People with their phones in New York City on June 10, 2024. With the intrusion of cell phones, Doug Lemov said, young people are reading or learning to read in a constant state of distraction, so their attention is being fractured. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
Kimberly Lewis is growing up in a digital world where information and entertainment are instantly accessible at the tap of her finger.
Still, she prefers to turn pages.
The high school senior from Paterson, New Jersey, has read more than 100 books. She enjoyed the Harry Potter series as a youngster but fell out of love with words on paper during her screen-based middle school years. Lewis’s passion was reignited after a teacher assigned “Lord of the Flies” freshman year.
“That’s when I wanted to lock in,” she told The Epoch Times. “I really think everyone can love books. You just need to find the right stuff.”
For Lewis, the right stuff right now is World War II historical fiction. She consumes stories about the corners of the globe that her social studies classes barely touch on—China, Southeast Asia, and Africa—or how the events affected people away from the battlefield.
Lewis plans to study history and political science in college. She loves the idea of mandating whole books in school, saying the required reading in English class three years ago changed her life.
She’s not alone. Last month, Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Mark Bauerlein, a trustee at New College in Florida, introduced model legislation requiring students in grades 6 through 12 to read two books per semester, or four per academic year. Kurtz expects to discuss the BOOKS Act with state lawmakers in the months ahead.
“It’s too early to go into detail, but I do think we’ll see legislation inspired by this model introduced in at least a few states in 2027, maybe more if we’re lucky,” he told The Epoch Times via email.
The Retreat From Whole Books
Common Core State Standards, established during President Barack Obama’s administration, is a set of academic benchmarks for students that was adopted by 41 states and the District of Columbia.
The intent was to establish comparable standards for math and English language arts instruction between states. In the era of digital learning that followed, teachers would extract key concepts from excerpts and seemingly cover more works by more authors without requiring students to read entire books.
The word “text” appears in the Common Core standards for K–12 English language arts instruction more than 180 times.
By contrast, “books” appears in the document nine times, and “novel” five times. Both are referenced mostly to contrast genres—stories, poetry, fiction, and graphic or historical novels.
Even the Scholastic Aptitude Test used for college admissions was modified to include shorter passages, or texts, in the verbal section.
Education policy experts say these changes cost students cognitive persistence and the ability to follow ideas and narratives over time. Now, with concerns about record-low test scores and short attention spans, they’re calling for the return of entire books to public schools.
“It takes time and work to enter a book, and that’s actually important for students to achieve that persistence,” Doug Lemov, founder of nonprofit education consulting organization Teach Like a Champion, said during a March 19 American Enterprise Institute panel discussion.
“They live in a world of instant gratification. But the book teaches you that if you persist and you struggle, you’re rewarded with a depth of thought and insight you don’t get from any other medium.”
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress report, which is based on state test scores, indicated that only 35 percent of high school seniors were at or above proficiency levels in reading in 2024, down from 40 percent in 1992 and 37 percent in 2019. It also said 69 percent of fourth graders and 70 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in reading.
This “disfluency epidemic” is growing as students increasingly read less outside of school, Lemov said. Worse, he added, with the intrusion of cellphones, young people are reading or learning to read in a constant state of distraction, so their attention is being fractured. A part of the human brain is dedicated to speaking, but that organ does not have a natural space for reading. Through quality repetition, parts of the brain that are naturally built for some other process can be rewired for reading.
“How you fire is how you wire,” he said.
Adults Can Lead
Parents, of course, set examples for their children.
An analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported by the iScience academic journal indicates that only 16 percent of Americans aged 15 and up read for pleasure regularly in 2023, down from 28 percent in 2004. It also said only 2 percent of the survey participants read with children on the average day. The data is based on a survey of 236,270 people over 20 years.
“People have a finite amount of leisure time and limited cognitive ability, resulting in an attention economy whereby activities are in competition,” the iScience report reads.
A March 23 EdWeek research center report, based on a nationwide survey of 693 teachers, principals, and district-level school leaders, found 72 percent of educators at the secondary level (grades 6 to 12) would like to see parents more involved in their child’s reading progress. Additionally, 58 percent of those surveyed indicated that more than one-quarter of their middle- or high school students struggle with basic-level reading.
Gemar Mills, executive director of the College Achieve Paterson K–12 public charter district in New Jersey, began phasing in an intensive book-reading curriculum in 2023 because many of his students come from low-income households where parents rarely read for pleasure, have a limited vocabulary, or even struggle with English. Students in grades 6 to 9 read novels in the classroom 150 minutes per week and spend 100 minutes each week discussing the books.
Students in grades 10 to 12 are expected to read more outside of school, but they also have more freedom to choose books they like. Test scores have surged in recent years, with at least three-quarters of students in the district achieving above proficiency level, not to mention higher SAT scores, expanded vocabulary, and noticeable improvement in research skills, Mills said.
“This is a case study that worked,” he told The Epoch Times. “You attach [a novel requirement], and students start to realize that they are missing out on a lot of things if they’re not reading for pleasure.”
Bringing Back the Classics
The model legislation would require that two of the four assigned books be originally published before 1900. Novels, autobiographies, and plays meet the criteria.
“We note that in practice, blue and red states will tend toward different selections,” Kurtz said. “That’s alright, so long as there’s a good mixture of classics, and all the books have a strong critical track record.”
He said the legislation would restore English language arts standards and the love of reading.
“Nothing matches the drama, the beauty, or the depth of a book,” Kurtz said. “Yet, videos and social media have distracted us to the point where many college students can no longer finish a classic work of literature or philosophy. Many high school English classes no longer assign whole books. If not there, where?”
Zulchriss Lopez, another high school senior from Paterson, New Jersey, said she discovered the joy of reading because of the classics. Her Advanced Placement English class requires multiple books per semester. She just started Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
“It just lets you step into that other world in a different way” that movies and music can’t offer, Lopez told The Epoch Times. “Before this year, I never had someone to give me that push and direction. Now, I want to push myself to read harder books.”
Lewis said that in her experience, classic novels aren’t always entertaining, but they show the foundation that inspired so many great contemporary authors across all genres, including Stephen King and Alice Walker.
“From [classics], schools should expand genres—mystery, thriller, historical,” she said. “We need more people to read. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
