News Literacy Kills Reading (Pleasure)

[Aethalope]

Lots to unpack in this Guardian article. And yes, reading isn't fun when you're constantly yanked out to discuss the author's intention in their use of metaphor.

And this:

For 14- to 17-year-old boys, who researchers claim are the “among the hardest-to-reach” in terms of encouraging reading, those who never read fell from 36% to 30% year-on-year.

Who even writes for this demographic anymore? Outside of manga, anyway. I am teaching several boys in this age range, but am struggling to find contemporary work that speaks to them... if anyone has any recommendations, I am all ears.

‘Relentless’ focus on literacy undermines reading for pleasure, says report

New HarperCollins study finds that daily reading for pleasure among five- to 17-year-olds fell from 39% in 2012 to 25% in 2025

www.theguardian.com

 

[Pamela Jo]

Does it HAVE to be contemporary? If so-short answer RPG based fiction like Dungeon Carl. Graphic Novels. Check out books related to games they may like. The Witcher books for example. But always and forever Chinese, Nordic, Celtic, Greek, African, Indian mythology. And WHY shouldnt young men be well-grounded in those things? I cant think of anything more relevant for a young man trying to figure out his place in a completely unknown future than those stories.
I recommend Once and Future King the series. TH White. William Burroughs Mars books. William Gibson CyberPUnk A Sci Fi. Don't poo poo westerns by Louis Lamour. He was a stickler for authenticity. Dont be afraid to start w short stories. SAKI, have you ever read a collection of his short stories? OH MY GOD GOOD. Maupassant. O Henry.... Even Stephen King. Horror, Adventure, SF anthologies. Kurt Vonnegut. Pretty much any of the SF from the 1950s and 60s. Ask them what movies they like to watch and go from there to what might hook them. Boy cookies do tend to be different than girl cookies.
Don't dismiss all romance esp the thrillers like Mary Stewart's. Her hero's are complicated but the kind of men women want to fall in love with. That is of interest to young men. My husband liked reading historical romance by female authors when he was learning English. Perhaps why he chose a saucy, sassy heroine for his own romance?
If it has to be contemporary Why does it have to be fiction. My youngest was more into facts. Biographies have always been popular for boys for a reason. The Horrible History books for good readers at 11, 14 and up if they are newbies. There are some really good animal "biography" type of nonfiction. TH White wrote about taming a hawk. The Eagle Owl is also good.
At that age boys are tasked with what it means to be male and where they fit into those definitions. It takes 3k times th testosterone of a 30 year old man to turn our sweet babies into men. There is so much about teenaged girls being hormonal but no one really considers that steamrolling effect of testosterone. Girls may have to cope with bleeding, but boys have to cope with a body that now wants to fight, fuck and feed never mind what mind has to say. No wonder teenaged werewolves feel so right for boys.
They will read about the men they want to be when they grow up and how those role models got thru this terrifyingly exciting change into manhood. Why do you think boys today are so vulnerable to the manosphere? They have no initiation, no direction, and now not even schools value them. Excess males have always been expendable or what are wars for? Give them books that give them something to aspire to.

 

[AgentPete]

reading isn't fun when you're constantly yanked out to discuss the author's intention in their use of metaphor.

You’re so on the money with this.

What they’re talking about is hardly new – we’re all familiar with the “Shakespeare Syndrome”, i.e. being forced into the academic study of an author almost (*) invariably ruining the potential for later-life enjoyment.

(*) “Almost” because an inspired teacher can bring about the opposite effect.

I think the academization of writing, and its bastard cousin literary criticism, have an awful lot to answer for. First kill the lawyers? No, first let’s kill the literary critics...

Ivan Illich approached this topic in “Disabling Professions”… how everyday human activities and skills have been appropriated by credentialed experts, displacing ordinary people. I think he also called it credentialism...

 

[Pamela Jo]

Ivan Illich approached this topic in “Disabling Professions”… how everyday human activities and skills have been appropriated by credentialed experts, displacing ordinary people. I think he also called it credentialism...

Lord, I havent thot of Illich in decades. But Saul's Voltaires Bastard's is along the same line.

