The education system teaches students to hate reading

[Sunseeker]

Get audio books instead of print books.

How does that help with their reading skills?

[Fang7986]

How does that help with their reading skills?

kinda defeats the whole purpose of learning to read to

[Adam Jensen]

How would you solve this problem? Should students stopped being forced to read the "classics"?

That'd be a start. For one thing, Absalom Absalom isn't a classic. It's torture, plain and simple. Faulkner should have been tried for crimes against humanity for writing that book.

I read that book in AP English. Or tried to anyways. First sentence in the book lasted AN ENTIRE PAGE. It was unreadable. By the time you got to the period, you forgot what the subject of the goddamn sentence was. I swear to god, it was like pounding my head against a brick wall reading that book. I think, for a 300+ page book, Faulkner wrote maybe three sentences total, each a hundred thousand words long.

Goddamn, its been ten years and I'm still not over how much I hate this stupid shitty book and William Faulkner's fucking face.

[Fang7986]

I will echo the "learn to read at home" sentiment that a few others have brought up. I absolutely hated reading in school but it was more because I was reading at an adult level before I was 10. The have kids take turns reading aloud was torture for me because I could read faster than anyone else in the class so I would be pages ahead of everyone else. And since my reading level was higher I hated the books the school had us read. Try reading a book aimed at 10 year olds when you had read The Lord of the Rings and the Clan of the Cave Bear books before you were 12.

[unfilteredJW]

I will echo the "learn to read at home" sentiment that a few others have brought up. I absolutely hated reading in school but it was more because I was reading at an adult level before I was 10. The have kids take turns reading aloud was torture for me because I could read faster than anyone else in the class so I would be pages ahead of everyone else. And since my reading level was higher I hated the books the school had us read. Try reading a book aimed at 10 year olds when you had read The Lord of the Rings and the Clan of the Cave Bear books before you were 12.

This.

I picked up my first book (Book One of the Elven Nations trilogy) when I was in third grade. My mother had been reading to me since I was an infant, and slowly I tore through what I liked. I still remember the day she brought me to a book store for the first time and said "Go pick out what you want." I still have that book.

[Zafire]

Grapes of Wrath, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird; I hated these books, cliffnotes was like the goto for the trash. But there were some I enjoyed such as Of Mice and Men and Fahrenheit 451 really captured my interest. But seriously Grapes of Wrath is like the longest piece of boring I was ever told to read in school. Also that book about the sign with eyes on it.. its famous but don't recall the name. It was terrible. High School has so much bad book requirements that I wouldn't blame people for dislike reading. However I do enjoy it, just personally I have read Shogun at least five times and Jurassic Park twice, Timeline twice.. books are amazing hands down if anyone hasn't read Villains by Necessity you are missing out on a literary masterpiece.

Oh hey, I thought I was the only one who legitimately liked Of Mice and Men in school.

Actually, I've never understood why kids at schools are forced to read classics. Most of them forget everything they've read the day after the exam/test anyway. Very few read classics with live interest, most just want to get it done and get a good grade. Although this problem applies not only to the literature, but to pretty much everything in the modern education.

I think the whole education system should be tuned to develop kids' talents and help them get better at what they are interested in. Instead, we have a huge program that is forced upon everyone, allowing only slight variety of courses by the later years. By the time kids graduate and choose what to do with their life, they often do not care about anything and just want some easy job and stable income, and only the desire to live better materially pushes people to work hard on their career, not passion.

I agree with this, by the time highschool hits you should be able to prioritize what you want to potentially have a career in.

[Ave07]

We should stop reading Anne Frank's diary and read Mein Kampf instead.

[Illuminance]

I'd support this. Mein Kampf is a work of historical significance

*At least adding it to the curriculum, not replacing Anne Frank altogether

[Elim Garak]

As a kid I read more off-school books than I read school proposed books. It didn't do me good in terms of marks for literature, but it improved my vocabulary and understanding of the world, which in my opinion was much much better than stupid marks in school. I read mostly Sci-fi/Fantasy

[prwraith]

I've yet to see evidence that it's a problem in the first place.

