Last night at our Thanksgiving get together, I got into a long conversation with a family member who is a long-time high school English teacher and who has begun dipping his toes into the Read/Write Web. (I had nothing to do with it, I swear…almost.) While he has been impressed with the work that his students have been doing on the blog, he’s said he is feeling conflicted at many levels about the ways in which traditional literacies are changing, lamenting the fact that by and large, his students have no interest in reading traditional texts. At one point, he looked at me and said, “You know, it’s like reading is dead to them.” As two people who grew up loving books, I know we both found that statement unsettling. But I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely look at these changes as being anything more than just different at this point, that labeling them “bad” or “good” denies the complexity that goes with the discussion.
We talked at some length as to whether reading for our students is much different than reading was to us. Whether they are reading in different ways, specifically through video or other media, and whether those reading literacies are equally as important as text literacy. Whether we are just chained to our old definitions of what reading should be because that’s how we’ve experienced it. Whether now that we can connect to so many different texts we shouldn’t be surprised that most students find Of Mice and Men irrelevant and uninteresting. Whether we should be rethinking what reading literacy means.
I watch my own kids developing as readers and I believe in my heart that it’s a crucial step toward their literacy. But I wonder how much textual literacy they are going to need in their futures when so much more of what they create will be done in non-textual terms. And to be honest, my brain is still very muddled about all of this. But it could be an interesting discussion…
(“Rusty Chain” photo by LinBow.)
Will,
I believe that reading is not dead. It is just changing. I attended one of your sessions and you said that knowledge has gone from hard to soft or maleable. I believe this and agree with it. For that reason, especially in the nonfiction area of reading, books are out of date by the time they are published since many times it takes up to 6 years to be published. Now someone can use a blog,wiki, or other Web 2.0 technology and get the content out there. Do you remember the commercial from Xerox where a stuffy professor is talking that only a few of them will be published and a student stands up and says that is not true?
I, however, believe that fiction in it’s many different genres, will be around for years to come and will come via paper books or e-books. Fictional stories are ideas that are only in the brain of the writer so those can take the time to develop. Although wikis could be used to develop the idea of that writer. It is inevitably up to the author to take the suggestion and make it their own.
I’m an adult literacy teacher in the UK, and literacy is changing, just like everything is changing. We talk about “literacies” and try to teach different responses to different literacies. Texting is making a huge impact on the way young people write. We have to deal with that as well. We also have to try to make traditional literacies interesting. But we don’t want a world where Beethoven is thought “better” than the Beatles.
I’m a former English teacher and I think that we need to take a look at what we’re having students read. Yes, part of learning about great literature is seeing its relevance. I believe, however, that we need to be updating our reading lists more often. We shouldn’t be teaching a novel just because we’ve always taught it. If we want to keep our students interested in literature then we need to make sure that they can identify with it. That doesn’t mean chucking out the classics. It may just mean teaching a different classic because it’s more relevant to what our students are facing right now.
Hi Will, you know this is the discussion we had w/you and the grads at Cortland on the 7th.
The “sacred text” rule still holds sway over high school Eng. classes. Because these are the “standard” (remember, school is now, more than ever before, about “standards.”) texts Eng. teachers read in h.s. and often again in college they seem the most accessible and easy to teach books for them to pass on to their own students. Also, they are often mandated in curricula and available in the book rooms. Other titles teachers might want to use are harder to get.
What I have found fascinating is how little resistance Eng. teachers who have a rich reading life of their own put up to continuing to propagate the notion that these books are “required,” that somehow we’re all deficient if we haven’t read them and read them in h.s. It’s as if we don’t think anyone might find his/her own way to “The Great Gatsby” in their own good time.
And I would argue that reading is not “dead” for adolescents, not at all. They are just not reading what they’re assigned to read in school. Many have rich out-of-school reading lives. Just hang out in the B&N YA Lit and graphic novel/comics aisles and it’s easy to see teens are reading.
Karen
I think one of the greatest challenges that we’re facing is convincing parents and educators that new forms of literacy are important (essential?) and valuable.
Over my own Thanksgiving, I mentally wrestled with my father in law over the idea that a digital conversation can be as meaningful as a traditional conversation. “You can’t connect with others electronically,” he argued.
My reply: “Those who can’t build digital connections and enjoy digital communities will be at a disadvantage ten years from now.”
What role do y’all think that digital community will play in our futures?
Better yet, what are teachers doing in your building to introduce students to the skills needed to “connect” electronically?
