Are we reading less—or is the way we read changing? Inspired by a provocative recent article in The Atlantic, Stacy, Donell, and Lindsay take on some big questions about reading, attention, and what it means to be a reader today. Their conversation explores what may be changing, what may be at stake, and what educators can do about it.
Show Notes
A recent Atlantic article makes a provocative claim: America may not be becoming illiterate, but post-literate—a society in which people can read but increasingly choose other ways to learn, think, communicate, and entertain themselves.
In this episode, Stacy Hurst, Donell Pons, and Lindsay Kemeny unpack that idea and consider what declining reading habits, shorter attention spans, digital distractions, and changes in classroom reading experiences could mean for students and adults alike.
Their conversation explores the difference between knowing how to read and actually being a reader, including:
- The distinction between reading ability, reading behavior, reading stamina, and reading culture
- How smartphones, social media, short-form content, digital devices, and AI compete for attention
- Why sustained reading asks something different of the brain than more passive forms of media
- Whether schools have unintentionally contributed to the problem by relying more heavily on excerpts and short passages instead of whole books
- Why explicit reading instruction and opportunities for deep, meaningful reading shouldn't be treated as competing priorities
- The importance of read-alouds and shared reading experiences at home and in the classroom
- What teachers can—and can't—control when it comes to helping students become lifelong readers
- Some encouraging signs that reading may not be disappearing after all
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- The Atlantic: “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch
- The August 2026 article that sparked this episode's conversation.
- Read the article in The Atlantic
- Maryanne Wolf: “Elbow Room: How the Reading Brain Informs the Teaching of Reading”
- Wolf explores the relationship between foundational reading skills and the development of deep reading and comprehension.
- Read Elbow Room at the Shanker Institute
- Daniel Willingham: Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do
- Mentioned by Donell in the discussion of the many factors that contribute to developing an enjoyment of reading.
- Learn more about Daniel Willingham and the book at Reading Rockets
- Dallas ISD: Cellphone Restrictions and Library Checkouts
- Stacy and Lindsay reference reports of increased library use after cellphone restrictions. Dallas ISD reported more than 200,000 additional library checkouts through March 31, 2026—a 24.35% increase over the same period the previous school year.
- Read the CBS Texas report
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View Transcript
Narrator:
Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights, and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and chief academic advisor for Reading Horizons; Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia, and special education; and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author, and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst:
Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And today, boy, are we talking literacy! We are going to talk about the article from the August 2026 edition of the Atlantic. It was written by Rose Horwitz, and it is called "The End of Reading Is Here. It's got a lot of attention, and its title isn't exactly what you call subtle. The subtitle, though, does say that once we once assumed that universal literacy was inevitable, but now the age of reading itself may turn out to have been a relatively short period in human history. And this article is a lot. It goes from the Library of Alexandria to reading scores, to TikTok, to the human brain, to AI-it covers a lot. So, oh, to Bleak House, which I can't wait to hear your input on that, Donell. But basically, we're covering all of human civilization today, so no big deal. And thanks ahead of time to you two for reading this because it was long. How long did it take you to read it? It took me. I I want to say it was an hour.
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, it's long, and it's like I get the irony of it saying how we're not used to reading these longer things as I start skimming because it's so long. You know, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's right. Yes, yeah.
Stacy Hurst:
Because I knew I was leading the discussion. I've actually read it repeatedly, and I listened to it on Speechify. But I get it, Lindsay. There were time moments when I was doing the same thing because stamina, man. We're going to talk about that later too. Okay, so I thought we'd start with the big claim before we get to any of the evidence. She isn't actually arguing that Americans suddenly can't decode. She is making a distinction between being illiterate and being post-literate. And I'm going to start with reading from the article from one of our favorite people, Marianne Wolfe, and she says she argue Marianne Wolfe argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn't mean they're forgetting how to decode individual words; rather, they are losing the higher order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn't illiterate. It's post-literate. That distinction really interested me. We can be a society in which most people technically know how to read, and still become a society in which people increasingly choose not to read as a way of learning, thinking, communicating, or entertaining themselves. Do you buy it? Are we becoming post literate? What do you guys think? Is there a meaningful distinction between knowing how to read and being a reader?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Well, definitely. I feel like that's a whole nother question than your first one. Yeah, that's
Stacy Hurst:
true.
