From a blog post by Joanne Jacobs.
When I was in school in the ’60s, we read Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Canterbury Tales, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Main Street, Of Mice and Men, Native Son, The Invisible Man, Old Man and the Sea, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Animal Farm and a whole lot of Shakespeare (plays and sonnets), as well as classic short stories, poetry and essays.
Not any more.
Nowadays, many students rarely read full-length novels, reports AP’s Sharon Lurye. Teachers assign excerpts, “a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare students for the modern, digital world.”
In a 2022 statement, the National Council of Teachers of English declared: “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Instead, teachers are urged to focus on “media literacy” and short texts that students feel are “relevant.”
Deep reading builds “critical thinking skills, background knowledge and, most of all, empathy,” said UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf told Lurye. “We must give our young an opportunity to understand who others are, not through little snapshots, but through immersion into the lives and thoughts and feelings of others,” Wolf said.
+++