School librarian Thomas Washington’s essay in the Christian Science Monitor strikes a chord:
I suspect that the tipping point in information overload has tipped.
Students’ aversion to reading does not necessarily signal a weakness,
much less a dislike of reading. For them, and now maybe for me, moving
on to something else is an adaptive tactic for negotiating the jungle
that is our information-besotted culture of verbiage.
And this:
The pursuit of knowledge in the age of information overload is less about
a process of acquisition than about proficiency in tossing stuff out. By necessity, we spend more time quickly scanning manuals, king-size
novels, the blogosphere, and poems in The New Yorker than we do
scrutinizing their contents for deeper meaning.
Yesterday I did a couple of RSS sessions in Elluminate for the PLP cohorts and I found myself talking more about what I don’t read than what I do read. I’m guessing that I scan through about 80% of what comes into my Google Reader, actually read a few full paragraphs and note or tag or move another 15%, and do a “deep” read (and perhaps write, as in this case) of the remainder.
I’m feeling guilty about much of this, though Washington is nice enough to let me off the hook. But I still wonder how much of this is just angst about the shifts, the transition to different reading space that might be as wonderful and valuable as the old one, just different. (I will admit, however, that the fact that my kids are currently engrossed and engaged in 400-page fantasy novels makes my heart soar and even leaves me a tad jealous.)
What I like about this essay (aside from that it’s relatively short) is that it nails the friction of our collective educator unease about the direction this is taking.
Reading is all about testing these days. As the NEA reports, it is
also about some prospective employer who ranks reading comprehension as
“very important.” Students know this. It’s part of the reason they’re
in SAT preparation overdrive in their freshman year. Living in the era of information overload forces
a few key questions on all readers. What do we need to know? Why do we
need to know it? And, given that by the end of our lives we will have
absorbed and converted to knowledge only a sliver of the information
available, should we bother knowing it?
So, assuming you’ve read this, what do you think?
Technorati Tags: reading, books, learning, knowledge
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Testing… RRRrrrrrr
This…. this is big.
I’ve seen what we’re asking students to read.
I don’t wanna read it either.
I especially don’t want to read it on somebody else’s time line.
And I particularly don’t like being tested on “comprehension” by somebody who doesn’t seem to have read the same book I did.
I didn’t like it when I was in school back in the middle of the 20th century and I don’t blame my kids for not liking it now.
But they love to read and they do it well.
My 12 year old taught herself to program in Python (when she was 10) using a book.
My 9 year old can trackdown, read, and interpret the cheat codes to play silly games with the avatars in Black and White. She’s particularly fond of manga (only the authentic right-to-left versions, thank you very much).
They have their own Border’s cards and are constantly after me to re-fill them. They use them to buy “chapter books” … they’re particularly fond of hardbound, but are learning that if they buy paperbacks the “book allowance” goes further.
My kids aren’t normal. I understand that. But before we start slinging “facts” about reading and literacy around, maybe we should look at what the underlying assumptions about reading might be.
Like, maybe they like to read but just don’t like the selections we’re offering them.
Wow…your kids really aren’t normal. ;0)
I agree…the stuff my kids are asked to read at school is just horrible. And what kills me is this everyone has to read the same thing mentality. I remember when I taught lit, there were a few things we all read, but the first thing I did was go to book sales and giveaways ans stock up on all sorts of “choice” books that they could free read if they didn’t have anything else. This lasted about two years until the board told me to stop since all of the titles weren’t “approved.” Nice.
I, too, feel guilty sometimes for not reading all the blogs to which I subscribe. I skim about 80% as well. If they don’t grab me in the first paragraph, they don’t get read. If they are too long, they don’t get read. If they don’t deal with what is specifically on my radar for that day, they don’t get read. What does get read? Well, this post for one….
I’m with Tim here. If the post is too long it won’t get read. I skim what about 80% as well. I’ve been trying to spend more time reading physical books more and more and learn how others are doing the same.
I see my students (age 10-15) reading ferociously every day–but it’s on their laptops, and they’re reading for information. I’ve been echoing to whomever will listen that most language arts classes are teaching the “art” of literature, skills that the average person doesn’t use (need? want?). We need to know the art of skimming and understanding the structure of text so we know what to read on the page for deepest understanding.
