The building blocks of literacy and citizenship
We need to elevate our approach to the humanities.
In January of 1776, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet called Common Sense. The pamphlet argued that Americans should pursue political independence from Britain. It was an argument for self-government; it was an argument against monarchy; it was a practical argument for the benefits of American autonomy. The pamphlet went viral and influenced public opinion in the colonies in the months preceding the official Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution Center describes Common Sense as being written for an audience of ordinary readers: “In plain, unadorned writing, it appealed to the common capacities of all people to evaluate the case for independence.”
The pamphlet runs 47 pages long. It contains 20,000 words. The reading level in today’s terms would be approximately 12th grade or early college.
They didn’t have reading standards or standardized tests back in 1776, but we can conclude that the “common capacities of the people” were proficient, measured by the fact that they were able to read and understand Common Sense.
The methods of teaching literacy were solid back then, even though accessibility to education wasn't universal across the American colonies.
Today, schools spend a lot of time focusing on data and tests. We have more standards than we know what to do with.
Civics scores have declined (slightly) since 2018 as measured by the NAEP, which has caused a debate as to how to increase civics scores. Starting in 2015, Arizona became the first of several states to require students to pass a civics test with 100 multiple-choice questions asking basic things like “When was the U.S. Constitution written?” and “Why do we have 13 stripes on the flag?”
Arizona state testing results were just released last week, showing mixed results on the subject of “English Language Arts,” which includes reading. Arizona reading standards measure things like whether students can “Determine and analyze the development and interaction of two or more central ideas over the course of a text to provide a complex analysis or objective summary.”
My gut reaction is that we have become too technical in our approach to the humanities. We would do better with a more expansive approach. We should increase the amount of reading done in schools, and we should improve the quality of how students interact with texts.
The Atlantic recently published an article by Rose Horowitch titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The conclusion is that standardized testing and smartphones have combined to shrink young people’s ability to read. Horowitch draws this conclusion through interviews with college professors and K-12 teachers.
Here are two pieces of evidence the article provides for the decline of reading habits:
“In 1976, about 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped.”
“In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey of about 300 third-to-eighth-grade educators, only 17 percent said they primarily teach whole texts. An additional 49 percent combine whole texts with anthologies and excerpts. But nearly a quarter of respondents said that books are no longer the center of their curricula.”
Horowitch describes the damaging effects of state testing:
For more than two decades, new educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core emphasized informational texts and standardized tests. Teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author’s main idea—mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests.
One of the high school teachers quoted in The Atlantic article disagreed with how her quote was framed. Carrie M. Santo-Thomas pushed back on the article’s conclusions in a Substack post titled “The Atlantic Did Me Dirty.” It’s not the testing or the smartphones, she says, it's the fact that “Gen Z and Gen Alpha don’t cow to authority for authority’s sake. They simply won’t do things they don’t want to do, and I actually kinda love that.”
Santo-Thomas thinks the problem is that teachers want students to read the classics, and students find those to be boring. She thinks students are more than happy to read long-form content, including books, if we add more variety to the reading lists: “It should go without saying that there is a medium between TikTok and Tolstoy. If we position ourselves as fighting against social media and short-form entertainment, we’ve already lost.”
I think it’s obvious that standardized testing and digital technology have combined to negatively influence the quality of reading that is done in schools. This is true regardless of the specific texts you think should be required reading.
It’s a fact that English teachers and history teachers in the public school system are pressured to drill students with reading standards that will show up on state tests.
The state reading standards try to dissect skills that come naturally — even unconsciously — to stronger readers. I don’t think it works very well. It’s like breaking down a golf swing by analyzing what a pro golfer is doing with his elbow, and then drilling novice players on how to position their elbows. It would be more helpful for novice players to work on big muscle mechanics and to not think anything about what the elbow is doing.
The folks who read Common Sense back in 1776 were obviously able to “determine and analyze the development and interaction of two or more central ideas over the course of a text,” even though they had never seen a multiple-choice question in their lives.