Lindsay Kemeny:
True. I I do agree with Marianne Wolf and the author here, where people are losing that ability because I feel like most of the texts people are taking in are like 150 characters or less. Right? We're texting. We're doing little posts where you have to fit everything in. We're skimming, you know, the little graphic to see what it says. Where our I don't know. I agree. I feel like our attention is being law. It's harder to maintain attention on something. Everything is short form.
Donell Pons:
Yeah, and this idea of illiterate Or you know, just post literate. That's a huge thing. And here's the thing that I think is worth fighting for. I think worth having this conversation and many others about is exactly why people historically you've got to go back a ways when. Folks were kept from reading, and why different populations, for various reasons, were kept from being able to read or being taught to read. And remember the reasonings behind that, and the reasonings were a lot of fear about oh dear, if this group or population become readers, they may not no longer allow themselves to be subjugated, or they may rise up, or whatever other fear or concern. And remember, those that couldn't read the Bible, and it was in a language that others were not taught, and it was kept in that language because they were concerned about their interpretation. So that's something to really remember when we're discussing: is reading worth preserving? What has reading really done for us, because that was really the mark was the ability of an individual to sit down with those words and interpret for themselves. And again, it was more than oral language in a quick conversation where you might grab a snippet here, you might interrupt there. That's a different type of communication than sitting with long form, a piece of writing in words, and just you and those words, and you and those words making connections that only you can make. That's different, and that also makes me think of an individual who wrote a little memoir about being in the Holocaust, and he was in a concentration camp, and he would repeat lines of prose that he could remember. And he said, "As long as I could do that, they could not break my soul, because there in those words was freedom. There in those words was my soul.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, you know, you make me think as you're talking about that. Like it is so important that people have access to text for those reasons because print has also been used to manipulate our thinking. Right, whether it is you you are not allowed to learn how to read, and even the author brings up a time when women were it was discouraged that like people got worried when women started reading. Yeah, and then, but you think about it. Even and they bring up the founding fathers, which I thought was timely because it's our 250th anniversary of our country. But they used a document to start the whole process of independence and and liberty and all the the things that we hold so dear, and also they used pamphlets and newspaper articles too. I learned a new word today, guys. You probably already knew this, but it's foment, and that means to stir up or to warm up the conversation. So, reading is one thing; being able to critically think about it is definitely another. Right? It's the difference between just believing everything on the internet or actually thinking about it. Yes. Okay. So I want before we get too far down that road, I want to look at the evidence because there are a lot of statistics in this article. I don't know if you noticed that, but taken together, I kind of found them pretty sobering. So I'll just kind of break it up based on the the the demographic they were addressing, so starting with adults. Okay, here are the stats. I'll just pause after each one, and if you have something to say about that one, just dive in. Okay, fewer than half of American adults reported reading a book of any kind in 2022.
Donell Pons:
Sounds about right. Yeah, that could surprise me.
Stacy Hurst:
It kind-I don't know if it surprised me or not, but I-you'll hear me talk about this probably throughout, and you've all heard me say this before. That first assignment I give my students to tell me about the five most impactful books in their lives. There's probably a lot of data here that backs up what this author is saying, but notably, there were a lot of my students who mentioned that they gained a renewed love of reading during the pandemic because there wasn't much else to do. Like they were limited in what they could do. So by hearing 2022, which was not long after the pandemic, I don't know. I guess that didn't apply to most
people, okay. Next statistic:
only 38% read a novel or short story. You know, I actually well, or read. Sorry, read a novel or short story. I was going to say, do I fall into that statistic? Because I mostly read nonfiction, but no, I I read at least a novel a year. How about you guys?
Lindsay Kemeny:
I mean, I've probably read like 10 this summer, so I did a lot. And it's my new favorite thing on the airplane is to bring a good thriller. I like thrillers. Okay, thriller. Yeah, like mysteries and that kind of thing, so yeah, it's. I love. I don't even watch. I like. I don't like watching movies on planes anymore. I just want to have a book.
Stacy Hurst:
You know, I I have read Anne Patchett maybe more than one of hers this year. So yeah. But Lindsay, I want your book list. I think we should put it in the show notes. What are you? I found a couple
Lindsay Kemeny:
different authors, and then I just was going to the library and getting like all their books, and I was, oh my gosh, this is and kind of getting into these ghost stories and things. It was so fun. And during the school year, I don't have a lot of time to read, and and so it was really nice during the the summer. In fact, I have one more book from the library. School starts next week, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to read that book. I got to do it because then I go back into kind of this desert where I'm not reading. So I understand people that don't read a novel because you don't have the time.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, that's true. And I will just put up there. We have President Obama's reading list just came out. We'll add Lindsay's to it in the show note. How about that, Donell? What about you? I I imagine you. I mean, yeah. Tell us about your reading.
