- my iParenting
- quick clicks
- preteenagers today articles
- preteenagers today q&a
- teenagers today articles
- teenagers today q&a
- message boards
- research baby names
- prepare a birth plan
- content channels
- ip channel rss feeds
- read birth stories
- read parenting stories
- recommended books
- e-newsletters
- safety recalls
- ip diaries
- ip store
- mom of the month
- dad of the month
- editor's letter
- letters to the editor
 |
- e-newsletters
- Sign up to receive our free weekly e-newsletters
- award-winning products
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families.
Readers for Life
Keep Your Teen Reading
By Kelly Burgess
"When kids get to middle school, they no longer have the freedom to read what they choose," says Reeves. "A lot of their reading is required and may not necessarily be a subject or genre that holds any interest for them. In addition, they have more demands on their time and options of how to spend time. Video games, hanging out with friends, after school clubs, activities and sports can make reading fall by the wayside."
Young adult author Steve Alten, whose most recent book is The Loch (Tsunami Books, 2005), agrees with Reeves, and notes that as children get closer to high school, they are also required more and more to read "the classics," and those books may simply not be relevant, or interesting, to them. "You have the combination of raging hormones and other interests, along with the fact that now, instead of reading what they want, they 'have' to read something that's a hundred years old and they can't relate to," he says. "All of a sudden reading is no longer fun."
Not to say that there isn't a place in academia for the classics – merely, Reeves argues, they should be a separate focus in the curriculum, and not carry the weight of the mainstream reading curriculum that high schoolers are expected to carry. "I would like to see teachers and the people in charge of curriculums be much clearer in their own minds about the purpose of reading," says Reeves. "Reading helps young people experience different lives vicariously, understand different characters and learn about how people operate. Schools conflate that by trying to pass on cultural traditions through literature, so they have these books written for adults by adults and read in adult life by a tiny, tiny portion of the population. What children learn is these great pieces of literature are boring."
