Had a conversation with a colleague today about a new student, who she was setting up in our Pre-GED program. She said the student had chosen a book that might be a bit below her reading level, but they decided that was OK for a first book, as the student gets used to reading every day. One of us said that not reading all the time is hard for us to imagine-we have both read every day(not reading like grocery lists, but reading) for most of our lives. My colleague said, as long as she can remember, she has always done that. I said, I've probably read every day since I learnt how to read at all. And even before that I was read to. I said that I've noticed something about our students, which is that when we read in class, even if it's an engaging story they really like, they don't retain the plot from one day to the next. Every day I have to jog their memories a bit before they can remember who the characters are and what is going on. I told my colleague that I really think this is a product of having grown up in the standardized testing era and going to typically low scoring schools; I'd be willing to bet that most of their school reading prior to our program has come in passages, and so they are used to reading that doesn't ask you to retain anything after you've answered the questions. I doubt most of them ever read a sustained story in school, or had one read to them there. They read passages.

My colleague said that she has noticed the same thing. I said that education policy is taking out everything that was pleasurable about reading and leaving only the frustrating stuff. I said that I feel like the government is trying to create a class of people who never do read for pleasure, who don't enjoy reading and don't have the skills to do it in a sustained way. My colleague (usually much less likely to attribute national policy to conspiracies than I am) said, I think you're right. And we just stared at each other.

When the "Common Core" comes in (for those of you who are paying attention to such things), not only will there be more emphasis on shorter texts (more than there is now!!?), but the emphasis will switch from fiction to non-fiction, even for little kids. I think this is part of a misguided attempt to start getting kids "work ready" from kindergarten. They're trying to make it sound good by talking about how most boys don't like fiction (really?? my brothers and my male students have liked it...), or how learning how to extract meaning from a short texts leads to more focused, "deeper," reading. But I'm picturing a generation of kids who won't know that reading is really about books, about pleasure, about learning about other human beings and yourself, about sustained attention to a complicated narrative. They'll grow up, like my students, thinking that reading comes in canned "passages" or "workplace documents," and that's what they'll have the "skills" to read. I guess it'll make them good workers for McDonald's, but it won't give them much else. I have no words for how angry this makes me.