Donell Pons:
No, I just I yeah, sure. I I like to read, but I mean, for for other people, I I hate recommending or saying you have to do this or do that, and I really recommend just going and exploring for yourself. Yeah, you know, plop yourself down in a library, go to a genre. If you're unfamiliar with your library, they are so informative at the library. You learn very quickly that they know their stuff at the library, so make a little trip to the information desk. I guarantee you, you will not be sorry that you did, and they'll show you around the library and just kind of explore for you. If you don't do a lot of reading, I would recommend treat yourself to that because it is a bit of a treat.
Stacy Hurst:
Yes, or Barnes and Noble, where they have a cafe and you can get a literal treat or a drink. I have a whole process in Barnes and Noble. Yeah, that's true. You don't have to, and you can sit down and read there. I always read the first few pages, like I narrow it down to what I want to buy. Then I read the first few pages, see if it makes the final cut. But back in the day when we actually, I think we did have cell phones. Mine was probably off. There were a number of times that over the intercom of Barnes and Noble, I was called to the front desk because my family didn't know where I was, and they called Barnes and Noble, and there I was. So I love that. We'll bring Barnes and Noble up a little bit later
too. Okay, next stat:
daily reading for pleasure fell from 28% in 2020 2004 2004 to 16% in 2023. Ah, that's a big dive in that amount of time. And this is about the time that cell phones became a little more accessible, iPads, so forth. That comes from a study of 236,000 adults. Now, here's the the statistic that just kind of sickens me because I think I've been assuming otherwise. Only 2% of adults read to a child on any on a given Day, yeah. I mean, maybe some people don't have children to read to, but 2%
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah.
Stacy Hurst:
Anything in there that surprised you guys, or
Donell Pons:
it's just Blake. It's all Blake. Ah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
and and we have a lot of people lying on their little reading forms, like for school day. Like I went to my child. Yes,
Stacy Hurst:
always you regret if you are. Well, you're in the very small minority then. Okay, now let's now statistics related to kids among 13 year olds. Those reporting that they rarely or never read for fun went from 8% in 1984. I mean that would be us basically. We were kate. I won't want. We won't talk about our ages. To 29 in 2025. What was the first? Sorry. What was the first one? Yeah, they never read the those reporting they they rarely or never read for fun went from 8% in 1984 to 29% 2025. More than 80% of grade three through eight teachers reported that students' reading stamina has declined since 2019, and then by eighth grade, the average child reportedly spends about four and a half hours a day on social media. Okay, and then statistics related to achievement. These won't be surprising based on those facts. Only 35% of high school seniors scored at NAEP proficient in reading in 2024. I think we know that roughly the same percentage scored below basic, and among adults, the percentage performing at the lowest literacy levels increased from about. 19% in 2017 to 28% in 2023. That's a big jump in not very many years. Sobering is a good word, Donna. It's kind of okay. So those last statistics kind of move us into something different. We're not talking about at this point. We're not talking about people who don't choose to pick up a book and read. We're talking about reading proficiency and comprehension. So I think we have to consider reading ability, reading behavior, reading stamina and attention, and then this broader idea of reading culture seems like they're all connected, but they're not quite the same thing. So it kind of makes me think we have several different problems being collapsed into one, like it's probably a perfect storm, right?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, yeah.
Stacy Hurst:
It's really interesting, and I'm trying to think about my own reading behavior over those years we've been talking about, but I don't know that it's changed that much. Okay, so oh, go ahead. You don't like my reading has yeah. I think mine has stayed like I don't think I fall into the broad categories that they just shared. Like maybe when we're talking about reading behavior, like you and I already mentioned, Lindsay skimming. Yeah, I think I've increased that.
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah. Well, just taking the time. I mean, I so prefer reading a physical book more than digital, and it just slows you down. You're less distracted and gives you that time to think more deeply about the text. And you know, if I'm being honest, I feel like that is maybe getting harder for me than it used to be. Than it used to. Like I feel like I I do feel like it's my attention. My attention is shifting, and I personally think that's a result of you know online. Let's just this digital age.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, which
Lindsay Kemeny:
maybe we'll talk about that more, I don't know, but I do feel like it's hard to be like. Well, wait, oh, I need to check this, or what about this, or what about you know when I read like a heavy book and I find my mind wandering, or I need to check something, like I feel that that yeah makes sense to me.
