I found an interesting article that discusses the decline in children's reading, and how in an effort to reverse this, a National Ambassador for Young People's Literature was appointed.
"Scieszka will travel the nation speaking to parents, teachers, and the media, as well as attend events at book fairs, publishing houses, libraries and nonprofit centers. But his main job as ambassador will be to engage the children..."
I'm not sure if this will actually be effective or not. What do you guys think? I've noticed this decline in reading, not only in young kids, but in myself as well. Have you been reading a lot less because of distractions from other media forms that can educate us just as well as books? What do YOU think should be done?
Here's the link if you are interested: http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-01/2008-01-03-voa73.cfm?CFID=268937370&CFTOKEN=41537150
3 comments:
This makes me think of a talk I attended last week in which the researcher argued that children are reading more than before--they just aren't always reading books! His argument was that some students are reading on-line for hours a day and that time should be considered as literacy.
The type of reading that we as kids used to do, with books from the library, and bought fro bookstores is just not as popular anymore. This is the age of technology and kids are using it to their advantage. They can get the same, if not more information from the internet as they can from the public libraries. The only problem with reading on-line is that the parents have to be much ore careful about what website their kids are going to. Unlike the library, the internet is full of potentially inappropriate sites, whereas the library is full of books that are safe for children to read. So, it is not that kids aren't reading as much as they used to, it is that they are doing a different kind of reading, on-line reading which is still just as good as reading a book, if their parents help them find the right things to read on-line.
Obviously there are safety concerns around the internet, but I don't know that books are somehow "safer" than on-line text. (I'm thinking about how dangerous texts like "And Tango Makes Three" feel to people.)
I do think that kids need to be taught to think about the quality and sources of information. One difference between publishing on the internet and publishing through more traditional routes is that the latter often goes through editors, is critiqued by disciplinary bodies, etc. So, while we gain access and diversity of ideas with the low barriers to publishing on the internet, we might also sacrifice some of the traditional ways that information is vetted...
What do others think???
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