Of course we still need to teach kids how to write in an organized fashion. I’m just saying let’s let them read informative texts, in which they have a deeper interest. My reluctant readers have been reading a LOT in this arena; notsomuch in the literature department. And I don’t make them.
Heck, I don’t read fiction either; I simply don’t have time…unless you count the daily national news or just about anything with statistics on it.
Will, I think it’s important to remember that while we may not remember what a story that we read in grade 10 was about, often what we read shapes the person that we become, whether we realize it or not.
Nate, I agree with you about students not wanting to read what we tell them to read on our timelines. They’ve grown up being able to watch TV shows when they want (VCR to Tivo to clips on YouTube or iTunes), finding information when they want (Web sites, social-networking, cell phones) and other such conveniences. They’re getting used to absorbing knowledge on their schedule. I do think that we should be giving flexibility in what they read (within reason – you can’t do your book report on Dad’s playboy), but it is difficult to not set some boundaries for when they need to read it by.
When I hear from parents that their children “don’t like to read” so they’re not going to “force them to read”, I cringe. Don’t force them to read. Find something that actually interests them and they’ll want to read.
Heather–totally agree. I just wish we gave more kids the leeway to do that, and I think that these tools make that more possible if people could start tapping into them.
I still read to my 7th grade students. I love Roland Smith to get them turned on to reading. They are also loving Rick Riordan’s Lightening Thief-we are studying Ancient Greece right now. I am of the opinion that I don’t care what they read as long as they are reading.
By the way one of my non-readers snuck into the library to check out Thunder Cave because we are reading it too slowly.
Will, I wish that we could do something like take the classics and put them into a blog and use CommentPress for students to analyze/comment/discuss what they’re reading.
Now there is an idea…
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” William James
While I still don’t know what I need to know I am getting better prioritizing for the moment.
People must know that “there is a difference between data and information.” -Jack Trout, The Power of Smiplicity.
There is also a difference between information and knowledge.
Stephen Downes makes this point over and over. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge comes from what you do with the information.
This echoes my experience which I blogged about just yesterday… I think the writers are adapting to this new form of reading. http://tinyurl.com/3y73k9
I too find that I skim many blogs throughout my day. i often think about how much do I really absorb. It is as if there is so much information out there available to me, that I want to read and learn it all. But, in my attempt to absorb everything, i wonder if I am actually absorbing anything. RSS is truly a cool thing…I’m waiting for the class offerings…How to effectively utilize RSS.
I, too, skim through blogs, mostly read for information, and feel guilty about what I am not reading. But I am also never without a book – a novel – to enjoy. And, neither is my daughter, who is also a game cheat expert.
I have been teaching forever, it seems, and I have witnessed many non-readers turn into readers because of a book I “forced” them to read. Does it always work? No. But I can usually find one or two books to recommend that I know will be enjoyed. And I have read almost all of the thousands of books I have in my class library so I can make good recommendations.
One more point – reading really does take you places you might never get to without books. They do help shape lives, make you think about others, yourself, your relationships. This is very valuable. It is not the thing which should be tossed out.
It’s interesting to me that the high school kids who read for pleasure at my school by and large use it as an escape–which isn’t that different from when I was young, only now they are also trying to escape the hectic pace of the online world too.
I have felt a cognitive dissonance with the vastness of information ever since I became a school librarian 6 years ago. I balance on the edge of the cliff feeling the sheer panic of drowning in a sea of information I cannot process and the sheer bliss of the possibilites such access offers me. To teach students to recognize this cognitive dissonance, to cope with it, to conquer it…what a challenge..what a mystery..what a necessity. Can humans evolve to process information/data/products that grow exponentially? I sure hope so.
Emily,
I clearly remember the first time I walked into a public library to use my own card. I was about 5 and felt overwhelmed and excited by the possibilities. I still feel that way everytime I walk into the library. In fact, I say it to my daughter each time…”So many choices. What do I choose?” How wonderful that now we can get that feeling from the Internet, too.