Stacy Hurst:
You're making me think of two things. First of all, the it's notable that you mentioned when you're on an airplane, because that used to be for me the only time that distractions were not an option. Like you, and that was before they had TV screens and all the shows that you could access. That reading and it really, I feel like those opportunities put you in a state of flow that we don't normally get into because you you have no option you can't be distracted by some things you have limited access, but even that now we have competition because we have that screen in front of us with so many options right of what to watch or listen to, and then the other thing that makes me think about too is just the yeah that just that sense of flow. I don't take the time to do that. I am reading Young Suk Kim's new book. It's fantastic, but not coincidentally, I also bought a brick. If you've heard of that, that will shut down my phone, my apps, so I can focus and read. So I I'm having to do more to make sure I can concentrate.
Lindsay Kemeny:
I I joke with my I'll joke with my kids about it even because as I was like as I'm like writing working on a book myself, and especially if it's a part that I'm like I'm not excited to work on this, and then I hear my phone, and I'll joke. I'll be like, "Oh, a distraction! Yeah, let me save by the bell. Exactly. But yeah, I don't know. I think our our our lives too are just so like rushed. This this this, and you do scroll this this headline, this headline, this headline. That that I mean, I really believe it's kind of changing. It's changing us. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
I agree. I agree, Donell. Anything to add to that?
Donell Pons:
No, just I mean, we're all compelled, and obviously the industry is set up to compel you to be engaged with it, right? We know this. We know that they they use all kinds of techniques in order to keep us engaged. Keep us coming back. I think there's even data around the fact that just having it sitting on a table, you're distracted thinking about what might be occurring, even if it's face down. So even having the device near you is still a distraction. And and I would say that's very true with my students. We actually have to put the device out of visual field because it's still a. Distraction just sitting face down on even with it turned off, so you're not even going to get a notification. It is still a distraction thinking about what might be occurring in that device, and boy, that then you know that they're really good at it. They've really got you. So this attention economy we've talked about it has different names, different things is real, and if it's working that hard, and the book industry is still the book industry, and the engagement is really you coming to the book to find the book, you turning the pages to get engaged. How does that compete? Oh,
Lindsay Kemeny:
it's not just yeah. There's so many things here because it's not just the like enjoying reading, but you have to enjoy it and desire to do it more than the other things that you could be addicted to, like social media or something. And then on top of that, it's like we're saying maintaining the attention on it. You so first, okay, yes, I want to read this book, but then this part's a little slow, or getting distracted, or I wonder what so and so just tagged me for on social media. You know, and imagine just a young. I mean, it's it's it can be hard as adults. So imagine our young like teenagers, like that's you know where, I mean that just takes a lot of self discipline. I don't know, so I mean those statistics are are troubling, but they're also kind of not surprising to me.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
and it becomes harder to eliminate those distractions. Case in point, I turned off my phone before we started recording. Clearly, I'm on my laptop where the notification for of a text came through anyway, and that's me as an adult. And I thought I shut that off, but clearly I didn't. But maybe children or even teenagers don't know how to lock those things down. So when they do need to concentrate, it's harder to do that anyway. So the author lists a lot of well, I'll use the word blame. She is placing blame of some of this, and there are plenty of things to blame. She calls out television, smartphones, social media, things we've talked about, schools, short form video, changing reading instruction, digital devices, AI, lots of things. Here's the
quote from the article:
Now entertainment is limitless, kind of like what you guys just said. There's no hard stop. One show bleeds into the next. People watch TV with their phone in hand, monitoring social media or texting with friends. Netflix has reportedly told directors and screenwriters to assume that the audience isn't paying attention, and to constantly remind viewers of what's going on. In this environment, people have to be really determined to read, and most aren't. I'm not gonna lie; that is me watching TV. I don't just sit and watch something,
Lindsay Kemeny:
yeah, insane.
