Not great expectations: Students are reading fewer books in English class

Chris Stanislavsky didn’t read much in his middle school English classes, but it never felt necessary. Students were given detailed chapter summaries for each novel they discussed, and teachers played audio of the books during class.

She said most of the reading materials at Garden City Middle School on Long Island were either abbreviated books, or online texts and printouts.

“When you’re given a book summary that tells you what you’re going to read as a kid, it kind of ruins the whole story for you,” said Chris, 14. “Like, what’s the point of actually reading?”

In many English classes across the US, full-length novel reading assignments are becoming less common. Some teachers focus on selected excerpts instead — a concession to perceptions of short attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare students for the modern, digital world.

The National Council of Teachers of English acknowledged this shift in a 2022 statement on media education, stating: “The time has come to set aside book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacle of English language arts education.”

Seth French, one of the statement’s co-authors, said the idea is not to remove books but to teach media literacy and add other texts that are relevant to students. In the English class he taught before becoming dean at Bentonville High School in Arkansas last year, students engaged with plays, poetry and articles but read only one book together as a class.

“Ultimately, many of our students are not interested in some of these textbooks because they had no choice,” he said.

The emphasis on short, digital lessons may not appeal to everyone.

Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in dyslexia research at UCLA, said intensive study is essential for strengthening circuits in the brain associated with critical thinking skills, background knowledge — and most of all, empathy.

“We need to give our young people the opportunity to understand who others are, not through small pictures, but through immersion in the lives, thoughts and feelings of others,” Wolf said.

At Garden City Middle School, students are required to read several books in their entirety each year, including “Of Mice and Men” and “Romeo and Juliet,” Principal Matthew Samuelson said, adding that audio versions and summaries are provided as additional resources.

Chris, who has dyslexia, did not find the audio easy to read. He just felt bored. He enrolled in Catholic school this fall, which his mother thinks will better prepare him for college. Students are reading less outside of school as well

There is little data available on how many books are provided by schools. But in general, students are reading less. Last year’s federal data show that only 14% of young teens say they read for fun every day, down from 27% in 2012.

Teachers say the COVID-19 crisis is at the root of this decline.

“When COVID hit, there was a trend to stop reading full-length novels because students were in shock; we were in a pandemic. The problem is, we haven’t fully recovered from that,” said Christy Acevedo, who teaches English at a vocational high school in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

This year, she said she won’t accept that students are too busy to study. She plans to teach time management strategies and use only paper and pencil for most of the class time.

Other educators say the trend stems from the influence of standardized testing and education technology. Digital platforms can provide an entire English curriculum, including thousands of short passages aligned to state standards — and all without ever having to hand over an actual book.

“If administrators and school districts are judged by their test scores, how are they going to improve their test scores? They’re going to repeat the test as much as possible,” said Carl Uebelhoer, a middle school special education teacher in Tabernacle, New Jersey.

For some students, reading is not difficult at all. In the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about a third of fourth- and eighth-grade students reached reading proficiency, a significant drop from 2019.

Leah Van Belle, a literacy advocate in Detroit, said that when her son read “Peter Pan” in his final years of elementary school, it was too difficult for most of the children in the class. She laments that Detroit feels like a “book desert.” Her son’s school doesn’t even have a library.

Still, he said it is advisable for English classes to focus on shorter lessons.

“As an adult, if I want to learn about and research a topic, whether personal or professional, I use interactive digital texts to do so,” she said. Teachers also fit books with other ‘rotating plates’

Even well-resourced schools have one thing they’re always short on: time.

Terry White, a teacher at South Windsor High School in Connecticut, no longer lets her ninth-grade English class read “To Kill a Mockingbird” in its entirety. She gives about a third of the book and a summary of the rest. She said teachers have to move quickly because of pressure to add more material to the curriculum.

“It’s like spinning plates, you know what I mean? Like it’s a circus,” he said.

She also assigns less homework, since the kids’ schedules are packed with sports, clubs and other activities.

“I maintain rigor. But I also want to help students become stronger and more critical readers, writers, and thinkers, while also taking into account their social-emotional well-being,” she said.

Alden Jones, a professor of literature at Emerson College in Boston, said that in the long run, the summary approach hurts students’ critical thinking skills. She assigns fewer books than before and gives more quizzes to ensure students understand what they’ve read.

He said, “We no longer value the time we used to spend in thinking. This is the time we could have spent on our phones to get our work done.”

Will Higgins, an English teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts, said he still believes in teaching classical literature, but that demands on students’ time have made it necessary to cut back.

“We haven’t given up on ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ We haven’t given up on ‘Hamlet’ or ‘The Great Gatsby,’” Higgins said, but he said he has given up on assigning other films, such as “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Her school has found success in encouraging reading through student-directed book clubs, where small groups choose a book and discuss it together. Contemporary authors such as John Green and Jason Reynolds have been very popular.

“It’s fun,” he said. “Many students are saying this is the first time in a long time they’ve read the whole book.”

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