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” — Samuel Johnson
It’s important not to confuse “reading comprehension” and “skillful navigation of a bewildering store of knowledge”. You can and should safely discard 80% of what you scan for information – holding on to the momentarily important item when you find it, and reading deeply when it matters – or when it gives you pleasure. Concerns on how to cope with information overload are far from new. Could I interest you in a Memex?
I believe that students becoming more skillful navigators, more comfortable with the technology that enables them find, keep and share what’s important on a global scale is cause for celebration! Learning when as well as how to read deeply should be taught, but this deeper than a SAT “reading comprehension” skill.
Like most writers about education, the reporter contradicts himself by simultaneously offering an information overload theory for the lack of reading among young people and then blames it on testing.
However, it is not the SAT that is the culprit (or more than an infinitesimal variable). School has the major prophylactic affect on reading and has done so for decades. Schools and classrooms in too many communities are devoid of books and teachers who read. Reading is reduced to stupid phonics tricks with books like “Fawn at Dawn” during the golden age of book publishing. We tell kids what to read. We interrupt their reading with comprehension quizzes. We rush, test, score, fail and then recover them.
This is NOT the first generation facing distractions and alternatives to reading. My MOTHER had a television at the age of three. Will teachers still be blaming television for too little reading 100 years from now?
It is better to feel guilty about not reading, than to excuse not reading. However, much of what come through a blog reader may warrant little more than skimming. Perhaps blogging is limited in its depth, breadth and quality. Perhaps it is not a superior communications medium.
I know that what I just said will be considered heresy. I hope Will’s server will not be shutdown by bloggers anxious to call me names.
I would like to challenge the notion of “too much information.” Have you ever been able to read and consider all of the information on your nightstand, let alone the world?
Gary, I totally agree. I see in my classroom, when I move into book discussions and away from comprehension questions, the children enjoy the books more and look forward to our reading period each day. We teachers learned how to successfully kill the love of reading long before computers were a factor. The average basal reader story has eight comprehension and skills pages, while the story itself is only 6 pages. Tell me that will instill a love of reading!
Gary, I think it’s simplistic to say he blames it on testing. I think he’s saying that testing is a barrier to engaging kids in the process of reading. But that’s not all of it. But I do agree that reading for pleasure is not a part of the school culture. Reading for pleasure is something kids should be seeing from their teachers, parents, everyone.
Now, about your attack on blogging. (HERESY!) Just because I skim it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have depth or quality. Most likely it’s because it doesn’t have RELEVANCE. I think you border on committing the same faulty logic that you feel the essayist does. Blogging is no doubt a superior communications medium. ;0)
Thanks for the comments, as always.
Interesting discussion thread(s) all,
Resisting the temptation to summarize, often I find the notion of information overload over-simplified (this is why the need to forget is so important!).
We make choices as teachers, as parents, as citizens, as individuals as to what we read, when we read, how much we read, etc., but are we never not learning? Its hard to pinpoint all of the tiny elements that our brains associate when called to perform a task, recall information, tell a story.
So perhaps information overload is a product of people aiming for speed and efficiency. Perhaps much of the tension experienced by schools, teachers, parents, is that we are moving too quickly, that we need to slow down the pace so we can deeply examine what’s going on around us.
We, as a culture, are reeling from our need for speed.
Every day I build in 15 min of silent reading. Students are allowed to read whatever they want as long as it is in English, is not a newspaper, and is not a textbook. If I have a choice between cutting silent reading and cutting any other part of the lesson, the silent reading almost always stays.
What it comes down to is that if nothing else, if they go from school to work to homework to sleep and then back to school, if reading is not encouraged in their home, regardless of anything else, my students will have 15 min of reading every single day.
Also, in refrence to those who think one reason students don’t read is that they don’t enjoy the book. I may be lucky up here in BC. As of a few years ago there are no recommended books. You can have your class read anything that you want, with the permission of your school and now and then the district, as long as your students learn the same things. The book is not the curriculum, it is what you examine while teaching the curriculum.