Bill
Much of the conversation that has gone on before deals with literature. My thoughts are more about nonfiction texts and their continued importance. Your comment Will about how much textual literacy your children will need is an interesting one. Several bloggers record their blog posts as podcasts but I rarely listen to them. It takes too long. Sometimes when I’m out for a run or stuck in Beijing’s traffic they’re a good diversion but most of the time I’d rather just read the posts. I admit there’s a richness in listening to David Pogue read his column but when I need to plow through a lot of information in a short amount of time, I prefer to read it.
I also think that our traditional definitions of Literacy and Reading are changing.
When we think of someone that is ‘Literate’ we describe many things, some of which have been part of the core learning process for centuries. What we are seeing now, with the explosion of information that is available, is that to simply be able to read a word and know its meaning are not enough to be considered literate. Being able to draw a deeper meaning from text and other media is necessary. Formulating theory and fact will become a multi-sensory experience. (Read: Henry Jenkins / Convergence Culture)
Reading is also changing. Reading is no longer a linear experience, where one reads one page after another. Reading now, especially on the Internet, is a three dimensional experience. The depth and breadth of content grows geometrically as multiple hyperlinks give readers the ability to dig into the background information that the author used to formulate their thoughts.
One of the issues facing educators over the next few years is to teach students how to use the contextual breadcrumbs and hyperlinks effectively to deepen their own understanding of the author’s message. Three-dimensional reading and writing will be skills that students of today will need to master in the workplace, as supervisors demand that they not only formulate ideas and theories, but document those theories with supporting materials that are just one-click-away.
Anyone know of any research, etc. on the issue?
Hi Will,
I believe that traditional reading as we were brought up with is still a valuable part of our learning systems. The most important thing is that we as educators need to show students why it’s important to read books. We need to show them why it’s fun to read the original Moby Dick, not an online version. We need to show them why it’s important to see what it takes to write a novel. To see the enjoyment in just sitting down with a book and losing yourself in the story, which is really not as possible while reading articles online in any form of Web 2.0.
Reading a blog, a news article or an ebook is not the same, you don’t get the same things out of it as you do a hardback book.
It’s up to us as parents, teachers and mentors to show them what they can get out of both online and traditional reading.
We need to show them why it’s fun to read the original Moby Dick, not an online version.
Why is it better to read the “original” Moby Dick than the one at http://www.gutenberg.org? The text is identical, right?
As it happens, I read the Gutenberg edition of Moby Dick on my PDA not long ago, and didn’t have any difficulty losing myself in the story.
I usually keep the Palm loaded up with five or six novels so I have something to read while riding the bus to campus or waiting in line.
There’s no way I could carry that many paper novels with me, given the textbooks and academic papers that are generally crammed into my backpack.
As I read today (huh? there’s reading going on?), I’m most struck here by Karen’s comment, “It’s as if we don’t think anyone might find his/her own way to “The Great Gatsby†in their own good time.”
I’m thinking of a pendulum, and how it ineluctably swings, and of our implicit charge to protect and archive what is important. The people will find it if it’s there. However, as we attempt to codify information into “knowledge” and then into “curriculum,” we somehow weaken and diminish it. We need to find ways to strengthen it in process, rather.
“Reading a blog, a news article or an ebook is not the same, you don’t get the same things out of it as you do a hardback book.”
Of course you don’t, Kyle. The things you get are just some of the other things you _can_ get if you’re learning.
Wow. What fun conversation awaits us.
Music Parallel?
Is it important that by the time we reach adulthood that we know who Mozart, Vivaldi or Beethoven are? Is it important that we have attended live concerts or only listened to recordings of their music? Is listening to their original music as good as listening to arrangements of their music done in GarageBand? Does something of value get lost when we don’t to balance new with older forms of media and make the attempt to help students experience the unique value of each? What will terms like “well-rounded” and “culturally literate” mean? I am not sure. What do you think?
Tony
Have you lost the fun in sitting with a book, turning the pages, feeling the book. Being able to curl up with the book without having to turn it on, open a browser to go to a web page just to read a book as you would with a computer.
Why would you want to read a book on a FDA? It’s impersonal, small and harder to read than the real thing. The same goes for the PC or laptop.
There is more to reading than the text. I’m sorry but I just can’t see how you could lose yourself in a book while reading it on a PDA. There is no way I could use my PDA for that purpose. I would get nothing out of it. Reading from a computer screen versus reading from a hardback novel, I’ll take the hardback any day.
I watch my 21 month old daughter take her books, turn pages, read a word, point out an animal and see her eyes light up while she reads. That’s what our kids are losing. That’s why our kids read well below their grade level across our country.
Just because it can be done on the computer doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done or taught to be done by hand the traditional way.
