{"id":1312,"date":"2026-08-11T20:47:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T00:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2026-08-11T20:47:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T00:47:51","slug":"rumors-of-readings-death-are-highly-exaggerated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/rumors-of-readings-death-are-highly-exaggerated\/","title":{"rendered":"Rumors of Reading’s Death Are Highly Exaggerated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I recently gave myself a severe pain in the neck by sitting at my computer too long reading the article \u201cThe End of Reading is Here\u201d from The Atlantic<\/em>. It also gave me a pain in my soul. It\u2019s sad for an English teacher to contemplate that years of tech distraction and overly strenuous standardized testing have brought us to a place where some people are declaring us a post literate society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But today was laptop distribution day in the Media Center (Oh, the irony!) and something very interesting happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My students were looking at books, commenting on them, wanting to find series they had started last year. I had brought my own current novel I\u2019m reading, There Are Rivers in the Sky<\/em> by Elif Shafak, and a student wanted to see it and read the back. She thought it sounded interesting. One student really wanted to know when he could start to check out books!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We returned to class and didn\u2019t have time to start something new, so I asked what they wanted to talk about. They wanted to know what my favorite books were. And my favorite musicals. I didn\u2019t lead them to this \u2013 they wanted to know. And they wanted to tell me about the books they were reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Creative Writing I had posted a slide from last year and had forgotten it said to \u201cRead for 5!\u201d for the start of class. A whole bunch of kids took out books. They had books with them, because that\u2019s what they do \u2013 the go around with books and are prepared to read instead of scroll! I hadn\u2019t even intended to read for 5 minutes at the start of class until next week. But I rolled with it. They read, I read! I asked if a few people wanted to talk about what they liked about the writing in their books. They did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t unpacked my classroom library yet. Some students are very anxious that I do it soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight my wife was reading her \u201cGetting to know you\u201d index cards from her seniors and sharing. One of the things she asked was \u201cWhat was the last book you read?\u201d Only a couple said nothing. Most of them had read something recently. Project Hail Mary<\/em>. A JFK biography. Kafka\u2019s The Trial<\/em>. Dan Brown. Marcus Aurelius. The Hunger Games<\/em> prequels. I Am Malala<\/em>. I can\u2019t remember all the titles she shared with me, and she only shared some of what she was reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite everything the system is doing to destroy love of reading in the name of improving reading scores, the reading continues. None of this interest was forced. None of the reading was assigned. They still want to read, given the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My neck, and my soul, are a little less cramped tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently gave myself a severe pain in the neck by sitting at my computer too long reading the article \u201cThe End of Reading is Here\u201d from The Atlantic. It also gave me a pain in my soul. It\u2019s sad for an English teacher to contemplate that years of tech distraction and overly strenuous standardized Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[182],"tags":[392,415,50,416],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}