A friend of mine is teaching “Ender’s Game” this semester, another is teaching “Obasan”. I’m teaching “Animal Farm” as a way to help them examine the means and reasons for propaganda and rhetoric.
I feel that when choosing a novel for your students you should always ask the question “Why?”
If you feel that students don’t have enough time to stop and read in their lives, then give them that time in your classes.
Will,
Thanks for bringing this to light. I teach Language Arts and, therefore, feel a need to weigh in on this reading issue. Year after year I have students come to me who say they don’t like to read. Gradually, throughout the school year, I see one kid at a time get excited about something he/she is reading. Last year, I had a student say to me the first day of school, “Mrs. Osteen, I don’t like to read and you won’t be able to get me to like to read. I’m just warning you.” Then by Thanksgiving he was coming by the room asking if he could spend his lunch time in there because the cafeteria was too noisy and he was at a good part in his book. 🙂
I think the difference could be that he had the freedom to choose what he wanted to read for my class. It’s a simple equation: to become a better reader, you read, and the more you read, the more you enjoy it. However, that only works if you are reading something that you are interested in.
I, too, skim entries in my blog reader to determine those I want to go back and spend more in-depth time with. I am looking for those relevant entries – things that might resonate with me or provide some insights for my work. I don’t feel guilty about that at all. That’s a skill: scanning, determining relevance and deciphering value. If I don’t read your blog post on any given day, don’t take offense. Rather, realize that even for me to have your RSS feed in my aggregator is a compliment to what you have provided through your blog. 😉
Wow, Will, you really struck a chord here. I obviously don’t keep up on my blog reading – note the date here. I teach 1st adn 2nd graders and see reading as independence and tell them this. Once they can read, they aren’t dependent on others for their learning. When I taught 5th graders I learned to give them the freedom to really hate a book they read, and to give it about 50 pages, then put it down if they don’t like it! Barring, of course, the lovely required reading. Once they had that freedom, and realized their book reviews could express their own views and not necessarily that of their educator, they enjoyed it much more.
I read this post a few days ago and wanted to comment. I came back to it this morning because this is the time when I allow myself time for quiet reflection. I have read through all the comments and am not quite sure how to succinctly give my perspective as a principal in a ‘high-performing’ district where a vast majority are focused on kids getting in to prominent colleges and as a parent of 2 young adults who by and large love to learn, but hated school. I have a daughter who is pursuing a Mastrers in journalism who is a voracious reader – both fiction and non-fiction. Little of her love for reading grew from or was valued when she was in her K- 12 schooling. I have a son who graduated with a degree in History, is selling Toyotas now, his passion is poker, and he loves to read about history – primarily about the historical development of nations currently experiencig great unrest. His loathing of school (K – 12 especially) was far greater than my daughers. All of that to say . . . I think the bigger issue than reading or not reading is schooling in general, thinking, and most improtantly, perhaps, developing thoughtful, passionate thinkers in school who care about something enough to want to learn about it – be it through reading, writing, communicating . . . testig aside – schools must be about more than preparation. Kids need to learn to care about something, to be connected to something, to be willing to think deeply about something. Our students just completed a survey about bullying – one of the most alarming resposes – 45% of the boys (6 – 8) and 32% of the girls were either neutral about or disliked school. At the high school, that rose to 50% for both groups. Kids spend way too much time in school to not have no feelings about it or to have negative feelings about it! To me – that is the bigger issue.
A P.S. to the above –
I just finished watching a TED video of Patrick Awuah talking about leadership and his work at Asseshi University in Ghana:
“We must believe that these kids are smart; that if we engage them in their education; if we have them discuss the real issues; if we give them skills to engage the real world – that magic will happen.”
And the student responses: “I AM THINKING NOW” and “CAN WE CREATE A PERFECT SOCIETY” – by creating an honor code – creating a good society – and the understanding on the part of the students that they have the power to create it.
THE POINT –
First: I came across this by my reading of blogs (Christian Long’s in this case).
Second: Education = developing leadership = serving humanity
That says it all!
