READING, WRITING, AND E D U C AT I O N I N T H E 2 1 S T CENTURY Joe Kalicki One of the prescient issues I noticed from the time I was

a child in elementary school was the declining interest in reading amongst my classmates. With the ever increasing availability of other forms of entertainment (and specifically with the internet becoming something that anyone could access and use to full potential) I observed more and more kids opting to play their Nintendo 64 or Playstation instead of going outside or delving into a book. My school routinely assigned summer reading (we would choose from a list of 40-50 novels deemed appropriate) and various novels to read during the school year that accompanied our regular English class, but these books were viewed as a laborious slag rather than a medium that could genuinely be entertaining. This isnt to say that I never shared this opinion. I can recall blowing through books, only attempting to garner the most basic understanding of the plot so that I could go read something that I actually was interested in. As I progressed through middle school, I noticed my classmates and myself developing abilities to further treat our assigned books almost like a history text---skim, condense, what was the point, move on. If The Old Man and the Sea and Tom Sawyer would have had bold terms, we would have been grateful. As the books grew longer and more complex as we moved into high school my grade split into a few disparate categories---those who were in advanced classes would read difficult, Victorian literature (by assignment, mind you, not by choice) and those who were in the lower level classes would usually read poems or abridged excerpts of novels. Being the disengaged autodidact I had developed into in high school, I was usually in the lower of the two options. Our freshman year we worked our way through Oedipus Rex and Much Ado About Nothing, but after that it was mostly the snippets that we would be reading, rarely trying work novel reading into the mix as we shifted focus to research papers.

We were often so swamped with reading that the concept of a student choosing to read outside of class would mean diverting our precious free time into an activity most people found boring. Once we had worked through all that was assigned for class, kids would much prefer to go online and spin their wheels doing absolutely nothing, play video games, spend time with friends, etc. If people were reading, it wasnt much beyond the most entry level of pop culture phenomenons (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.). I was happy people were reading at all, but I dont think these novels (often defended as reading for fun) provide any worldview expansion or introduction to complex vocabulary that a diverse slew of books can provide. The assumption that more challenging novels couldnt be fun was a disappointing stance many people chose to take. I feel like a solution isnt far out of reach, and can be achieved using the very technology which is likely distracting the students of 2012. Apples iPad, the Barnes and Noble Nook, and Amazons Kindle are supremely popular and very reasonably priced items that provide the best option for reading in the 21st century beyond the archaic book which many students look on with disdain as it is the homework giver, the damned bound beast that they had to read 30 pages in every night. We should be giving kids time during their school-day to read whatever they want, as long as theyre reading. Yes, schools are going through budgetary issues and schooldays are getting cut shorter and shorter, but encouraging young adults and children to explore new topics could be a potential fix to the slow death of interest in the STEM fields. If we view education as this rote knowledge seeking behemoth, our schools end up looking like an indoctrination factory as opposed to a place where people can learn critical reasoning skills and how to form their own opinions. We must move away from standardized testing and approach the classroom in a manner that can adapt to the kids, not force them to do things that children and young adults inherently wont want to do.

Its worth noting that the introduction of concepts like reading for fun do often have to start at home, and parents must be aware enough to provide their kids with reading material at a young age. If it doesnt get introduced until they are shipped off to school, then it will certainly never be viewed as something beyond an assignment. I recall going to check out a book in my schools library in 9th grade, Albert Camus The Stranger. After checking it out, I flipped to the check out information in the back out of curiosity, only to see that it hadnt been checked out in 23 years. 23.Years. Several thousand kids had progressed through my K-12 school in this timespan and not once had the book been checked out. This was routine among many other classic novels and nonfiction books. I wouldnt want to come across as elitist, claiming that one cant be successful in life with having read some made up stories. That being said, it certainly doesnt hurt to have been exposed to different schools of thought, cultures, or anything that shakes up the status quo and instills the idea that the world is bigger than the town we grow up in. It certainly helps develop empathy when you can read Frederick Douglass My Bondage and My Freedom and understand a first person perspective of slavery. Obviously, other iconic books like The Diary of Anne Frank or any other precious encapsulation of history provides us modern people a visual gateway into situations that are very different from our own time and give us greater perspective on human struggle and the human condition. We need creativity and imagination to return to the classroom and encouraging consumption of a variety of media is the best way to meet that goal.