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Do People Read Anymore? Can They?

Discussion in 'Education & Learning' started by Ken Anderson, Oct 18, 2024.

  1. Vada Bloom

    Vada Bloom Very Well-Known Member
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    I wonder how many young parents read to their kids before bed in this age of tech. We read to ours every night but we didn't have computers and iPhones then.
     
    #16
  2. Marie Mallery

    Marie Mallery Veteran Member
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    Closest thing to a book club for me was Readers Digest subscription. :) but I did use library and some books I bought.
    Most of my book reading was when kids were in school. Or in bed when they were asleep.
     
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  3. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I don't know if you have watched the two videos I opened this thread with. If you have or haven't, what do you think about recent generations' reading abilities or habits? Do you get the feeling that the last few generations read as much as our generations have? If not, why?
     
    #18
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  4. Marie Mallery

    Marie Mallery Veteran Member
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    My son learned a lot in the Navy. He did very well has all kinds of awards. Sailor of the quarter, sailor of the year, they put his photo over the captains' quarters. Sent me a letter but since my memory is getting bad, I forgot the title. Things I should remember but don't scares me lately.
     
    #19
  5. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    I suspect that younger generations do not read as much. Too many electronic devices competing for their attention. We didn't have all the gizmos so books were our windows on the world.
     
    #20
  6. Marie Mallery

    Marie Mallery Veteran Member
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    I'm watching the rest of them now.
     
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  7. Kate Ellery

    Kate Ellery Supreme Member
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    I left school at 14 during the December school holidays, and as I turned 15 in early February before school started again, so I left barely able to read/ write due to having to stay home so much to take care of my 7 younger siblings ,due to my mothers drinking

    I bought comics …and love story books …they were little thin books I could hide in my mattress so they wouldn’t be thrown out .
    or torn up by the younger siblings .

    I Eventually taught my self how to read well ..by the time I was 16 …. and now days I’d rather go to bed early in the cold months and read ( mainly weekly magazines that also have a lot of puzzles ) rather then watch TV

    The mags I buy from time to time

    IMG_7388.jpeg
     
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  8. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    While parents can undoubtedly play a substantial role in encouraging their children to appreciate reading (my mother was an avid reader and advocated for my book club membership when dad would have just suggested the bookmobile), children are still individuals, as evidenced by the fact that three of my four brothers weren't so interested in reading for pleasure, although certainly capable of it. Although I raised my son, whom I adopted at the age of 7, until he was 20, he was never particularly interested in reading. For that matter, I had one of the early computers while he was with me and bought him an Atari when they were first put out on the market; he doesn't use a computer and uses his phone only for making phone calls and texting. As the videos in the OP suggest, the school system itself is part of the reason people don't read today, and that differs from individual preferences. However, individual choices still make a difference. My grandson, who is, I think, 19 or 20 now, has always been a voracious reader, as was his mother.
     
    #23
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  9. Marie Mallery

    Marie Mallery Veteran Member
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    The schools no longer care as much about teaching as they do about indoctrinating. We let the politicians decide what our kids will learn and not learn. Like Erickson said, Common Core and other studies DEi ,etc, are studies to make group speak instead of individualism and basic study for improving the life of the student in most schools and universities.
     
    #24
  10. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I used to read all the time. When I was a kid it was books, Popular Science, and MAD Magazine. I was a voracious reader most of my adult life, but at some point I just stopped, except for magazines (The Economist, Foreign Affairs, etc)

    I think that reading not only expands your vocabulary, it reinforces spelling and grammar.
     
    #25
  11. Jacob Petersheim

    Jacob Petersheim Very Well-Known Member
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    I think a large sheaf of changes have impacted populations. Reading ability, focus on tasks may just be a couple of visible symptoms.

    Changes in diet. Both moves to ill-advised industrially processed products and pantry globalization probably both hurt. Look at "food allergies" and "autism" and on and on. Some populations evolved to digest dairy and others have not. The same with wheat and "exotics" like avocado just to name a couple. Some can't nuts. Or shellfish. And those are just the ones unsubtle enough that we can't miss them. How many "foods" are quietly making us dumber?

