How do we get the youth of America interested in reading again?
>>7375109
penis in vagina
>>7375109
Why do you care?
They tried that with history and science and look at the insufferable pseudo-intellectuals around now.
> How do we get the youth of America interested in reading again?
Impossible, they are too interested in meme culture to do anything intelligent.
>>7375114
I'm a teacher.
>>7375120
Use incentives like prizes, Book Bowl, and maybe "le maymayz" because kids are into that.
As a teacher, you can always coerce them to read and also make it more fun by talking about the aesthetic quality of the text and some bigger ideas instead of focusing on nit-picky plot details that many teachers seem to do.
>>7375120
What grade do you teach? Either way, you should probably give them money. School was fucking shitty.
I'm a writing teacher, which puts me in a position to force kids to write and push them to do it well. I help them feel like good writers, and I really believe it contributes to their interest in literature later.
The one thing you must understand is that not every kid is a reader. It's always been the case. The number may even be smaller now, because there are more options for what to identify with in terms of media. We lose a lot of the people who would have been half-hearted readers 30 years ago.
You can't change the world, but as a teacher you can certainly make an effort to ensure kids are exposed to reading, and that will make sure the people it's right for will do it.
>>7375129
>teacher
>being able to afford to give others money
>>7375131
writing teacher from >>7375130
I make 30k a year, and do wood work on the side for another 5-10k no tax on the side. I spend over 5k a year feeding students. I teach in the Mississippi delta after moving on a grant from Oregon and I have students in my 10th grade class who come to school having not eaten since the last time they were there. I can not let those children try to tackle my class without a full stomach, so I provide food for not only in-class but for over the weekends and over holidays. I bought a turkey for five families this year for thanksgiving next week.
Teachers are public servants. You are in the wrong field if you're not willing to spend every spare dollar you make and every ounce of energy you can to help kids succeed.
If you really believe giving them money will make them better people later in life I believe you should do it. With that said, I don't think money is a good incentive to read. Too many kids will be too distracted by the light at the end of the tunnel to actually enjoy the reading experience. You need to be more subtle and just let the kids who are going to become readers do it. Just make sure you're exposing them to the best reading they can handle within their realm of interest and abilities.
>>7375137
Wow anon you are such a good person. Would not expect someone like you browsing this cesspool
>>7375137
Good for you but not every teacher can do the same because they might work in places where they have less purchasing power, they might have more mouths to feed than you do, or face other extenuating circumstances.
>>7375137
Charity is the wickedest virtue.
>>7375146
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvcdS6IW6yY
>>7375145
Sure, but you have to work with what you're given. Every teacher, every working human being is put in positions to prioritize. After moving here and realizing I couldn't get around a lot of the side roads in my Civic I bought a 1985 Chevrolet truck that was for sale a few houses down with the intention to upgrade after the paychecks started rolling in. I still haven't upgraded that truck six years later. Instead I got to my first day of class, met the kids, and within a few weeks learned that 3 of the 25 people in my class lived in homes without power. Most of the others were in identifiably terrible circumstances even if they weren't as extreme, and it became very clear that if I was going to stay here these kids were going to be my priority.
My contract for the grant(they paid for my masters degree if I moved here and taught for five years) ended this year, and I don't see myself leaving soon. I'm 26. I have a very long time left to make something of myself. For now I live a simple life and pretty much break even by giving up simple, unnecessary things in favor of making an impact on my school system.
I picked up the wood working side job based on my childhood hobby exclusively to help these kids. These are decisions I've made that directly influence the lives of the people I got a degree with the intention to help. For many teachers being good in the class room just isn't enough. We live in troubled times, and I guarantee every class room, no matter where you are, has at least one child who would be doing a lot better if they had some simple things added to their life. I could very well say "I can't afford to help" and still teach 50+ kids a year sufficiently, but it is entirely false to act like every teacher is helpless in putting themselves in a position to do things like this. It isn't glamorous. We're teachers. Public servants. Humans who have chosen to give up a life of glory and opportunity to serve future generations. No one cares if I'm driving an '85 chevy, or the shiny new truck I could afford if I was selfish. Those kids care a whole lot when I send their parents notes asking permission to help them buy their first kids Thanksgiving dinner that isn't out of a can.
Every teacher has a choice. You can't fix every kid's life, but I will not accept anyone telling me they couldn't change a little something in their lives to find ways to help their students, whether that's staying after school to help them with things, teaching them off the books(I teach a few of my students and ex-students piano because they wanted to learn after seeing me play, for example - one is now graduated and still comes by after his job at the co-op on Wednesdays and Fridays) or helping more directly like with my buying food for hungry students.
>>7375146
Tell that to a tenth grader who comes to school and hits a point where they haven't eaten in 23 hours during their third consecutive class because they can't afford school breakfasts and have nothing to eat at home.
>>7375172
All you're doing is allowing the global capitalist system that allowed that situation to occur in the first place to continue existing because of your selfish need to distinguish yourselves above others and to remove your guilt for being a beneficiary of the system, purchasing and following into its ideology. This is a gross, evil, and violent act.
>>7375109
you just gotta make it seem cool. I started reading outside of generic fantasy/sci-fi when i was 16 cus of murakami. to 16 year old me the jazz/classical/dostoyevsky name dropping was the coolest shit ever.
As I read the books themselves, I liked them less because of how Murakami portrayed them in the mood/frame of his stories and more for their own merit.
haruki is a gateway drug to literature and I recommend him to everyone who wants to start reading
>>7375173
If I let these kids become failures because they couldn't eat enough food to care about school it isn't going to make any difference to the system. Sure, you're right on a large scale, money isn't the right way to make the world a better place. But the more good kids that come out of the public school system the better our chances are to change something. Kids who can't break out of working for mcdonalds because they didn't get a good enough education to understand the world in a more complex way than "make money, buy food, survive" are more of a problem for your world view than anything I could choose to do with my pay check. I'm not in Guatemala giving a bunch of money to kids to westernize their lives. I'm in Mississippi trading my pay checks to give kids a chance to develop their minds.