I think it goes even further back in education to the choice schools are making for books for children. I see it in the competitions. There is a narrow category of topics and styles esp for those who aspire to "literary" children's books. Contemporary. But they tend to lack understanding of what was a cookie for a 5 year old is still a cookie.

 

[Rachael Burnett]

You’re so on the money with this.

What they’re talking about is hardly new – we’re all familiar with the “Shakespeare Syndrome”, i.e. being forced into the academic study of an author almost (*) invariably ruining the potential for later-life enjoyment.

(*) “Almost” because an inspired teacher can bring about the opposite effect.

I think the academization of writing, and its bastard cousin literary criticism, have an awful lot to answer for. First kill the lawyers? No, first let’s kill the literary critics...

Ivan Illich approached this topic in “Disabling Professions”… how everyday human activities and skills have been appropriated by credentialed experts, displacing ordinary people. I think he also called it credentialism...

I would be dead or dying, as that’s what I’m doing my PhD in, well English Literature which involves literary criticism. As someone who left school with basically no qualifications and did a degree and MA midlife, literary criticism as the bastard cousin isn’t my experience at all. To me literary criticism is just about different readings of texts and it’s typically fascinating.

I understand the whole Shakespeare idea, but again as an adult learner, reading literary criticism helped me understand texts that were not written to be read but performed, same with understanding difficult to comprehend poetry.

 

[wrightstuff]

You’re so on the money with this.

What they’re talking about is hardly new – we’re all familiar with the “Shakespeare Syndrome”, i.e. being forced into the academic study of an author almost (*) invariably ruining the potential for later-life enjoyment.

(*) “Almost” because an inspired teacher can bring about the opposite effect.

I think the academization of writing, and its bastard cousin literary criticism, have an awful lot to answer for. First kill the lawyers? No, first let’s kill the literary critics...

Ivan Illich approached this topic in “Disabling Professions”… how everyday human activities and skills have been appropriated by credentialed experts, displacing ordinary people. I think he also called it credentialism...

Credentialism has found a spiritual home in Singapore. It's a direct consequence of not being willing to make a judgement call - 'no one got sacked for using IBM' is the battle cry of Singapore society (even if they don't know it).

 

[wrightstuff]

I would be dead or dying, as that’s what I’m doing my PhD in, well English Literature which involves literary criticism. As someone who left school with basically no qualifications and did a degree and MA midlife, literary criticism as the bastard cousin isn’t my experience at all. To me literary criticism is just about different readings of texts and it’s typically fascinating.

I understand the whole Shakespeare idea, but again as an adult learner, reading literary criticism helped me understand texts that were not written to be read but performed, same with understanding difficult to comprehend poetry.

I'm with you. I appreciate that people can be turned off reading for enjoyment by they way literature is taught in schools (as if that never applies to any other subject...), but my enjoyment of reading has been significantly boosted by understanding what I read on a deeper, more techical level. I'm willing to admit that I may not be mainstream in this. My Latin teacher called me a 'puzzle-solver' rather than a linguist (she wasn't wrong).

The one area it does take the shine off my enjoyment is that I am constantly re-writing badly-writen novels in my head. Perhaps I'm just a natural editor... Whilst I do enjoy the process of writing (most of the time), I find editing my work is at least as fun.

 

[wrightstuff]

