An Alarming Reading Trend

I’m worried.

I don’t want to be, but I am. 

Partly, this is the fault of who I am. I tend more towards the cautious side. Partly, this is the fault of cold pitiless numbers. In this instance, there are specific numbers to which I refer.

 9,000
 11,000
 9,700
 8,000
 6,000

See what I mean? Ah no. Wait. It’s unlikely you do for I haven’t put them into any context. Here’s how I should have posted them.

Physical books checked out of our school library. (Numbers are rounded.)

4 years ago: 9,000
3 years ago: 11,000
2 years ago: 9,700
1 year ago: 8,000
Current year: 6,000

Have these numbers tickled your curious side? Or, like me, do they skip the curiosity phase and go straight to alarming you?

Not alarmed? Eh, interesting. 

Is it because you noticed the use of the words “physical books” to describe the circulation numbers and figure the picture isn’t complete because our school provides electronic versions of books to be checked out by students? Well, you get a gold star for noticing. We do indeed provide electronic copies to our students. 

Here is the rounded number for electronic copies checked out this school year: 1,800.

Using a high-powered calculator, we come to an adjusted number for this school year of 7,800. The revised list should look like this. [NOTE: I did not pull the number of electronic copies for any previous years as this is a relatively new offering for our students.]

4 years ago: 9,000
3 years ago: 11,000
2 years ago: 9,700
1 year ago: 8,000
Current year: 7,800

On the surface, 7,800 doesn’t appear all too bad. It reflects a small drop-off from the previous year, at the very least and maybe reflects the adjustment phase as we transfer over from physical to electronic reading. But that’s the problem with surfaces, they too often hide a reality beneath them; and, in this case, we’re talking about the difference between solid oak and oak veneer.

Students checked out 1,800 electronic books this year. It seems solid. Seems. 

Our electronic book library come with a nifty computer program that lets us see a whole swath of things: who checked out what, which books are most popular in a month, how many minutes a student spent with a book open, how many pages they viewed, and so on, and on, and on. 

The program allowed me to ballpark how many of those 1,800 checked out books were actual titles checked out versus those which were the same title checked out by the same students over several periods. The new number drops closer to 730. A big difference. 

Of those 730 or so actual checked out titles, it appears as if only 40-50 were read in full. That’s the data I care about; the data I worry about.

Of the 1,800 books checked out, only 40-50 of them show as having been read in full. And, this is with me being rather lenient and giving credit for books close to done because I don’t know how many blank, filler, author biography, first chapters of other books, etc. are along with a title. Another wrinkle is that swiping through pages and/or skipping to the end of a digital copy registers as completed in the computer program. We do have the ability to see minutes read and could try and match those to pages read, but that’s a task I’m unwilling to tackle this Saturday morning. Suffice it to write, 40-50 may not even be a true picture of what was read electronically. The same principal applies to the physical books too. Just because they were checked out doesn’t mean they were read in full. 

If that caveat isn’t enough to question the solidity of that number, then consider that a large number of these “read” books were checked out for books clubs or whole class activities and were what I think of as forced checkouts: they were for class, not for idle enjoyment. The same applies to the physical copies that left the library. Many were for book club or whole class assignments and not necessarily for enjoyment reading. This stipulation applies to any previous year too, of course, which does nothing to change the trend. It’s moving down, not up.

Because I can only conjecture on who actually read what was checked out, I won’t lower that 4-50 total. However, it is one to be taken very lightly at best. Here’s the revised total for the current school year.

Current year: 6,050

Not as hopeful. 

It did manage to get the physical circulation numbers for the grade above ours, grade 7, for the last two years. Here are those.

2015-2016 school year 5,500 books circulated.

2016-2017 school year 4,000 books circulated.

Another drop off. Yes, the middle school offers electronic books too, but I do not have those numbers. Again, I can only conjecture, but I’d go with the same scenario as our own building and assume it’s a much smaller number than the physical totals and one that can be taken with a grain of salt.

A-LAR-MING!

The big question is why is the trend going the wrong way?