You've yet to see evidence that hating to read is a problem. How do you need to see evidence of something so readily apparent.

[Elim Garak]

You've yet to see evidence that hating to read is a problem. How do you need to see evidence of something so readily apparent.

If you have a better method of absorbing the book material it is ok to hate the archaic reading.

[prwraith]

That'd be a start. For one thing, Absalom Absalom isn't a classic. It's torture, plain and simple. Faulkner should have been tried for crimes against humanity for writing that book.

I read that book in AP English. Or tried to anyways. First sentence in the book lasted AN ENTIRE PAGE. It was unreadable. By the time you got to the period, you forgot what the subject of the goddamn sentence was. I swear to god, it was like pounding my head against a brick wall reading that book. I think, for a 300+ page book, Faulkner wrote maybe three sentences total, each a hundred thousand words long.

Goddamn, its been ten years and I'm still not over how much I hate this stupid shitty book and William Faulkner's fucking face.

I don't think kids should be forced to read classics. Make them read something interesting and modern in a genre they like and slowly step up the language until they can really grasp language.

- - - Updated - - -

If you have a better method of absorbing the book material it is ok to hate the archaic reading.

Well if you can download a book into your brain sure. But audiobooks lose the flavor of the book. It's like saying you know how to use a calculator ergo you don't need to know what you're actually doing when multiplying two numbers.

[Alydael]

To me, there was always two types of reading. Reading I did for enjoyment and the reading I had to do to improve my skills, profession, w/e.

You have to have the skills to do both. It is easy to read something you enjoy.

To be able to successfully read something that is a bit dry, but is teaching you technical skills is another thing all together.

Students have to be able to do both. If you only let students read what they want to, when they get to work and have to read a "dry" text for the first time, how will they fare?

[Elim Garak]

But audiobooks lose the flavor of the book.

That's like your personal preference and a subjective opinion. We are not talking about you here. Audio material is absorbed better than text, because it's more natural and doesn't require the (acquired) reading skill.

[alduron]

I actually like the "classics", at least for the most part; what I HATE is having to pick apart every little thing in the story rather than just being allowed to enjoy it.

[Deathquoi]

I never understood why the curriculum for literature classes wasn't broken up between the classics and student choice. Why are literature classes in high school more or less solely focused on books written 100-300 years ago? Why not build a few projects around books that students choose themselves?

To be honest, I rarely read anything I was supposed to in high school or college. Could not get through shit like The Scarlet Letter or Wuthering Heights. If I had to write a paper on a book, I used a combination of Sparknotes and skimming. I still managed to get As so whatever.

[Super Kami Dende]

I've always known how to read fairly well since about the age of 4. Yet got so bored of the "curriculum" books.

Give kids Deltora's Quest or Dragonlance. That will get them reading.

[Adam Jensen]

We should stop reading Anne Frank's diary and read Mein Kampf instead.

I think Mein Kampf would be fascinating to read. Not that I agree with Hitler's ideology, I find him and his beliefs very repulsive, but because I've always wondered how a twisted man's mind works.

[Elim Garak]

I never understood why the curriculum for literature classes wasn't broken up between the classics and student choice. Why are literature classes in high school more or less solely focused on books written 100-300 years ago? Why not build a few projects around books that students choose themselves?

Because:
A. Teachers and Ministry of Education guys have read those books when they were students.
B. If you have 30 students per class and most of them select different books and you teach more than one class... and you haven't read the books they chose...
C. It's not about teaching. it's about meeting the requirements.

There's just no need for Literature classes in curriculum. At all. Teach them how to read and then tell them there are billions of books to read and live it at that.

[Deleted]

I think its often a case of teachers often not understanding why you need to be introduced to classics and therefor teach them in a bad way. Classics give insight into our human history and is very important for us to understand so should be taught, however you shouldn't "endure" full books on this, since its way more than is needed. Just samples from them.

Also its very hard to make a curriculum based on your individual choice if you want to create a standard test