids really like AR. While there are kids that
get
totally burned out on reading with it, others are very enthusiastic about
earning points for reading. Many school librarians I have spoken with
said they wanted to dislike AR, based on what they had heard about it, but
unfortunately/fortunately, it seemed to get some of their kids who had
previously not been reading excited about it.
At a Jim Trelease workshop, he was specifically asked if reading
incentives (e.g., summer reading programs) contribute to sending the wrong
message to kids about the joy of reading, and he said, in general, no.
His summation of the research is that in studies of reading incentives,
kids who have a "humanities/arts" outlook on life do extremely well
with
incentives, while those whose outlook was more "math/science" oriented
tended to be less affected by incentives. The rationale is that kids who
like the limelight, who collect trophies of their accomplishments, who
bask in praise (think drama students) do quite well when offered
incentives to read, while those who are internally motivated by curiosity
(think math whizzes) tend to pursue their own interests whether or not
reading incentives are offered; in other words, it neither motivates nor
demotivates them.
I believe he also mentioned the Bell curve, stating that there are kids at
the top end who will read no matter what you do or don't offer, and those
at the low end who won't read no matter what you offer, but a larger
portion in the middle who can be inspired to read if you "make it
interesting." These are the ones SRPs are designed for.
I also think it's interesting that we don't have a problem understanding
that some kids don't like sports, art, or music, but we continue to puzzle
over the idea that some people just won't ever like reading. Trying to
get ALL kids to like reading seems unlikely. In her book "Parents Who
Love Reading, Kids Who Don't," Mary Leonhardt talks in the preface about
having two children, one who loved reading and one who didn't. How
disheartening for any librarian-parent to understand!! She felt like she
did all the right things, how could this happen.
I also think that the physical experience of reading is not the same for
all kids. Some kids eyes naturally move over the page and process the
text in a comfortable manner, and for other kids, that process is the
farthest thing from natural. We can work to help them get better, just as
kids who are not athletically inclined can be helped to be more fit, but
that may not make them readers, and that should be okay.
My niece in 9th grade now tells me that she hates reading. (When I
mention books, she rolls her eyes and holds up her hand like a stop sign.)
She thinks it's uncool and could be called a reluctant reader (so much for
this being just a boys' problem). But she uses the Internet a lot, and
one day I asked her what she was working on the Internet, and she was on a
poetry site!! She said she LOVES poetry, and she writes lots of her own
poetry--and I had to bite my tongue not to tell her that that IS reading.
Julie Linneman
juliel@wichita.lib.ks.us
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End of PUBYAC Digest 978
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