    Then you have rapid (on the natural human migration timescale) genetic intermixing. No telling the impact of large "shuffles" occurring rapidly. We probably experienced this for good or for ill long ago too. The evidence for mixing and shuffling of human sub-species seems to grow every day. But over long timescales "bad" combinations got weeded out without catastrophe (much of the time). Are we trundling downhill rapidly today from the much higher rate of uncontrolled mixing?

    Ok, that sounds bad... I just put it out there.

    Then there is the matter of cultural changes and what's most highly valued. Along with educational "hula hoops" like fads for teaching reading (in the videos), arithmetic, and who knows what else?

    Or delayed pregnancies that use the less "fresh" eggs left late in reproductive life, IVF diddling with chemicals and hormones to force fertilization, and carrying children in geriatric wombs?

    Environmental factors, like food and water carrying chemicals that mimic fertility and development hormones.
     
    #26
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  12. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    We did not have all these "screens" when we were growing up. TV had 3 channels and did not air 7x24x365. There were no computers. There was no internet. So not only were there fewer distractions from books, but reading was superior to watching the limited offering.

    I used to watch my neighbor's two home-schooled boys when the parents had a date night. I won't go through examples of how damned smart those kids were, but one big reason was they were limited to one hour of "screen time" per day (television, video games, internet, etc.) Everything they learned they got from a book, and reading was almost their exclusive past time.
     
    #27
  13. Vada Bloom

    Vada Bloom Very Well-Known Member
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    This past week the library board of trustees voted to close a branch of the public library. The reason given was that this branch was in rented space. There are other branches of course but not convenient for that neighborhood and it's disappointing. The people affected by the closure showed up to protest, complete with signs and angry voices but it did no good. I'm interested in seeing if anything can be done to reopen it. It's in an area where I have considered relocating.
     
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  14. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Our local library is far busier now than when the town government operated it, but books are a small part of its activities. Slated for closure by the town, it was taken over by volunteers, who expanded and renovated the building. They offer computer access, a host of programs throughout the day and some at night, and free spaces for meetings and other things.

    The recovery program that I facilitate on Mondays is held in the library, which includes all of the necessary furniture, a big-screen television, computer, and Internet access for those who join the meeting via Zoom. We take up a collection and donate it to the library each month, but they haven't asked for it, and it's certainly not required. In small rooms downstairs, other groups reserve space for different meetings, and someone uses one of the smaller rooms to do a podcast.

    They also have a large room with comfortable furniture set aside for teens during the summer, with occasional night schedules. I don't know whether kids use that because it's set off from the hallway, and I have never had a reason to go there. I have been in the room because I am usually the only person in the library when setting up before our recovery meeting; I have a key. Of course, there is also a computer room, and I see people using the computers whenever I visit the library.

    Under volunteer operations, they are open from 10 am to 4 pm on Saturdays, while the town did not have weekend hours when they ran it. Plus, everyone is much friendlier than the grumpy librarian the town had employed.

    However, the book section of the library is much smaller than it used to be. Except for the teen space, the basement is all meeting spaces now, whereas that used to be the children's section of the library and roughly half of the upstairs is taken up with other things now, so the book section of the library is about one-fourth of what it used to be, and I rarely see anyone looking at the books. I don't hang out in the library for long periods, but I don't think that very many people use it to borrow books anymore.

    It's still called a library but it's more of a community center.
     
    #29
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2024
  15. Jacob Petersheim

    Jacob Petersheim Very Well-Known Member
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    We had a county-level takeover of local libraries over a decade ago.

    Our own local library moved, has few books now, got rid of DVDs, has mostly become study desks for school kids using the WiFi. There is one public meeting room for 50 people, but local knitting squatters seem to have it reserved from here to eternity.

    You rarely see anybody else bothering to go in any more except when it is open as a polling place for some elections. It's all old ladies with wheeled walkers and large sacks in them hobbling in and out today.

    My guess is that they used to dominate the Senior Center, but that closed down.

    It's sad. Public services seem to be turning into the Eloi Sphinx from H. G. Wells' "Time Machine."
     
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