Donell Pons:
So think about the brain capacity. It really, it's it's rather remarkable that anyone's reading. Quite frankly, doing long form reading, that's quite remarkable, actually. Because if you think about it, think about the brain space that you did have prior. I know it's really hard to imagine a world where you don't have all these devices and things, but now the brain is constantly thinking about because if I'm not engaged, the updates I need to be updated. I need to be aware because then I'm out of the loop. I'm not going to know what everyone's talking about. Someone's going to see something. I'm not going to know what it is. Oh, do I understand that thing? I can just quickly Google it. That capacity-just imagine-that's going on constantly in the brain, and then you're supposed to slow things down. I'm talking slow things down, not that it's a slower thing, right? But the requirement is that we're going to do this with more intention and purpose, and the payoff may come later. We're not used to a payoff that comes later either. We want instant gratification.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, that's a good point. So maybe go ahead, Lindsay. Oh well, just listening
Lindsay Kemeny:
or watching something is more passive. And if we are, you know, we're actually doing the reading, then we're doing the work. And like Donell says, you slow down, you stop, you think about something. You ponder. You go back and read something again that you that you know you didn't understand, and that doesn't happen scrolling a phone or watching a video where those scenes are changing like so quick. You know, it's funny. I joke with my kids like, oh, you know, just the videos now. Like, do you remember Bambi? I'm like, there's like five minutes of just like here's the meadow and just like
Stacy Hurst:
yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
and la la la. And like nowadays, the shows there's like every 20 seconds we're changing scenes and we're going from yeah, you know, it just kind of. You know, it's so good for us to take a break from that and to dig into a text, and you just you don't you want kids to experience that and just grappling through a text and grappling through their thoughts instead of just
Stacy Hurst:
yeah just consuming and passively yeah okay more statistics but to wrap that, well, not to wrap it up, but to like to say put a fine point on it. Maybe technology hasn't changed our ability to read; it just changes what we have to compete with in order to do it, which it's a lot.
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Stacy Hurst:
Okay, more stats. Most secondary ELA teachers assign only zero to four whole books a year.
Donell Pons:
Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
was that the case for you guys in high school? How many did you read?
Lindsay Kemeny:
I don't know. We read a lot in high school, and we would have different kind of categories, tragedies, comedies, or whatever, and you'd had like I remember having like six different classics you could choose. I remember reading like Tess of the Dubervilles for one, or like Wuthering Height,
Stacy Hurst:
yeah, and
Lindsay Kemeny:
all of this, yeah.
Donell Pons:
And we actually read them. Everyone actually read them.
Stacy Hurst:
Okay, that's what I was gonna make. I was in AP English, and so I don't know what it was like in like the other English class. But I like you're saying though, Lindsay. I think we all read like we were all assigned books. But I do remember we had an excellent teacher, and I bet we probably read a book a month or every six weeks. To be honest, but that's probably when we started saying let's watch the movie instead. So that was a movie though where you had to physically go to a video store and rent a movie. Anyway, but yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
and with my own children in high school, it's not like it's not like when I was. I felt like we constantly were doing a book study on a book, and they're not. And I even I think I've shared on this podcast before when my son was a year ago. They were reading Lord of the Flies, so that I'm like, okay, they are reading a book, but they weren't even required to read every chapter. And my son was so mad at me when I was like, no, you're gonna read this chapter, and he's like, "No, we don't have to. It's infinite. You don't have to. You know, this one we can skip and go. I'm like, "You're gonna read the whole thing, you know, and I just couldn't fathom that. Like, okay, yes, now we're doing a full book, but we're not really picking and choosing chapters. What is that,
Stacy Hurst:
Donell? When you were teaching. How many books did you sign in a school year?
Donell Pons:
Yeah, we were already well into this. We had phones, distractions, and then I also taught all levels of English and school newspaper, and it varied greatly. It varied greatly by the students' background, what their interests were, as to how much they had read, how much they were willing to read. I was often surprised by honors classes where you might get out of a classroom of 30 students, five who actually read the whole book. That was not uncommon, and that was then. And and now I, I mean, it's it's much worse. And my students with dyslexia who are in English classes, traditional English classes at their high schools, are usually the only one to read the book because we're doing it together in tutoring, and they'll report that I was the only one who read the book, and that's not uncommon.
Stacy Hurst:
And probably unlike like Lindsay's sons, because Lindsay made him read the chapter too. Like, yeah, okay, more than 80% of elementary teachers surveyed said students receive a school-issued device by kindergarten. Many curricula increasingly rely on excerpts and short passages. So, how much of this is the teachers, and how much of this is the curricula that they're they're made to use? Okay, from the article, faced with shrinking attention spans and declining comprehension, schools might have been expected to resist the impulse toward shorter passages and shallower reading. Instead, they spurred it on. She is blaming schools here. A 2025 survey found that most middle and high school English teachers assigned zero to four books a year. Successive waves of education reforms have led districts to favor short passages over full books, the better to mimic multiple choice reading comprehension exams. Many of the most popular school curricula now rely on excerpts.