I am a librarian and American Literature teacher who reads novels on my PDA. I subscribe to Audible, checkout free e-books from the public library website, and frequently search for full-text reading online. I also find nothing more enjoyable than wandering through stacks of books in libraries or bookstores, holding a wonderfully bound book in my hand, or thumbing through pages of some of the amazing journals that are published monthly.
I request that my students get their own public library card while they are in my class; I find it tragic that many of them have a driver’s license in their wallet first. I educate them about Dewey, but then I teach them how to request books online and access internet databases for research.
Simply put, I think there is room for all of it, and I consider myself lucky to be part of this evolving teach/learn/write/read miasma. After all, I love to read Will’s blog but I also shelled out the $30 to hold his book in my hand.
I sense that the world of the new reader has become larger than ever. To be literate now is even more necessary than ever. The varieties of texts and the ways in which we can read them grows yearly. My question is whether or not they are evolving in such a way that we are not able to consolidate one form before the next wave crashes over us.
I am upset more that my students have very narrow literacies and that, like the various recording technologies of the twentieth century, theirs will be “obsoleted”. I find text messaging to be a very thin slice of the literacy pie tied exclusively to a particular input technology, the cellphone keypad. I am surprised and interested in it as a mode of expression, but I find it is an example of the increasingly commonplace practice of making the user adapt to the technology rather that the other way around. A poem on the other hand is a pretty damned rugged recording technology. It is a literacy which enables and broadens rather than truncates like so many transactional technologies do.
The wild card in all of this is what might be called for lack of a better phrase, “networked literacy”. I don’t think we can predict the complexity that is being unpent at the moment. Add all of the influences you see daily in a simple aggregated dash across the web and I see Web 3.whatever not just lurking in the wings, but damned near onstage
I do think that the larger the skillset/toolbox we provide the better off our students will be. So…get library cards and introduce them to Mr Dewey and Ms. L.O.Congress, visit comfortable bookstores as well as ratty holes in the wall where they can buy paperbacks by the bag or the pound, teach them how to aggregate websites and create their own salons, read literature aloud to all of our children on our damned laps as well as in our laptops, teach readers the joy of smelling a fresh book of their own or of having a PDA which scrolls through Lewis Carroll while in bed with the lights out under the covers just like I used to with a flashlight.
Reading is dead, long live the text and all that implies for now, for the future, for the past. Amen
If reading were dead then writing would be dead too. We’re all learning to read and write in much different ways than what we learned about when we were in school – some linear, some non-linear. In thinking about the reading and writing that’s gone on in my own house this long weekend I’ve seen my 19 year old hold a book in her hands, IM her friends, write emails to me about things she’s read via her Bloglines account such as news stories, comics and some other tech related websites. She composed a list of books – yes, 5 actual hold-them-in-your-hands books that she’d like for Christmas (and I ordered them all!) Our students need different literacy skills now and for the future – but, what they really need even more than that is to be flexible in their learning and be ready for whatever comes next.
Our job is to expose students to things that they might otherwise never know about. Allowing ourselves to be overly concerned with a student’s desire to do that which is easy and avoid that which takes effort is, in this context, a mistake of the highest order. When a student would rather read or write a blog about their favorite new technological toy, it is because it responds to an interest they already have. You as educator do not have to develop that interest. And exposing them to more of the same is no great art, but merely a device for engaging interest long enough to teach them some other thing.
Magical teaching occurs when you expand a horizon, not merely use a limited horizon to access enthusiasm. Exposure to great literature, music, art, theatre not only has NOT lost relevance, it is the most relevant thing you can do, especially in a culture in which pop expression dulls minds and limits potential.
Reading is only dead when we let it be. If we want students to read complex, layered literature then we have to expose them to it. In fact, if we want them to be good stewarts of our planet and repositories of our collective knowledge, we must not be seduced by the idea that the medium is the message. Technology is wonderful, but in the hands of the undereducated it is little more than flashing lights and surface gloss.
As you say, Will, relevance is what matters most, to students and to us. It is easy to say that my students are “reluctant readers”, but if I do not find ways to meet them where they are first and then try to bring them along for the ride with Of Mice and Men or The Great Gatsby or Much Ado About Nothing, then I have missed my chance. And just about piece of literature can be relevant, given the right angle. Of Mice and Men is a friendship story, a hero story, a peer pressure story, an outsider story, a story about being misunderstood. These are relevant ideas. But what about the student for whom reading is a stuggle, who is “bored” easily, who has a conviction about disliking reading? I think I know what your answer will be – other literacies. I see your point. And one does not have to be, really should not be exclusive of the other.They all require reading of some sort. Perhaps these other literacies will bring student back to reading books. I guess I am not entirely convinced by the argument that things are just different. You have talked a lot about how fast the technology changes and that it is really hard to keep up with. But I am not sure I want to (maybe I’m just not ready to) give over the value of literature to a technological juggernaut that sort of wipes out what books have to give. I guess in our enthusiasm for this new medium, we have not had time yet to reflect on what we might be losing. Which is all just to say how do we weld the two together in order to preserve what we have and promote what we are discovering.