It’s not at all as if we’ve suddenly changed our teaching style, goals, or enthusiasm for reading. Education rarely changes quickly and a love of reading would be the last thing to leave or bones. No, we remain a department of eight Language Arts teacher and one curmudgeonly skeptical reading teacher, employing a Reader’s and Writer’s workshop model, who love our books. Love them!

Maybe there’s been personnel change? Yes, there’s been some turnover in personnel but not much. Insignificant. The district, school, and individual goals all remain the same: we want to foster natural readers and writers.

Can’t lay blame on our administration or librarians because they’re the same people who were with us over the last five years. They’ve been as supportive emotionally, professionally, and financially as anyone can expect.

What’s changed?

Well, this is where it all gets messy. Messy as heck, because who knows exactly? 

Possibly, students are buying more books at home, using the town library more, or passing on books they’re not likely to read again. Not that’d I wager on any of those instances as being the primary issues. Home life continues to evolve. We know many of our students have robust after-school lives, but that’s been true for many, many years. Home electronics present another possibility to why reading seems to be eroding, despite our efforts. There too, I wonder. Game systems, iPads, laptops, and personal phones have been in our community’s hands for years now. 

Though I may well be pilloried for this, I can really only point to one big change in our classrooms; and that is the introduction of iPads. We have had one-to-one (one iPad for each student) access for several years now at various grade levels, working from our high school down. This year was only our first year with each student having his or her own iPad for use throughout the school day. We did have them in sets for teams to access, but they were shared and not carried around all day by the students. The HS, depending on the grade level, has had them for 4 years now and some elementary grade levels for a year or two. Middle school has had them for 2-3, I believe.  In other words, there is some verifiable overlap between these devices and the circulation timeline presented in this article.

I know, I know. They’re a tool and not going anywhere anytime soon. Got it. And yes, every teacher set the tone for these tools. You can ask every student who enters your room to put them away to work with physical paper if you like. This does happen. It just...feels like a harder stance to maintain.

I’m not looking to debate the good or bad of the device. It does have some amazing capabilities and has allowed our students to do some terrific things because of them. It’s just that the downside, in this reading teacher’s opinion, is concerning. There’s no longer a barrier or distinction between home behaviors with devices and school behaviors because they're now ever present. The phone or iPad at home is for games, texting, researching, and reacting to it every time it chimes. While we watch strictly how students use them in school, their belief is that what they do at home is how to use them in school, and how to react to them in school. The iPad is sometimes more authoritative and commanding of attention than the teacher in the room. Think about that. If you doubt this, then think about that the next time you’re speaking with someone, your phone chimes, and you reach for it without thinking. 

Anyone who’s used an iPad for his or her reading knows the pitfalls. It truly is a challenge to remain lost in a book. Notifications intrude often and if there’s a moment of weakness while reading it becomes all too easy to decide to just “check on something”: email, FB, some Amazon product, etc.

This is not to blame the students. I’m no better at home sometimes, which is why I’ve moved back to physical copies of books exclusively the last two years. I can’t trust myself on an iPad to remain focused, to read and think deeply. 

Our response to this next year, as a department, will be an increase in sustained reading within the school day. We’re also planning to offer book-swaps and increased time for students to spend time investigating new, physical, copies of books.

Who knows, we may even have to explore the mindfulness of reading, the mental value that comes from focused, meditative-like engagement with a text.

Oh and please, before anyone tells me how people and kids are reading more than ever because of how much time they spend on their devices visiting sites and working on things, let me chuckle right now. 

It’s not true in my eyes and that’s for two reasons. One, I’m a self-admitted curmudgeon and skeptic. I say nay to things first and wait for proof to be convinced otherwise. Two, there’s a vast difference between glazing over swaths of words and actual, deep, even meditative, reading of words. It’s like saying that because kids are texting thousands of words a day, they’re writing more than ever. Nope, not sold. Besides, the trend appears to be moving to emojis only. Though I won’t use them (still -proudly- don’t own a phone), if I had to this article would end with a thumbs down, worried face, and giant question mark set of signs.