> I don't disagree that reading is good. And my anecdotal experience is with
> students who resist reading. So all of that I am on board with. Where I am
> struggling is in ascertaining to what extent "kids these days" *read less*than "kids [say] twenty years ago."
>
As a side note, the DO seem to have worse vocabularies, but again this might be a matter of where I'm teaching now, as opposed to where I was teaching 15 years ago . . .
Anyway, continuing my quest for data on reading rates, I found the following blog post on the topic from a Toronto academic: http://gamineexpedition.blogspot.com/2010/11/kids-teens-and-reading-for-fun.html
She notes several items, including the KFF study I linked above, but she also points to a very interesting 2008 Newsweek article<http://www.newsweek.com/2008/05/13/generation-r-r-is-for-reader.html>which argues that teen/Young Adult reading is actually in the midst of a boom, brought on perhaps by Harry Potter, but not reducible to the little mug (not to say, muggle, don't'cha know). One could hope for harder data from them, but it at least starts to paint a picture along the lines of what I have been thinking, which is that there still are lots and lots of teens who read a fair bit, and they read fiction, not just their textbooks.
Although, on that most dubious of topics, I note that in 2009 textbook growth was way up over basically everything else. What a frickin racket.
j