I think that reading is not dead but schools are doing more to kill it than anything else. English teachers all too often choose books that turn kids off from reading and make reading painful. Kids need help to find books of interest to them. Textbooks are often not written correctly for today’s audience either. Textbooks need to be made more relevent and interesting. Today’s kids are more willing to resist what teachers tell them to do. TV shows teach them that. So when they are asked to read and the books are boring they will not read them as readily as previous generations.
Young people will spend long periods of time doing things that interest them and that includes reading. It just has to be worth it to them to invest the time.
I think this is a point that we can discuss and observe, but to a certain degree technology will drive learners and aspects of learning on it’s own road, similar to the effect digital photography has had on traditional journalism. I will tell you the discipline of using a dark rooom is sadly a lost art, and I don’t think photographers get the rigourous course of study that traditional darkroom photography gave them. That said digital photography with it ease and immediacy is exposing a larger part of the population to visual arts and the language of image. I mourn the lost art, and the wonderful traditions, that pioneers created. However time marches one,languages,art and learning (change, morph and evolve) is it always a positive thing no. If you look at the accomplishments of antiquity, I dare say problably not. Changes are Not always positive but I think in many cases unstoppable.
Literacy has become different, as has the way learners learn and the way teachers teach. Technology has brought a different perspective to many facets of life. Writing letters has been replaced with email…does that mean we do not communicate? No. We just communicate in different ways. I do not feel that reading is dead, but changed. Learners have intersts of all kinds which are being addressed in all sorts of media.
The following is from Pete Reilly, a highly respected educator from the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center in NY:
http://preilly.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/changing-world-changing-literacy/
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“As an example of changing literacy, I compared George Washington’s first Inaugural address and Bill Clinton’s.
“AMONG the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. â€
-George Washington’s First Inaugural
“My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring.â€
-William Jefferson Clinton First Inaugural
A comparison of the readability statistics of both addresses is astounding. George Washington’s address is rated at a 12.0 grade level and Bill Clinton’s an 8.8 grade level. One of the most interesting statistics in this analysis is that Washington used 61.7 words per sentence on average and Clinton about 17 words.
As I read Washington’s first two sentences out loud, I could see many faces in the audience go blank. They would have attacked me if I had attempted to read the entire address. Two sentences was more than enough to make the point. Our literacy has changed so much in the last few centuries that I doubt George Washington could be elected today.
But….to the student who wrote this sentence in an IM session….
“r u smart bcoz i need some1 smartâ€
….Bill Clinton sounds like George Washington.”
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I found Pete’s commentary and comparisons to be quite interesting and worthy of sharing here! You can read the rest of his posting at the above address.
Amazing conversation…thanks to all for contributing.
I don’t think reading is dead either. Nor do I think we should stop teaching books. But, my, how my definition of reading has expanded in the last few years. I still love the feel of a book, whether it’s a trashy crime novel that gives my brain a break or a Lessig book about our current circumstance. But I also love the feel of my Tablet PC on my lap reading “The Wealth of Nations” and annotating it as I go, just like I would on paper. And I love reading the impassioned mini essays on from bloggers, thinking all the while of how I might respond (because I can, ya’ know) via a comment or on my blog, which changes the experience profoundly. And I love scanning and reading quickly and thinly through all of the aggregated content in my Flock News Reader. And the Skype chats that I have going. And all the rest. God, the stuff I read.
Of all of the great ideas and thoughts here, it’s funny that the one that especially sticks is Kyle’s concept of reading being a “three dimensional experience.” That’s true in a number of ways, from the complexities of hypertext to the challenges of multitasking or multireading. It’s not two dimensional anymore, and I wonder if we should be thinking about how to make Of Mice and Men more of a 3-D experience that makes relevant all of the important ideas that David expresses.
Lots of questions to keep us up at night…
Hi Will,I am attending your session at MCIU today. I appreciate your ability to share these ideas in such a natural way. It’s tough to find the right way to bridge the way kids communicate with the way we teach. I’m looking forward to starting (with baby steps).
Thanks for a good first half…
jane englert