I'm only selfish to the extent that I can't stand to see kids suffer when I can easily and directly fix a great deal of it by making small sacrifices in my own life.
I fully understand your argument, I grow my own food, I hunt for a great deal of my meat, I'm probably doing more to separate myself from the capitalist system than most people you've had this conversation with. But you don't seem to be fully comprehending your own accusations. I'm not going through some charity to give a meaningless ten cents to children in Chile every time I buy from a certain grocery store or whatever. I'm bringing prepared salads to school and slipping them to my first period students so they can eat two meals a day instead of one. Fuck you if you think I'm betraying my anti-capitalist beliefs doing so.
>>7375185
OK, I actually think you're a good person. Keep on doing what you're doing anon.
>>7375173
free agency you shmuck. If that's what fulfills him, then there's no use trying to convert him to your Atlas Smug ideology.
>>7375137
Good to know we've got people like you around, anon.
>>7375109
Honestly--and I'm pretty drunk right now--during high school all the english teachers seemed really disconnected and would shove what normies would see as boring shit down our throats daily. I think all you really need ro do is connect with them. Be the dorky teacher that puts memes on his/her powerpoints, shit like that. Most students already dont wanna be in your class so dont worsen the problem. Dunno if i even typed anything coherent desu.
>>7375173
people like you make me sick
>>7375225
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8LPn4irao
>>7375173
Fuck off and die red.
>>7375235
prove it =_=
>>7375109
A CHEESEBURGER ON EVERY PAGE!
>>7375240
/thread
Remove the politicization where complete garbage gets pushed down their throats to fill the teacher's or local school board's political control needs.
I can still remember, as someone who loved reading when I was younger ever since I was introduced to Jack London books, being forced by school to read "classics" like some upper class LGBT celebrity's whining about how his father didn't understand him growing up. That and other similar cases would have soured me on reading permanently if I hadn't already found what I liked.
Same with film, watching schlocky shit like the Silence of the Lambs to have some "the drapes are blue" teacher ask us to explain the "symbolism" behind everything.
Painting classes that barely taught anything and insisted that any result was perfection because art couldn't be judged even when I myself absolutely loathed the result.
All of this at a time when the closest I had to a political conciousness was far left of the SocDems-in-charge politically.
The social sciences really taught me what I hate in life.
Turns out it's the modern values of the social sciences.
Expect them to read one book of their own choice per week in their own time and report on it, the name of the book chosen and a short less than one A4 summary, throughout their entire time at school. Make it a routine.
Have an hour long class weekly where a historically significant book is picked by the institution that will then be describe at the next week's class with no expectation that the kids will actually read it.
That should spark the imagination of those susceptible to it.
>>7375173
>This is a gross, evil, and violent act.
As opposed to letting these people's lives be fucked over in the name of marxist revolution which is just great. :^)
You know what kids should read?
Demons by Dostoyevsky.
That way they know what kind of people are behind arguments like yours.
>>7375277
>My interpretation of the text is the right and best one.
Actually for the symbolist slag I despised how they were trying to simultaneously push their interpretations down our throats while preaching that all interpretations are valid which they clearly didn't believe.
Like most relativists they were only really relativist up until the point they were faced with a relative viewpoint they didn't agree with.
>>7375288
OK, but superficial readings of texts are a disgrace to the literature you're engaging with and it serves no purpose.
Not quoted but
>>7375294
Kek, pray tell what "value" in-depth literature readings have served.
Perhaps you consider academic masturbation a virtue?
>>7375137
You're better than the best teacher I had in high school, and they were pretty damn cool too.
>>7375109
Youth today loves to read, you know. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, John Green etc are extremely popular and successful.
>again
When has the youth of America ever been interested in reading? When has the youth of any culture ever been interested in reading?
>>7375109
remove them from adhd media (tv, games, social media)
>>7375202
>dorky teacher that puts memes in his powerpoint
no. That's ridiculous. don't do that. Kids don't need memes in school.
Prioritize an aesthetic appreciation of literature, rather than just searching for themes and symbols. Not saying the latter don't have their place, they just shouldn't be the primary focus. Have a few assigned readings, but also let kids pick a few books on their own to read and complete an assignment on. Have a list of recommendations for kids unaware of what to choose. Try to encourage them to read more literary works, but allow them to select genre shit if they'd like. For example of a student selects an airport thriller, encourage them to consider the emotional reactions it elicited, how the writer sought to 'thrill' his readers, how language was used to achieve this, etc.
>>7375137
This is cool and all but you're just looking for an excuse to brag desu
>>7375109
You gringos also have it bad eh? Mexico is nightmare mode TBQH
>build wall etc
I don't know.
I almost think it will be impossible for America; the anti-intellectual hegemony is too strong.
>>7375992
Why not just have ADHD media with depth and challenging literary ideas?
>>7375109
why would i care if "the youth of america" is interested in reading?
>>7375109
>again
This implies that American youths were interested in literature in the first place.
>>7375109
If you mean the general masses, you can't. As long as the current popular mediums of entertainment exist, then the masses have no reason to turn to books for entertainment.
I could see the masses of the millennial generation becoming interested in pretending to read for the sake of social credibility on the internet (aka, booktubers and hipsters) but you can't force people to be interested in something if they've never really been interested in it.
>>7375137
I'm really glad to see someone like you on the Net.
Keep up the good work, you're an inspiration for many :)
>>7375109
Stop forcefeeding people classics like they're shit just because a bunch of lonely people circlejerk over them.
