Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

...Shouldn't schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn't the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students' hands? Shouldn't this be a front-burner issue at all times?

I am not simply teaching the reading; I am teaching the reader.

To become a lifelong reader, one has to do a lot of varied and interesting reading.

What do teachers and curriculum directors mean by 'value' reading? A look at the practice of most schools suggests that when a school 'values' reading what it really means is that the school intensely focuses on raising state-mandated reading test scores- the kind of reading our students will rarely, if ever, do in adulthood.

Both of these students- both high school seniors both old enough to vote in the upcoming election- thought 'Al' Qaeda was a person. At that time the United States had been at war for five and a half years and here were two students two young adults leaving the educational system who had never heard of al Qaeda. Both by the way had passed the multiple-choice reading section of the state's high school exit exam.

WYTIWYG” (pronounced “witty-wig”): What You Test Is What You Get.

The sheer number of standards is the biggest impediment to implementing standards

Authentic interest is generated when students are given the opportunity to delve deeply into an interesting idea.

Valuing reading” is often a euphemism for preparing students to pass mandated multiple-choice exams, and in dragging students down this path, schools are largely contributing to the development of readicide.

What do we mean when we say our school 'values' reading?

Clearly, if we want students to perform well on standardized reading tests, our top priority should not be on narrowing students into a test-prep curriculum; our focus should be on providing our students with the widest reading experiences possible.

I am not against teaching students how to take a test. Indeed, we want all of our students to have test-taking knowledge. However, the emphasis of teaching reading through the lens of preparing students for state-mandated tests has become so completely unbalanced that it is drowning any chance our adolescents have of developing into lifelong readers.

...read books through the lens of life preparation.

How did the Finns build the best readers in the world? By eliminating standardized testing and emphasizing the importance of reading and critical thinking, by nurturing deeper thinking and creativity, and by leading their students away from the drill-and-kill instructional approach that is currently permeating American schools.