{"id":348770,"date":"2025-10-06T10:40:49","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T15:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/why-some-students-think-they-dislike-reading\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:40:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T15:40:49","slug":"why-some-students-think-they-dislike-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/why-some-students-think-they-dislike-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Some Students Think They Dislike Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Why\"Why<\/figure>\n

by Terry Heick<\/strong><\/p>\n

We tend to teach reading in a very industrial way in the United States.<\/p>\n

We focus on giving kids \u2018tools\u2019 and \u2018strategies\u2019 to \u2018make\u2019 sense of a text. To \u2018take the text apart\u2019. To look for the \u2018author\u2019s purpose\u2019\u2014to bounce back and forth between a main idea, and the details that \u2018support\u2019 the main idea, as if the reading is some kind of thing that students happen upon by chance while on some purely academic journey.<\/p>\n

And we push the illusion of the \u2018otherness\u2019 of a text by promoting the lie that they simply need to decode this, recognize that, and analyze that and that and that, and they\u2019ll be able to \u2018read.\u2019<\/p>\n

While this all does well to emphasize the work that real literacy requires, there\u2019s little wonder why students are increasingly seeking briefer, more visual, social, and dynamic media. Because not only are these media forms effortlessly entertaining, they rarely require meaningful investment of themselves.<\/p>\n

And it is this kind of connection that makes reading\u2013or any other media consumption for that matter\u2013feel alive and vibrant and whole. When readers are younger, there is a natural \u2018give\u2019 between the reader and the text, their imaginations still raw and green and alive.<\/p>\n

But as readers grow older, there is less give\u2013and more need for texts to be contextualized differently.<\/p>\n

See Also: 25 Self-Guided Reading Responses for Fiction and Non-Fiction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Spirituality Of Literacy<\/b><\/p>\n

There is a spirituality involved in reading (really) that is challenging to promote only in the classroom. (That is, not at home, at social or recreational events, but only at school, where it will always be a kind of naked.)<\/p>\n

Cognitively, a student \u2018makes sense\u2019 of a text through a perfectly personal schema\u2014that is, through the symbols and patterns and enthusiasm and suffering and meaning in their own lives. Students can\u2019t simply be encouraged to \u2018bring themselves\u2019 and their own experiences to a text; they have to realize that any grasp of the text decays almost immediately if they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Without that inward, reflective pattern where students acknowledge the sheer craziness of reading\u2013where they are asked to merge two realities (the text, and themselves)\u2014then that process will always be industrial. Mechanical.<\/p>\n

A matter of literacy and \u2018career readiness.\u2019<\/p>\n

Other.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that we give students mechanical tools that, even used well, can break the text beyond recognition, then wonder why they don\u2019t appreciate Shakespeare or Berry or Faulkner or Dickinson.<\/p>\n

We try to divorce the reader from the reading.<\/p>\n

The nuance and complexity of literature is its magic. But students dislike reading raised in data-loud, image-based, form-full, socialized and self-important circumstances aren\u2019t accustomed to that kind of selfless\u2014and terrifying\u2013interaction.<\/p>\n

The self-reflection true literacy requires is horrifying! To closely examine who we are and what we think we know by studying another parallel examination from another human being who put their thinking in the form of a novel, short story, poem, or essay! You\u2019re not just \u2018reading\u2019 another person\u2019s thoughts, but you\u2019re pouring yourself into their marrow.<\/p>\n

No wonder they skim.<\/p>\n

Most readers are already working from a disadvantaged position, where they view themselves as not only distinct from the text (false), but somehow further along in time and priority, as if they are being brought to some text to see if it\u2019s worth their time.<\/p>\n

And so they sit with it only long enough to see if it <\/i>entertains them, <\/i>neglecting the most fundamental tenet of literacy: Interdependence.<\/p>\n

The Irony Of Reading<\/b><\/p>\n

In reading, you\u2019re simply uncovering something you\u2019ve always been a part of. Instincts you\u2019ve always had. Circumstances you\u2019ve long been afraid of. Events and ideas and insights you\u2019ve struggled to put into words but have just found right there on the page.<\/p>\n

Your brain can\u2019t understand it any other way.<\/p>\n

Compared to media experiences most modern students gravitate easily towards\u2013Instagram, facebook, Epic Fail YouTube channels, video games\u2014reading also lacks the immediate spectacle that can catalyze the experience. Something that lights them up inside at a basic knee-jerk level, and will keep them from having to go any further.<\/p>\n

Reading isn\u2019t a show. (Not at first anyhow.) It doesn\u2019t exist to make them LOL. (Though it might.) But they often turn the page hoping to be passively entertained. Ironically then, reading isn\u2019t \u2018built\u2019 for what we use it for in education. Reading is hugely personal but in education, we often focus on the mechanics instead of the people and the strategies instead of the living and breathing happening all around us.<\/p>\n

Reading involves process and tools and strategies, but it isn\u2019t any of those things.<\/p>\n

The Ecology Of Reading<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019d be easy to blame the ecology of it all. To suggest that Huckleberry Finn was only interesting because Minecraft wasn\u2019t around to compare it to. Or to blame social media for distracting everyone.<\/p>\n

And this is all part of it. Their habits and access to complex texts and personal affinities matter. There is an ecology that schools and students and texts and literacy operate within\u2013an interdependence\u2013that is there whether we choose to honor it or not. A lot of this is much bigger than you and I as teachers.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t excuse us from our own failures in how we teach reading in schools. We give students processes<\/em> for writing and tools<\/em> for reading without stopping to humanize the whole effort. Mechanized literacy has all sorts of troubling implications.<\/p>\n

You and I\u2013we teach students to overvalue their own opinions when they\u2019re still often baseless and uninformed, which is like teaching them to read without helping them to truly understand why they should read.<\/p>\n

We fail to help them navigate the blessed, intimidating, awkward otherness of reading that makes it rise.<\/p>\n

And so we lose the reader\u2014the real person\u2013in the process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image attribution flickr user bluesquarething\u00a0and oldshoewoman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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