Rather than starting out with a technical reading standard and analyzing the life out of a short excerpt of a text, classrooms should spend more time reading and discussing solid texts, which would help students become stronger readers.
As for the technological aspect, our attention spans are probably shortened for good. Instead of reading by candlelight, we have social media and Netflix. Written today, Common Sense would be a 4,000 word Substack post.
Schools don’t have to cater to short attention spans, though. Not entirely. Classrooms can be counter-cultural spaces where reading and thinking is done every day. If teachers want students to read the classics, they can read the classics.
It might not be possible to assign the same amount of nightly reading, or weekly reading, as before the digital revolution. But that doesn’t mean we should give up our expectation that students are reading substantively.
If we drop the overly technical approach to reading, how do we measure literacy in schools?
I’ll just brainstorm an idea.
Pizza Hut used to do the “Book It” program where, if you read a certain number of books, you would get a personal pan pizza. If I remember correctly, you had to pass a reading comprehension quiz, given by a teacher, to prove you read the book.
What if we measured how many books students were reading per grade? If students demonstrate comprehension of a book (or a primary text), they get points for having read that book. Higher points is higher proficiency.
The books (or primary texts) could be categorized by reading level, with an extra multiplier for historically significant texts (or something like that). In this way, teachers and schools would be incentivized to teach books and substantive texts.
If students needed to demonstrate reading comprehension, teachers would be incentivized to hold class discussions based on the text, and assign writing tasks based on the text, as a way to enrich student understanding.
Wouldn’t we produce stronger readers with this method than what we’re doing now with the goofy state tests?
Wouldn’t students have a higher vocabulary?
Wouldn’t teachers and students find this method more motivational?
This is just one half-baked idea. It would only work, I think, if teachers were given autonomy to give students a “pass” on a text, and policymakers don’t trust teachers with this kind of power.
My point is that, if we must use a metric to track literacy, we should find something that encourages students to read.
Just to be clear: I am not against the concept of academic testing. I’m in favor of using tests like the SAT as a measure of college aptitude. I think it’s a good thing we do NAEP testing as a way of comparing academic performance over time.
My argument is that our state testing system has created a mind-numbing set of incentives. The system is obsolete.
I think we should feel a sense of urgency to advance the humanities in American society.
A good start would be to elevate and humanize our classrooms.
Thank you Billy. Civics and humanities should be taught in every grade. Sandra Day O’Connor and John McCain would have agreed. No child left behind, left a lot of students dumber, made teachers jobs harder and eventually made distrust of public schools the norm in Arizona. Yes and then came the internet. I am in the school of LET TEACHERS TEACH! Helicopter parents who read, on a “Facebook for parents” thread. (Disclaimer, I don’t social media). School board members who think they know more than teachers, ( I have been a school board member) administrators who don’t help out teachers with discipline issues. They are too busy doing paper work or too afraid of upsetting a parent which has driven students from public schools to charters and private school who are less regulated. This shift has been going on for 35-40 years thanks to our Republican dominated legislature squeezing dollars from schools. I can’t help wondering, just my wondering, if Preston Lord would be alive if the upper class kids at their Gilbert school had been taught more humanities, how to deal with classmates verbally not with violence. I remember my 7th grader (1995) taking a class in conflict resolution. It was mandatory. I’m sure those days are gone.
Bravo, Billy!!
You nailed it. We are hollowing out young brains by failing to even give them a chance to experience what satisfaction and--often--joy books can deliver. Plus, the interaction discussions provide in open classroom dialogue prepare students for, among other things, engaging in their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic republic. The quality of public exchange seems dedicated to fostering conflict, distortion, and misunderstanding. Public communication, especially regarding governance and politics, is a catastrophe, measured by volume, not clarity.
I don't know if your strategy would work or not. But, it's a damn good place to start and who knows how many great ideas could grow from that seed to yield a rich array of possibilities teachers could draw from?
Isn't it ironic that a system intended to measure how well we are doing is destroying the possibility of doing it well?