On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:51 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> I have no hard data, but my impression is that the population of students
> who would be likely to read are the exact same population that are college
> bound and therefore mired in lots of A.P. classes, extracurricular
> activities, and lots of homework, which seriously cuts down on leisure time.
>
> When I was in high school (second best academic high school in L.A. from 69
> to 71 (I skipped a half a grade), in my junior year, I took one AP class; in
> my senior year I took two AP classes. this was considered hot shit back
> then. Kids are now routinely taking four A.P. classes a year. And these are
> not the type of A.P. classes I was taking; they're all like cram fests. It's
> really quite, quite horrible.
>
> You see, education is being destroyed on both ends: for the inner city kids
> it's drill and kill; for the upward bound it's A.P. drill and kill. The
> result is that most kids come to really hate school and what passes for
> "learning."
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeffrey Fisher" <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2011 6:25:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?
>
> On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > 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
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