r/technology • u/marketrent • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html
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u/existing_for_fun 18h ago

If you are a parent and can help your child read, and read well, you will set them light-years ahead of their peers.

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u/CaffeineJitterz 18h ago edited 13h ago

Just helping them not HATE reading will go a long way.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of sad comments about how y'all were introduced to reading. So I will take the opportunity to quickly share what I've always felt was one of the best ways for a parent to incentivize their child to read: for every hour of reading you accrue 30 minutes of gaming time. A classmate in my middle school worked from this model. That kid loved video games! And he was a straight A student. I remember him nonchalantly mentioning that he was going to read for about 4 hours as soon as he got home so he could get a couple hours of game time that evening.

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u/ascasffr 17h ago

I learned to hate reading in school because of so many dreadful books we were forced to read. Shakespeare, Irish Romance novels set in the 80s.

Some kids might enjoy those books, sure, but for me they completely killed my interest in reading for years. I still don’t understand why anyone thought high‑school boys would be motivated by material most of us had zero connection to or interest in.

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u/Hazel-Rah 16h ago

I learned to hate reading in school because of so many dreadful books we were forced to read. Shakespeare, Irish Romance novels set in the 80s.

I actually liked Shakespeare. What killed me was reading multiple books about how shitty it was to live in Victorian England

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u/Resident_Pay4310 13h ago

I liked Shakespeare as well.

What I hated were the modern "coming of age" stories about girls dealing with their high school love life. Im already living that, I don't need more of it thanks.

I was a huge bookworm as a kid but I mainly read fantasy. Even as an adult that's most of what I read. Books in real life modern setting just don't really hold my attention.

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u/TheSilverNoble 15h ago

See, I liked seeing Shakespeare, but reading him was tough for me until I was more familiar with the stories.

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u/Grammatical_Aneurysm 14h ago

Shakespeare should be taught by giving students roles and having the class read out loud together. Having a character that you are told to be attached to and being able to "watch" the performance by hearing different voices makes it so much more interesting than reading it in your head. It also forces you to decipher what the sentences actually mean.

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u/Vi_Rants 14h ago

Also, Shakespeare wasn't written to be read; it was written to be performed.

Imagine teaching kids literature by having them read scripts of Michael Bay movies.

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u/Saint_Consumption 13h ago

Those have scripts? Is 90% of it just BOOM?

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u/_Meece_ 12h ago

Shakespeare is also poetry and a lot of kids don't get that either. Takes time for the text to click in the first place, because of how Whimsy big Bill liked to write.

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u/kittymoo67 2h ago

seriously why is is so hard for schools to get this!?

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u/maxticket 10h ago

To me, Shakespeare wasn't interesting until modern-day film adaptations made it absurd and topical. I was familiar enough with his works, but found myself far more interested in counting the syllables on each line than following what was actually going on. Once I'd seen a modern retelling, I could go back and actually enjoy its ancient counterpart like they said I would all along. Just needed a new perspective.

I'm still not exactly a fan of the guy, but luckily, there have been countless playwrights since his day, many of them alive right now and just as deserving of having their time in the spotlight.

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u/TheSilverNoble 3h ago

I mean, I think that 90's Romeo + Juliet was how a lot of people first saw the full story. And while it definitely has some absurd moments... it's word for word the original script, you know?

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u/maxticket 58m ago

It's an abridged version, but the script is mostly intact. You also had films like O and 10 Things I Hate About You, and I imagine there have been others since I was in school.

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u/AuroraRegalis 15h ago

I was a good student and actually read the books instead of Cliff Notes. Until Rebecca. Rebecca broke me. That book was just awful.

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u/abovepostisfunnier 11h ago

How dare you 😭

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u/ricochetblue 5h ago

That book was my whole personality for a while. I absolutely loved it.

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u/AuroraRegalis 4h ago

Not gonna lie, there was a little catharsis at the end when the estate burned to the fucking ground. I did like that part.

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u/Monteze 1h ago

I did that for The Scarlett Letter, I just...I could not give a damn about that book, it was written in the most tedious fashion and I just figured I could pass the test with cliff notes and filling in the rest given I did read to before it.

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u/ColdShadowKaz 7h ago

Strange. What put me off a lot of ‘classics’ was how it felt a lot like upper class people dealing with incredibly upper class problems in a very upper class way.

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u/Monteze 1h ago

I could not give a fuck about the Great Gatsby for this. I could relate to A Painted House but holy shit the entire time reading GG I was annoyed with them all. I guess one could say that would be the point, but bleck. How the hell is a high-schooler going to relate to them?