Donell Pons:
Yeah, but that also goes along with reading statistics too of how many students can competently read those passages that are given to so any given book, and so you're also going to respond to that. I remember in my middle school class of students that I had, I take them down to get them tested, do a reading test at the beginning, just to kind of get a feel for where my students are at, and find out that I've only got one class, about one class of students who are reading at or above grade level, and the rest are anywhere from two grade levels, three, four, and you know down to I can't even read. I'm reading word by word. What's a teacher to do? I mean that's and that's middle school, right? Who they have no background in how to teach reading.
Lindsay Kemeny:
I think this is the blame here goes to curriculum publishers because I feel like a lot of teachers do try to bring in. I mean, like I'm talking chapter books here. I'm thinking upper elementary, right? And and and so you have like those basal programs, and do a lot of them. You know, I don't, I haven't taught upper elementary, but it doesn't seem a lot like a lot of them have full books in their basal programs because they're jumping from week to week to like, oh, let's do author's purpose, oh, let's do compare contrast, let's do you know whatever, and they're just using these like different short stories or you know maybe excerpts from books rather than whole books. Where I feel, whereas I feel like I've seen a lot of teachers personally trying to get class sets of The Giver or class sets of whatever you know number the stars, all those different books, and trying to create their own kind of lesson plan unit based on those whole books. Which, like, that's like asking a pilot to to build the plane while flying it. But so I feel like it kind of depends on if the teacher is really going out of their way to try to implement those, but I feel like a lot of big bazel programs don't have whole books.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, which is kind of ironic, right? So there are two things. I don't schools do not have a reputation for resisting things, and I I think that's because maybe we don't have the power to do that, right? Like coming out and putting our foot down, and saying no, we will not. It's usually legislators or other governing bodies that make those decisions for teachers. But the other, so we do accommodate on some level. But as you're talking about that too, I think the irony is if you can read a whole book and get the many things there are to learn from reading a whole book-so many things, right? Then a passage that's on a test would be easier to read and get understanding from. So they, I, and I do think there's been an overemphasis on accountability on those school tests, and that's probably driven the curriculum that teachers have to use, so kind of accommodating for that too. It kind of just makes me think about like are are kids unable to sustain longer reading because we stopped asking asking them to do it, or did we stop asking them to do it because they couldn't sustain
Donell Pons:
it, I think it's a perfect storm of things that come together, don't you?
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, yeah. I do remember when I taught first grade stamina was a when we were talking about reading stamina. It was something we focused on. It was something that we built in our first graders, I mean it's first grade, so like, but my students could read out loud collectively, not chorally. Collectively out loud, it was kind of noisy in there, but they were up to 2025 minutes by the end of the school year. We had time every day where they did that. They were reading leveled readers. We won't talk about that, but we did have to build up to it. It was a focus, and I don't, I don't know. It might not be so much of a focus anymore. Okay, so this is where she like at this point in the article, the author takes it kind of to a bigger point about how reading changes the brain and changes. I should say changes the way we think. So here's an excerpt from the article, and this is really key. I think reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to. And the more you're rewarded with new understanding, eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the the converse is also is true as well. The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge. So I think we've already actually kind of addressed this, but the question
I have here is:
What does sustained reading ask the brain to do that watching or listening doesn't?
Donell Pons:
Yeah, it's a lot of cognitive things, right, that are occurring at once. So there's also a visual processing that's occurring in the brain, when when a scene is described, right? There's a description of a scene, and the beauty of that, there have been many people who've tried to replicate that in giving a description, a narrative description of what is what is occurring and how different it can be for different people from what their experiences, life experiences are, and then to have them describe their scene. So that's an aspect we don't talk a lot about, but it's very much a piece of what happens when someone reads a descriptive scene. And then there's phonological processing, there's language comprehension, there's semantic knowledge, there's executive functioning of things that come to the fore and things that you suppress. There's attention, memory. I mean, there's a host of things, right?
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, and it is unique because you're tying all of those things based on your background, your knowledge, and you're you're kind of interacting with engaging with what the author has written on the page.
Donell Pons:
So you think about regular exercise with those things. That just like physical exercise, regular mental exercise, how much better you get at putting all of those things together? Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
yeah, that's a good point. Okay, more statistics: screen attention reportedly fell from two and a half minutes in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to about 47 seconds more recently.