I read constantly and have done so since the very first time I cracked the code back in 1961. I’m excited about the 24-hour access to information and knowledge that the Internet affords me, and I hope to stick around until I’m about 120 (provided my stash of marbles stays reasonably intact). Even so, I’m also suffering from the symptoms that many of you describe – too much to read, not enough time. But this is a problem I have to find a way to deal with on my own.
What I see as a more pressing problem in my daily work as an English teacher at a college of education in Denmark is the number of students I have met over the past ten years who are not interested in reading. To be fair, many of my students do read and take great pleasure in it. These students can be counted on to hand in thoughtful and interesting assignments and to give valuable contributions to class discussions. They know stuff, and they know how to communicate their knowledge and insights.
But the number of students who don’t read on a regular basis seems to be increasing, and it’s a mystery to me how people who want to be teachers can be so disinterested in what must be (am I wrong?) the very basis for learning. I try to point them in directions that have relevance for their future teaching careers, one of which is their own proficiency in English as a foreign language: how about reading something – in English – on the teaching of English? How about following blogs on education? How about reading one of the English-language newpapers on the Internet to stay on top of what’s going on in education, in a particular country/region, in movies, in literature? The list is endless.
So far I have failed. They read what they have to read for class, but we can only cover so much ground. The result is that when we’re discussing lesson planning, for example, they come up with ideas for activities, themes and texts that are practically indistinguishable from those used when they themselves went to school. They have no idea of what’s going on out there in the world; consequently they don’t know how to connect activities in the classroom to the outside world. And the inertia and conservatism among school teachers that many comment on in blogs on education will continue to flourish unless we can instill in our future teachers a passion for learning, exploration, innovation and – not least – critical thinking.
So seen from my corner of the educational system, the problem about getting kids to read is not merely one of helping individuals to lead fuller lives as informed citizens in the twenty-first century; it’s one that – if it goes unsolved – has the potential to undermine the educational system from within: some of the non-readers wind up as school teachers. How can they help their students to see that reading is the be-all and end-all of the Information Age?
Oh well, I’ll try again with the next batch of students. Right now those I have are getting wound up for exams in June, so they don’t have the time to – read.
This posting strikes a chord for me in the midst of once again giving away a library, a few thousand books, a bit at a time at school to students, teachers, the school library, and then other books given away to others and to the town library. It’s the fourth library i’ve given away. But with books piled all around at home, triple shelved then stacked on the floor, and others at school, it’s clear it’s time to give all away and begin afresh and again.
And i love the sentence, “The pursuit of knowledge in the age of information overload is less about a process of acquisition than about proficiency in tossing stuff out.” Yes indeed! This is true for my AP students as well as my regular students, that they are not good editors to toss “stuff out”. The dire thing here is that when they don’t know what to toss out, then, with too much to figure, they fall back on what they already know, hear at the dinner table, remember from 5th grade.
The flood of information causes our students to regress in understanding, in imagination, in moral and critical awareness. We know that being overwhelmed causes regression, and we’ve all experienced that.
Why, then, not realize that this is the effect on most students now with the information overload? There is no lack of psychological critique of the internet, but none of that do i find much incorporated in the edublog sort of sites. It’s all so “upward and onward”. That is a fantasy and a wish of our adult investment in the internet, in the “new world”, that we ask our kids more and more to bear. I think some psychological and moral evaluation of that might be good.
Anyway, i do think this notion of the editorial and educational expertise we need to teach is NOT to learn something, but to learn what to throw away. That is, of course, a terrible situation, utterly negative, to be in. We do not like political candidates, news reporters, teachers or preachers or spouses or children to be negative, to be critical, we want positive and… But thanks to the flood of info the greatest virture for intelligent use with the internet may be negative as this post suggests.
If this is so then we are, pehaps, making a great psychological and sociological shift to the individual as the focus of critical intelligence. That seems to go dead against the whole hoopla about “connection” — but, in these days of flu and worse, “connection” worldwide does not seem entirely a good thing.
A critical evaluation of the varieties of “connection” and in education all seem to me to be called for. And there’s lots and lots to toss out. It would, however, be sad to me to find that the best thing we can teach our children is what to throw away.
A good challenge in this blog that i want to consider far further, and thanks to Will and all the commentators for company.