Does it HAVE to be contemporary? If so-short answer RPG based fiction like Dungeon Carl. Graphic Novels. Check out books related to games they may like. The Witcher books for example. But always and forever Chinese, Nordic, Celtic, Greek, African, Indian mythology. And WHY shouldnt young men be well-grounded in those things? I cant think of anything more relevant for a young man trying to figure out his place in a completely unknown future than those stories.
I recommend Once and Future King the series. TH White. William Burroughs Mars books. William Gibson CyberPUnk A Sci Fi. Don't poo poo westerns by Louis Lamour. He was a stickler for authenticity. Dont be afraid to start w short stories. SAKI, have you ever read a collection of his short stories? OH MY GOD GOOD. Maupassant. O Henry.... Even Stephen King. Horror, Adventure, SF anthologies. Kurt Vonnegut. Pretty much any of the SF from the 1950s and 60s. Ask them what movies they like to watch and go from there to what might hook them. Boy cookies do tend to be different than girl cookies.
Don't dismiss all romance esp the thrillers like Mary Stewart's. Her hero's are complicated but the kind of men women want to fall in love with. That is of interest to young men. My husband liked reading historical romance by female authors when he was learning English. Perhaps why he chose a saucy, sassy heroine for his own romance?
If it has to be contemporary Why does it have to be fiction. My youngest was more into facts. Biographies have always been popular for boys for a reason. The Horrible History books for good readers at 11, 14 and up if they are newbies. There are some really good animal "biography" type of nonfiction. TH White wrote about taming a hawk. The Eagle Owl is also good.
At that age boys are tasked with what it means to be male and where they fit into those definitions. It takes 3k times th testosterone of a 30 year old man to turn our sweet babies into men. There is so much about teenaged girls being hormonal but no one really considers that steamrolling effect of testosterone. Girls may have to cope with bleeding, but boys have to cope with a body that now wants to fight, fuck and feed never mind what mind has to say. No wonder teenaged werewolves feel so right for boys.
They will read about the men they want to be when they grow up and how those role models got thru this terrifyingly exciting change into manhood. Why do you think boys today are so vulnerable to the manosphere? They have no initiation, no direction, and now not even schools value them. Excess males have always been expendable or what are wars for? Give them books that give them something to aspire to.

My children absolutely loved Horrible Histories, Geronimo Stilton and the rest, but while my daughters made the transition to full literary enjoyment naturally, my son had issues, and still (aged 21) does not read for pleasure.

 

[Aethalope]

There will be kids who enjoy diving deeper into a story to explore what the author meant.

However, they are likely to be readers already. For a significant proportion of the rest, reading itself is a skill that must first be learned. Not just decoding the letters on the page, but something as simple as following the character emotionally can also be a challenge.

I am reading novels with boys this age who have never read a novel before. They read the words on the page out loud, and can often identify literary devices because that's what they've learned at school using extracts, but they cannot explain why a character is behaving as certain way. It is almost like they haven't learnt that a fictional character can mirror their own inner world.

 

[wrightstuff]

There will be kids who enjoy diving deeper into a story to explore what the author meant.

However, they are likely to be readers already. For a significant proportion of the rest, reading itself is a skill that must first be learned. Not just decoding the letters on the page, but something as simple as following the character emotionally can also be a challenge.

I am reading novels with boys this age who have never read a novel before. They read the words on the page out loud, and can often identify literary devices because that's what they've learned at school using extracts, but they cannot explain why a character is behaving as certain way. It is almost like they haven't learnt that a fictional character can mirror their own inner world.

That sounds like a broader issue with empathy.

 

[Aethalope]

That sounds like a broader issue with empathy.

Something needs to teach it...

 

[Aethalope]

From my experience of literary criticism, it's not what the author meant, quite the opposite. It's about the readers interpretation of the text, what does it mean to them, how do they read it. And I don't mean 'close readings' as in identifying such things as metaphors or a similes, etc. although that can be part of the enjoyment, identifying them and interpretating them from your own perspective. Maybe if teaching children and young people could shift towards what early learners think and feel about a text, this might engage them, knowing that there's no right or wrong answers, it's about interpretation, that's true literary criticism to me. From my own academic journey of English Literature at BA, MA, and PhD level (I didn't do Eng Lit as a separate subject at school, only English which I did mediocre in and remember very little about) it about history, geography, psychology, sociology, science, basically every academic subject comes into literature and literary interpretations of texts.

This is all true, and it's probably different between Europe and Asia. But I think forcing a 10-year-old to interpret a text when it means nothing to them is going to teach them that reading is a chore.

 

[MattScho]

Given the extensive back stories and ongoing stories of so many game these days, and that is where a lot of boys in this demo are getting their story needs met, maybe someone should be teaching the games.
Added bonus, then they boys, in protest would start reading shakespeare!

