The Country That Stopped Reading

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html

March 5, 2013
The Country That Stopped Reading
By DAVID TOSCANA

EARLIER this week, I spotted, among the job listings in the newspaper Reforma, an ad from a restaurant in Mexico City looking to hire dishwashers. The requirement: a secondary school diploma.

Years ago, school was not for everyone. Classrooms were places for discipline, study. Teachers were respected figures. Parents actually gave them permission to punish their children by slapping them or tugging their ears. But at least in those days, schools aimed to offer a more dignified life.

Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much less. They learn almost nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago. Even if baseline literacy, the ability to read a street sign or news bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not. Once a reasonably well-educated country, Mexico took the penultimate spot, out of 108 countries, in a Unesco assessment of reading habits a few years ago.

One cannot help but ask the Mexican educational system, “How is it possible that I hand over a child for six hours every day, five days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?”

[Warpy]

1. Perhaps they need to take a look at their books

I know a lot of kids were completely turned off to reading by the appallingly bad Dick & Jane series. I know I rebelled and flatly refused to take part in any class activity that featured them. Fortunately, I wasn't in that school for very long.

Flash cards had more of a plot than "See Spot run. Run Spot run."

Kids will read when they've got something that appeals to them, like the Harry Potter series here. I think those books created a whole generation of voracious readers.

[Scootaloo]

2. I learned to read from dinosaur books

I was able to pronounce "anklyosaurus" before my mother - and she read the things to me

[exboyfil]

3. Comics for me

Then quickly followed by science books and then science fiction. You are right about having the kids read almost anything in which to start. I have heard Harry Potter being criticized as a gateway to Stephen King, but I frankly think they are great books for kids. I wonder if Mexico has a similar cult following for reading. The skill set quickly transfers to other topics.

Both my daughters are avid readers especially the younger one. It has made a difference. They liked Harry Potter, Warrior Cats, etc.

One thing is that we have no video games in the house. While they spend a lot of time on the Internet, they were involved with posting stories on fan websites like Warrior Cats. This got them writing as well.

[CanonRay]

4. That's funny, I thought I was the only one who learned from comics

I had my older brother teach me enough to read them before I got to Kindergarten.

[raccoon]

5. Amen. I'm surprised those readers didn't turn off everyone to reading. They seem to have been

designed for that!

[Myrina]

6. .... and that's the model that we're now operating on ....

.... Teach-to-the-Test a.k.a Race to the Bottom err, "Top", building the next generation of Wal Mart minimum wage workers.

[Brigid]

7. A lot of this sounds awfully familiar.

[dem in texas]

8. Take your kids to the library

I grew up in a poor family, lived in one of the most improvised neighborhoods in Dallas. There with 6 children all crammed together in a 9 year age span. But as soon as we were 6 years old, my mother had took us to the Oak Cliff library to get a library card. She made sure we checked out 6 books every 2 weeks and that we read them. We all grew up loving to read and all still read a lot even though it is now mostly on Kindle.