Kids want 'great stuff' to read -- or do they?

As a ninth-grader in 1989, and her classmates read Beowulf, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti recalls. Her child's ninth-grade class "read excerpts, a few paragraphs from books that were meant to capture a theme, or articles about the books." They didn't read a single Shakespeare play in its entirety. "They watched movie adaptations. And not even the entire movie!" Shakespeare's language was too hard for teens and not relevant to their lives, said the teacher. "How could Romeo and Juliet not be relevant to teenagers?," Chakrabarti asks.

Beowulf is rarely taught in high school any more.

"Kids are not reading books," and if they do, they're not reading good books, say James Traub in a WBUR discussion of whether states should write required-reading lists. Furthermore, if every student is reading something different -- or pretending to read while staring at a screen -- there will be no opportunities for teachers to explain the tricky parts or for the class to discuss the shared book.

In visiting schools to research his book on "how schools can help save our democracy," Traub became convinced that schools need more focus on shared knowledge rather than isolated "skills," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

Texas' reading list requires schools to teach "specific books . . . that are — with some telling exceptions — rich in language, ideas and feeling," he wrote. "It is better to read a classic than a relatable contemporary story not only because one is beautiful and the other is not but also because a classic, by the very fact of its persistence over time, has become part of our shared culture."

Many teachers told him that they can't assign books because students won't do the reading, Traub told Chakrabarti. Parents complain, "You're putting an unfair burden on my children."

If it's left up to teachers, students won't be asked to read very much or teachers will find easy-to-read books about "relatable" teenagers, he says. People think that's what kids want. "Whereas I don't think that's actually what they want. They want great stuff."

English teachers are assigning fewer novels, reports Lauren Lumpkin in the Washington Post. "A 2010 survey of high school English teachers found that students were reading, on average, about four books. Now, students read about 2.8 books as a class, according to a 2026 report."

Teachers use short excerpts to teach skills that will show up on standardized tests.

Trying to get all her seventh-graders through the same book would be very time-consuming, said Sarai Hertz-Velazquez, a teacher in New York. They're at very different reading levels. In her small group for students with grade-level reading or higher, she expects them to read two books a year. Struggling readers may tackle one book a year.