Donell Pons:
Ugh,
Stacy Hurst:
that screen attention,
Lindsay Kemeny:
and then we have to compete with that as teachers. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
right. Can I tell you the number of students I have that complain that I have so much reading in my course, and honestly, it's not, in my opinion, not that much. It's just that they're not used to doing it. Even in my, I taught a graduate class, and they were high school English. There was a high school English teacher who made that comment too. This is a lot of reading. In Hutton's study of young children, the brain region associated with imagination was activated about half as much during animated stories compared with illustrated, wait, let me start over. In Hutton's study of young children, the brain region associated with imagination was activated about half as much during animated stories compared with illustrated stories accompanied by audio.
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, and it also brings back to that, you know, the read aloud, the statistic you shared with the parents who read aloud to their child, and it really worries me. The more that are like, look at this app that's going to read it for you, or listen to Alexa read it for you, or whatever, Because for those reasons, Stacy, but also the beautiful connection that we have with you know with each other, a parent with a child, or a child with the caregiver, cuddled up and reading together is a special like bonding opportunity that's going to get lost if we're just saying listen to this audio book,
Donell Pons:
Lindsay. I love that you brought that up because I I witnessed this down visiting my grandson who is 21 months. He's been around books his whole life, and when he sat down by himself, pulls out his books. He likes to just sit down. Obviously, I mean he's got a little vocabulary, not a lot. I'm not saying this kid is speaking in full sentences. That's the beauty of this thing. He pulls out the book and starts babbling, but he does it in the voice that his dad or mom does it for that book. That connection, he's already so he gets to the page, in a deep voice that his dad might do, already mimicking that, right? So I mean, you can't replace that, and I think
Lindsay Kemeny:
same is true for in the classroom. Doing that when I am reading a story to my students, that again is this beautiful connection between us, where we're sharing the love. You know, I'm sharing my love of literature with them, or maybe a fascinating nonfiction book. You know, the the thrill of of what we're learning. I can share that they can feel my emotion. We can pause. I can point something out. They can say something. They interact more. That's very different than being like, I'm just going to put on this YouTube video of the story because then I can just sit and do my. Which I know you have a million things to do. I know you're like, I'm going to go and plan or grade page. I get that, but something is lost there.
Unknown:
Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
yeah, for sure, and that becomes an experience in and of itself. Whether you're a parent or a teacher, like you can't go on field trips every day. Most of us as teachers, but if you are reading aloud to a child, that's the same thing as going on a field trip, because then you can always refer back to that. I remember teaching first grade, and I read my my students a chapter book all the time. Like that was our part of our I read aloud multiple times in the day, but one was called a single shard, which was not even a first grade text. But we referred back to that book or the Little Prince many times throughout the day or the year because it does become an experience too. The content of that book and then, like you said, Lindsay, just that bonding and connection too. So then we're talking about the Bleak House study, the novel, and Donell. Yeah, I bet you have had this lived experience, I'm sure. So, English and English education majors-that's important. Their English and English education majors were given the opening seven paragraphs of Dickens, Dickens, and access to the internet. So, the Bleak House novel and access to the internet. At least 25% of those students interpreted figurative language literally, and only 5% of them demonstrated an accurate, detailed understanding of the passage. Is that a reading problem, a knowledge problem, a lack of experience with complex text problem, all of the above. What do you think, Donell?
Donell Pons:
Yeah, I mean, so that's that growth that comes as you continue to read. She addresses this and talks around it. The fact that okay, so once you've taught someone to read, which is not a question she's even addressing. It's okay now. You know how to read. What are you doing with it? And that's really what she's talking about here throughout. And that's that piece where if you have done the good hard work, students are reading. Maybe they need more. We've identified because we're really getting on top of it, so that students are getting the same opportunity to read. And that's that chasm of the Grand Canyon that can happen for kids who take off with reading and go, and the kids who are struggling and don't, and that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Right? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of I'm only going to get further behind because I'm not able to take in the information, and so with that, you're gaining all kinds of things: extended vocabulary, you're introduced to new concepts or ideas that you didn't know, things that you haven't seen or aren't going to go see, but you can have a deep, rich background and understanding because you've read about them. Interpersonal relationships that you've read about, all of these things that you're gaining as you're reading and taking in a corpus of work, so that hopefully by the time you make it to a college course in literature, because that's what you really want to study, you might be introduced to terminology that certainly isn't a part of your day to day, but because you've read it in the past or been introduced, or you can even extrapolate because you have enough information, you're not able to do it, and therefore not interested.
