Over the past year, publications from Teen Vogue to the Associated Press have bemoaned students’ lack of reading stamina. Everyone seems to agree: these days, middle and high school teachers are assigning mostly short or excerpted texts, and now college students can’t read more than a few pages at a time. Many of these pieces cite the same reasons for the abbreviated readings, including smartphones, standardized testing, the prevalence of cheating, student disengagement, and reading skill deficits.
Although my colleague Mike Petrilli has correctly observed that no hard evidence backs these claims, these arguments nonetheless resonate with my experience as a former high school and undergraduate educator. I also appreciate the additional rationale for banning smartphones and implementing evidence-based reading instruction. But these pieces tend to conclude with a call for teachers to assign entire works, rather than excerpts.
OK, yes, agreed. But with what time? With what supports?
When I shifted from teaching college to high school English nearly a decade ago—back in those days when undergraduates were regularly assigned actual books—I was appalled by the commonplace practice of assigning high schoolers excerpts of longer works. How could students make meaning from material they never fully saw? I did not oppose teaching some poems, essays, and short stories, but I still worried that my students weren’t being exposed to enough extended text.
An inspirational story, which you very much might like to hear, would be that I pushed back against school culture, leapt onto a desk like John Keating, and added multiple full-length readings to every course I taught.
That story, however, would be neither true nor realistic.
I added a grand total of zero novels, plays, or memoirs to any high school syllabus. I decreased the number of excerpted readings, but yes, I still taught some. I had my reasons, though, and I suspect they’re similar for many other teachers.
First, in my experience, was the issue of alignment with school culture and expectations. The other teachers in my department, including other teachers of the same course, frequently assigned short or excerpted readings. I could not have diverged from these assignments without substantially revising syllabi and pursuing conflict with far more experienced teachers and administrators—and even then, the answer might well have remained no. A serious change to the short-reading status quo would have required a shift in priorities and expectations from the top down.
Schools are not without reason for the shorter assignments, either. As the various think pieces have flagged, the reasons I encountered as a teacher included ever-waning attention spans and, indeed, standardized test preparation.
My colleague Mike Petrilli has also argued that standardized testing isn’t likely to blame for fewer pages being assigned. He’s right with regard to private schools and some grade levels, but when I taught grade levels that were tested, the narratives around teaching shorter texts for test prep were compelling and pervasive.
In New York, for example, the notorious Part 3 of the ELA Regents exam asks high school students to read a short excerpt, identify the “central idea,” and analyze how a “writing strategy… develops the central idea.” (I’ll set aside my numerous objections to this prompt for the moment.) I acknowledge that in a perfect world, teachers wouldn’t spend time “teaching to the test,” but in reality, teachers need to ensure that students know what to expect on an intimidating assessment that determines whether they graduate.
Over and over, highly experienced educators told me that students could prepare for Part 3 by reading new, short texts, and drafting practice responses. I have to tell you—this take is not unreasonable. If the state assessment is testing students on excerpts, then it makes sense to prepare students with… excerpts. And New York is hardly the only state that relies on this assessment strategy.
But even if the challenges of school culture, attention spans, and test prep suddenly disappeared, the practical fact remains that teachers lack the time that is now required to support extended reading.
Once upon a time, as many of you will recall, English teachers assigned most reading and writing to be completed at home. Class was largely reserved for lectures, discussion, and assessments. This structure was far from perfect. Plenty of students did not complete the readings (CliffsNotes have existed since 1958), and students with additional commitments like work or caregiving were further disadvantaged.
Today, many districts and schools encourage more reading and writing in classrooms. This shift has its advantages: reading together can enhance comprehension of challenging material, for example, and writing in class allows students to seek feedback in real time. Still, a school day has a limited number of minutes, and lengthy readings in class mean fewer minutes for everything else. Within these parameters, unfortunately, short texts make logistical sense.
English teachers don’t need to be told that full-length novels, plays, and memoirs are good. They already love books; that is literally why they became English teachers. What they do need, however, is a culture shift and more practical support from district and school leadership to teach more full-length works.
What might that support look like? There’s no silver bullet, but in my next post, I’ll offer ideas for ways to support teachers in getting kids to read books—or at least, equipping them with the tools they need to be able to read them. Stay tuned.
