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Survey: Homework, 'other things' keep kids from reading

Comment by LeBoeuf (at USA Today site): Haleifreakinlujah! It's about time someone realized this. When I was in school, we had so much boring homework that it made me sick to read another book for fun ever again. I took me 10 years out of high school to read my first book for fun.

Comment by webba: My son hates to read and it kills me, because everyone else in the family loves to read. Yet when I ask him why he doesn't want to, he answers that the books the teacher gives him are "too boring." Also, he has to complete a "reading log" EVERY DAY to take to school for homework. He's supposed to read twenty minutes out of books the teacher chooses for him. While I applaud the encouragement of kids to read, the minute you make it an assignment, it becomes one more chore and unless the kid loves to read anyway, a kid who might be on the fence will pan it in a heartbeat, especially when they're not into the subject material. My son is assigned mostly fiction, but he'd rather read about planets.

Comment by Stephen Krashen: I find it ironic that Scholastic's website offers a visual presentation of a summary of the report. Lower down on the page they give you the option of downloading the report and actually reading it. Also ironic: Scholastic's researchers, it seems, didn't do much reading: There is no bibliography, no mention of previous surveys.

Ohanian Note: On the Scholastic site, one must click through three screens to get to the report itself, which is a pdf file.

By Greg Toppo

Many children in the USA are too busy, too distracted and, in some cases, too tired to read books for fun, a new survey finds, suggesting that schoolwork, homework and the inability to find a book they like may keep them from regularly digging into more than required reading.

The findings, to be released today by children's publisher Scholastic, echo those of the National Endowment for the Arts, which reported last year that, from 1984 to 2004, the percentage of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly ever" read for fun rose from 9% to 19%.

The new survey finds that, on average, one in four children read for fun every day and another 40% read for fun at least a few times a week — but 22% rarely, if ever, do. And as kids get older, it finds, the percentage who rarely read for fun grows from 8% to 37%.

But Internet use may not necessarily be the culprit. In fact, kids in the survey who are "high frequency" Internet users are more likely to read books for fun every day. And the survey finds that 75% of kids say that they'll always want to read books printed on paper, "no matter what I can do online."

About one in four say they "have trouble finding books that I like," a breathtaking admission in the age of chain bookstores, librarians' blogs and blockbuster children's series such as Harry Potter. (Scholastic is the series's U.S. publisher.)

"There are millions of books out there," says Kristen Harmeling, a researcher at Yankelovich, the research firm that conducted the survey. "But finding the right book for the right kid at the right time, that's the challenge."

The survey also finds that children age 9 or older don't see much difference between reading a book and reading online.

"Kids don't have that vision" of the Internet as detracting from books, Harmeling says. "They see them as supplementing each other."

In fact, nearly two-thirds say they have trawled the Internet for information on a book or author, visited fan websites or written an online book review.

But in the survey of 501 children ages 5-17 and their parents, which took place last winter in 25 major cities, kids give several reasons why they don't read for fun, including:

•31% "would rather do other things."

•27% "have too much schoolwork and homework."

•19% "read other things like magazines, newspapers or online articles" or "already read enough books"

•18% "don't have time to read."

•14% say "I'm often too tired."

To John Hutton, co-owner of Blue Manatee Children's Bookstore in Cincinnati, the findings aren't surprising. They suggest that children need more unstructured playtime and less screen time, either in front of the TV or on the Internet.

"Kids are really stressed and overstructured," he says.

Hutton, himself a pediatric resident at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, says parents are crunched for time, too, and reading to children "is often the only one-on-one downtime that parents will see with their kids."

Hutton says he and his wife restrict the amount of time their three children spend online and watching TV, and they won't let them have computers or TVs in their bedrooms.

"A little boredom," he says, "is a good thing." NTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE

Where kids get ideas for books to read for fun:



• Mom: 65%
• Friends: 61%
• Teachers: 57%
• Library/librarian: 48%
• Dad: 43%
• Bookstore or other store: 41%
• School book fair: 40%
• TV shows: 34%
• Internet: 32%
• Grandparents: 31%
• Brother/sister: 28%
• Others in family: 28%
• School book clubs/order forms: 28%
• Magazines/newspapers: 27%
• None of the above: 2%


Source: 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report, Scholastic[pdf]

— Greg Toppo
USA Today
2008-06-11
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-06-10-kids-reading_N.htm

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