 

[Aethalope]

Given the extensive back stories and ongoing stories of so many game these days, and that is where a lot of boys in this demo are getting their story needs met, maybe someone should be teaching the games.
Added bonus, then they boys, in protest would start reading shakespeare!

Games, absolutely. Red Dead Redemption 2 has insane character development and story. And all the anime, which they watch with subtitles, which is reading too.

But parents won't let them play games, watch anime or read manga because it's rubbish and does nothing for exams

 

[MattScho]

Turning point in my life, really. At 13, My Mom got a note from the lit teacher that I was doing either Dandy or Fantasically in our reading of A Tale of Two Cities. My take was that, really, please shut up. who needs it. Her point was that she'd bought two copies of the book, and lookie there, we had two chairs facing each other in living room. "Sit down and read chapter one, I will do the same. Then we will talk about it."
I admit, at the start I was convinced the point was to ruin a weekend. But by the time we were a third of the way through the forced reading march, I was in love with the story, and in love with the idea of reading something, then pausing to think and talk about what it means.
Now, from that point on, my lit grades were decidedly Average. but what actually mattered is that it was a major step on my way to what is now 40 years of getting paid to write stuff, and interpret what others write (rarely very good stuff, though it didn't used to be as horribly awful as what those still covering *r^mp read today).
Even so, I'm not sure Mom's method is scaleable. Worked a treat for me.

 

[Jake E]

Lots to unpack in this Guardian article. And yes, reading isn't fun when you're constantly yanked out to discuss the author's intention in their use of metaphor.

And this:



Who even writes for this demographic anymore? Outside of manga, anyway. I am teaching several boys in this age range, but am struggling to find contemporary work that speaks to them... if anyone has any recommendations, I am all ears.

‘Relentless’ focus on literacy undermines reading for pleasure, says report

New HarperCollins study finds that daily reading for pleasure among five- to 17-year-olds fell from 39% in 2012 to 25% in 2025

www.theguardian.com

There's a whole series of Halo novels that boys will absolutely destroy.
My brother is a non-reader and even he read the whole series.

The Witcher books are a little... R rated for children, even teens. Lots of SA and violence. Wouldn't recommend.

 

[RK Wallis]

Something needs to teach it...

This is what the pill/theme of my MG is, covered in sugar-coated fun.

A Tale of Two Cities.

I loved that book! I'm so stealing this idea What a clever mum!

Halo novels

even I read a few of those donkey years ago...

From birth, I read to my kids every night until I had from my stroke. Fast forward to today, my older two read constantly. With my youngest (whose 19 next month), I feared he wasn't exposed to reading as much as much as the other 2 (he was 5 when I had the stroke) and he didn't read much, as much as I tried to find what he liked.

In the past few months some magical moments birthed a voracious reader (I'm over the moon). Dungeon Crawler Karl happened. Instagram happened. A mindless job happened (he devours audiobooks at work, reads physical books on the train). I gave him access to my kindle and audible. Unfortunately, the books he's reading aren't for kids (he wants to read Crime and Punishment and The Count of Monte Cristo thanks to Instagram), but he liked Goosebumps, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and an Australian author Anh Do when younger.

Laura, do the kids not like Harry Potter?

 

[Aethalope]

Laura, do the kids not like Harry Potter?

No, they are not much interested in it. These guys liked Attack on Titan and Demonslayer, so Harry Potter might be a bit tame.

 

[Jake E]

No, they are not much interested in it. These guys liked Attack on Titan and Demonslayer, so Harry Potter might be a bit tame.

Full metal alchemist might be up their alley, then.

 

[Pamela Jo]

There will be kids who enjoy diving deeper into a story to explore what the author meant.

However, they are likely to be readers already. For a significant proportion of the rest, reading itself is a skill that must first be learned. Not just decoding the letters on the page, but something as simple as following the character emotionally can also be a challenge.

I am reading novels with boys this age who have never read a novel before. They read the words on the page out loud, and can often identify literary devices because that's what they've learned at school using extracts, but they cannot explain why a character is behaving as certain way. It is almost like they haven't learnt that a fictional character can mirror their own inner world.

That could be a lack of fluency. This sounds like what Visualising and Verbalising is for.