Well, after spending the day giving final exams to my AP English Language students and watching many of them sigh, shift around, and fall asleep while reading the close reading section, I can't help but wonder -- do students REALLY believe they will do well in college if they cannot stand to read? The teenaged girl, Nadya in the "RU Really Reading" article seems to believe that "nobody said you have to read books to get into college." That's true -- I'm sure the University of Phoenix or Robert Morris will be thrilled to have you.
I do believe though that a love of text and stories has developed from internet reading. The Nadya girl loves reading Fanfiction, and although most of it is probably as badly written as the example the article provided, I also happen to know a well-educated colleague and British Literature scholar who regularly contributes stories to a FanFiction website. It is also hard to argue with the statistics that show dyslexic kids doing better with the internet than they do with books. And it's hard to argue with the logic that the Internet allows you to read many different points of view at once, interact with text, and develop an intellectual curiosity to learn more. Bravo to all of that. But, we also cannot ignore the fact that it is hard to keep the attention of today's youth in a classroom.
As educators we almost have to switch gears every 15 minutes to keep up with the fragmented attention span of students. And, if reading scores are going down -- I have to say it -- it is not because somehow the teachers are "bad." It is because the internet generation does not have the attention span to read books anymore. Books are assigned to them and they don't read -- they look up Spark Notes. Students sitting in English graduate writing programs claim they want to be novelists but have not read any substantial authors. That Nadya girl in the article who hates to read books wants to be an English major. God help we English teachers and professors! So, what is the problem? This girl supposedly gets A's and B's but she and others like her think that books are too "one-sided" but what's really happening is what the debate on "Is Google Making Us Smarter or Dumber" is trying to argue. The Internet is making our brains behave differently. So whether that is good or bad it does seem those who are starting to hate books are losing the ability to use their imaginations and cognitive thinking skills to decipher complex meaning without clicking a mouse to take them to another window to give them bits and pieces of information that they don't have to wade through text to discover. What reading tests ask students to do is a skill that they are losing because of the quick fix information they can get on the internet. Internet searching and synthesizing of information is yes, indeed, a grand and valuable skill to have for higher education and for the job market. However, if the skills acquired by using your imagination and comprehension skills to decipher lengthy bits of text are still valued by employers and still measurable in their link to greater success in higher education and brainier jobs, then "reading" on the Internet will not be able to replace reading books. Nor should it.
I also found "nobody said you have to read books to get into college" to be an interesting statement. I feel like she was trying to say, read novels and paperback books. I hope she knows that you'll have to read textbooks in college, science and business etc. I think that at her age, the statement was an exaggerated and rebellious response. Reading fanfiction is a lot like novel and texts, but its a new type of text. Attitudes towards books and literature change. I wasn't always an avid reader and now I read a lot.
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