All Bets Are Off - 2/18/2002

"I Hate Reading"
By Jon, Conval High School

I was laying in bed the other night thinking of ideas for this week's article, and I stumbled across this question. Why do most teenagers hate to read so much? Throughout middle school we always had "reading time", where we sat for about a half an hour and read silently. I can only think of one person in my class that actually spent the time reading. I will admit, I hardly used the time to read, but rather used it as a time for socializing. The school devised a plan to keep the students reading, which involved making tests for books and setting point values for the tests. We had to take an assessment test to determine our reading ability, and then they set a point goal that we had to achieve by the end of the year. Most of the questions were very easy, and the goals were not very high, so it was not very difficult for us to reach our goal. As I sat there during reading time, I saw many people cheating on the computerized tests by having someone who had read the book sit next to the computer desk and give them answers, but the teachers never seemed to catch on. Some kids were caught, but many got away with it. My point is that the majority of kids don't like reading, and dread having to do it. I saw otherwise great students cheating on those tests because they didn't want to read the books. It wasn't a very good system, but it didn't change the fact that kids dislike reading. 

Even in the high school the majority of the class complains when we have a reading assignment. I am not sure why, but throughout my schooling I have noticed that if you are smart and do your homework, you're not as cool as kids who don't are. The "cool" crowd usually consists of kids who do average or poor on their report cards. Why wouldn't somebody who is smart be cool? They are the kind of people who will make it in this world. The same thing happens with reading. Apparently if someone likes to spend their time reading a good book, they are considered a loser by most. I have heard various kids at my school talk about others who they think are weird by saying things like, "Well they're one of those kids who just sits around and reads." It doesn't quite register to me that a person can be categorized as a loser for having an interest in literature. I know that sometimes students who are smart and enjoy reading are "cool," but mostly reading is something for "losers" and 'geeks." As I lay there in bed thinking about all of this, I started to wish that I hadn't been one of the "cool" kids in middle school. I think that if I could go back in time, I would spend my reading time reading, and not talking. Now I enjoy reading, and think it is a great way to let go of my problems and travel to a different world or learn something new. I am not going to bore you with the speech about how good reading really is because we have all heard it far too many times, but I will however tell you that I would rather spend my time reading a good book than anything else. 

I believe that children's hate for reading began early in their schooling. When I was in elementary school, I always thought that we were rushed to learn reading, and they didn't give us enough time to learn. If teachers had spent more time teaching us how to read well, than we would find it more fun. Many of my classmates still have trouble reading out loud during class, so I know that our teachers could have done a better job teaching us about the importance of reading. It is proven that humans learn the best when they are young and that the information we take in then stays with us longer than anything else we learn in our lifetime, so we should use that time to learn good reading skills. If we had spent more time learning how to read, it would be much easier and more fun for teens to read now. I think elementary schools need to spend more time with reading so that kids will be better at it later on. I can't imagine how the world would be if everyone loved to read. The school systems seem to be getting better, so maybe in the future kids will enjoy reading more than they do today. I think that too many kids worry about being "cool" and that is why they do not enter the wonderful world of reading. With more help from teachers early on, and better reading plans, teens will not dread the word "read" as much as they do today. 

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