Poll: When did reading become so horrible?

[Zakarath]

I got really irritated at English class back in high school (in college now) because the class would always be reading the book aloud at a crawl and I am a (very) fast reader. I'd always end up reading way ahead of the rest of the class and then have no idea where to read from whenever I got called to read aloud <.<

And I really feel that part of the reason (most) kids are such terrible readers these days is that they've never been exposed to a good book. The books chosen for English class are (in my experience) dated, dull, depressing, and written with stilted language that makes them harder to read without necessarily improving them. Instead of books like "Of Mice and Men" and "The Catcher in the Rye", why couldn't we read a few more modern, intelligent "new classics" that also happen to be fun? (Some books I might include: The Golden Compass, Snow Crash, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, among others.)

 

[CK76]

Pride and Prejudice. Eurgh.

add "and Zombies" and there you go.

 

[spartan231490]

no offense, but i think its because most kids of this (read: my) generation, are honestly too uneducated to enjoy something that requires them to dig through all those big words, and crazy punctuations.

 

[Andalusa]

I absolutely love reading. Can't sleep without reading in bed first. I suppose it's just as well, I'm going to be doing a lot of reading in the next few weeks.

 

[SlowShootinPete]

It depends on the subject.

Once for my sociology class, I had to pick a study from some academic journal and write a summary of the experiment and its findings. The study that I picked was about the relationship between juvinile delinquency and mental disorders in Greece. It was surprisingly interesting, and I read it in one sitting between classes. The summary I wrote of it was about three pages long, and wasn't terribly difficult because the source I was working with was easy for me to understand.

Then in my English class the professor kept assigning us these articles and short stories we had to read. Several of them, mostly the New Atlantis articles, were about fairly interesting topics and well written, but very, very long and complex. And we were supposed to summarize these articles in one paragraph. Not my idea of fun.

 

[Marowit]

[

I could never understand why my teacher would always ask me, when it always such an arduous experience...maybe they thought they where some how helping me overcome it...?

Perhaps... it's not an entirely phsychological thing though is it? I thought it was more to do with the way the brain interprets patterns. Or am I utterly mistaken?

Either way... you've clearly overcome it now.

oh no, you're correct it's a physiological defect and so just muddling through it, probably hasn't improved it much. But yeah, I kind of have to have an extra layer of filtering while I read so that when I read something like, 'the boy stairs fell the down' I can not get thrown completely for a loop and click it into, 'the boy fell down the stairs.' Interestingly it's made visual pattern recognition super easy for me so learning symbols for Chinese/Japanese super easy as well as not having that much difficult with the different language structure in japanese...since it was almost how I was reading to begin with...

 

[Necromancer1991]

English classes always include supposed classics like "Great Expectations" and all that other rubbish, want to know why we don't like those books, they lost their cultural relevance, whereas books like 1984 inch closer and closer to becoming reality

 

[Spudgun Man]

This is something that really annoys me also, but luckily using the crack science skills that any bored person seems to posess I have been able to create a mind reading device. And my findings were not exactly startling:

"Whut iz srange hyrogliphs on tihs parge?"

Devolution ftw.

 

[GrinningManiac]

Elongated Schoolwork in that case, which warrants a groan

Personal reading is fine, though. I often got into trouble for bringing in and reading my own books whilst Miss banged on about some stupid, pointless "11-14 book", which, if you're unfamiliar with books aged at that age-group (that teachers consider appropriate), they have the promises of interesting plots, but alway assume we're thick and replace it early on with clichéd morals

 

[Zakarath]

"Whut iz srange hyrogliphs on tihs parge?"

Nah. They would never come up with a word like heiroglyphs.

 

[atalanta]

Perhaps I am blinded by having had to write a long synopsis on every chapter. Some of which are mind-numbingly short, such that the synopsis is of comparable length to the chapter.

Oh yeah, that'd probably do it. Summaries are such a waste and it always made me sad when we were assigned summaries instead of, say, mini-essays or something.

I went to a school that made an active effort to include books by people who weren't exclusively dead white guys, so for the most part I read Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc on my own, which is the best way to do it, I think.

 

[Spudgun Man]

"Whut iz srange hyrogliphs on tihs parge?"

Nah. They would never come up with a word like heiroglyphs.

True, but "Stick line things" didn't have the same appeal.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I've never understood why people object to reading so much (except for one guy I know who has dislexia and hates it because it takes him so much longer to read things than anyone else). I've loved reading my whole life and generally read at least one book a week.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

[

I could never understand why my teacher would always ask me, when it always such an arduous experience...maybe they thought they where some how helping me overcome it...?

Perhaps... it's not an entirely phsychological thing though is it? I thought it was more to do with the way the brain interprets patterns. Or am I utterly mistaken?

Either way... you've clearly overcome it now.

oh no, you're correct it's a physiological defect and so just muddling through it, probably hasn't improved it much. But yeah, I kind of have to have an extra layer of filtering while I read so that when I read something like, 'the boy stairs fell the down' I can not get thrown completely for a loop and click it into, 'the boy fell down the stairs.' Interestingly it's made visual pattern recognition super easy for me so learning symbols for Chinese/Japanese super easy as well as not having that much difficult with the different language structure in japanese...since it was almost how I was reading to begin with...

Wow. Our brains are funny, amazing things. If it helps with visual pattern recognition it must help with gaming!

 

[asinann]

I'm a high School senior and for some reason whenever my english teacher assigns any kind of reading assignment it sounds like someone is being tortured, grunts and moans of dismay flood my ears and that got me wondering, when did reading become the thing of nightmares? Yeah sure it could be said that reading can be boring but they make it out as this horrible thing which is taking them to a dark room somewhere to torture them. I would like to know all of your opinions on this matter.

It's because assigned readings are usually things that people who are out of touch with reality think will be good for you educationally or things that they were forced to read so now they want you to suffer through that "classic" crap.

 

[rddj623]

I love to read, but don't do it as often as I would like. Guess I'm the only person who can change that, and I'm actually working on that so that's a good thing.

 

[ScarecrowAlone]

Where I live, it's because most of the little inbred annoyances around here CAN'T read, and the books they assign to seniors are their mental equivalent of astrophysics. For me personally, I just find things like To Kill a Mockingbird and Moby Dick to be inexplicably boring.

 

[Goremocker]

Reading is only bad when you have to read.You see if you HAVE to do something it becomes annoying and you don't want to do it.I only like read on my own terms,if I don't then it sucks.

 

[CoverYourHead]

Most high school reading is terrible and crammed with way too many symbols. I enjoy reading enough, and I occasionally get a good poem, book, or play to read. But a lot of it is dull. And of course, then there's a chance I have to write something about it, and that's just annoying.