Stacy Hurst:
So that brings us to probably the most important question that we could address today: Have we become so focused on teaching children how to read, that we paid too little attention to whether they become people who actually like to read, and I think about that over the span of development. And I guess my big question is, how do we do that? How do we teach elementary school students to like reading, and then how do we teach older students to like reading? How do we teach struggling readers to like reading? How do we ensure that pre-service teachers like reading? Because my students are probably no exception. I don't. There are few that are avid readers and love it, and others that say they haven't read a book since middle school. How do we? So, if I wanted to steal an
Donell Pons:
answer to this,
Stacy Hurst:
yeah,
Donell Pons:
Stacy, it's more it's more complicated than one thing. It's far more complex than one thing. So, I think if we were to just simply hone in on the did we spend too much time doing this instead, we're going to miss all of what happened with our our very online lives that are very engaged in the attention economy. If we leave that out, and how it follows us everywhere, it's just that's just the way that it is. So there's that piece to it, but there's also a piece I don't think we're ever not benefited by teachers understanding how people learn to read. I think that's completely beneficial, and I don't care what age you teach, there's still benefits to knowing how someone learns to read. What what are those pieces, so that you can identify for someone if there are challenges with even that basic decoding interaction with text. But then it also gives you a better foundation for understanding. Okay, so then once they have these skills, what are the things that develop as a result of those skills? It's the whole rope, right? It's it's all Scarborough's rope, and I think those are all beneficial. Should we be paying attention to how those intersect with our attention economy and the challenges of reading? Oh yeah, I think we should be paying way more attention to that, and should have been for sure. You're
Stacy Hurst:
reminding me of Marianne Wolf's elbow room article where she talks about that teaching, and you're kind of balancing them out. I will say, Lindsay, you had this experience too, I'm sure, because we were we started our teaching careers in balanced literacy time period. But my the fact that my students they were so easy to influence, maybe because I'm an avid reader and I love it, which makes us wonder: Do you have to love reading to teach it? But the problem became that I was almost setting them up for failure because they loved it so much and wanted to do it so badly, and then they couldn't decode. They couldn't do the thing I'd been modeling, and that's what turned. You know, you've heard this story before, but yeah, there's so much to be, I think, unpacked there. Like you said, Donell, Lindsay, what are you thinking?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, so your question, you know, have we focused too much on children learning how to read or teaching children how to read? No, absolutely not. And I think all these statistics show that because learning how to read is not just about decoding, but also as we showed, like being able to think deeply about a text and comprehend it-that's all part of it. And obviously, we need more of all of that. And then I think, you know, here's the thing: I can control more. I can teach a child to read. I can control that, but it's an unfair expectation to put on me or teachers to say you have to get them to like it because that is their their preference. My my son wants me to play learn how to play Halo with him. He wants me to like video games. It doesn't matter how well he teaches me how to play. I'm not going to like it. I don't want to do it. It's just not going to change, and so it's unfair to say you've got to teach them to like it, or or like that's my job. I want everyone to love love reading, and that's my that's what I'm going to try to do. Get them to want to read in their spare time. That's just that's just way too much to put on someone. Do I want my students to love reading? Of course I do. So, am I going to try to facilitate? You know, facilitate that. Absolutely, I'm going to show my love for reading. I'm going to talk about the books I like. I'm going to make sure we have are exposed to lots of different texts in my class. I'm not just going to have AI spit out these like like texts for them, and that's all they read. No, we're bringing in chrysanthemum, we're bringing in Pete the Cat, we're bringing in you know all the the hungry caterpillar, all the wonderful books that are out there, and and I hope to inspire them to love to read, and I'm giving them time to browse through my library, get their hands on books, and look at them and interact with them, and we're going to talk about it. But it's not my job to make them like it, I guess. So even though I want that, I can't control that. And so, yeah.
Donell Pons:
And Lindsay, you make a really good point. Even the work of Daniel Willingham, look him up because he does a lot of work around the psychology about how people develop a love of reading, and it takes a lot of things. It's everything from home environment and books and watching other people do it, role models around you, people you care about doing that thing. So there's a lot that goes into it, as you're saying.
Lindsay Kemeny:
And then, as we mentioned earlier, not just liking it, but then you've got to like it more than everything else you could be doing at that time. So that's a lot to compete with.
Stacy Hurst:
That is, but I do think, and I'm not being contrarian here, but I am thinking like your example of being a video game connoisseur is well taken. I'm with you on that, but I also don't. I have made it through my life quite successfully without playing video games. That is not something that is I have to rely on that ability. So being able to read, yes, but then maybe instead of asking the question, should we make sure our students like put it upon ourselves to make sure they love reading is the wrong question. Rather, helping them to see the benefit of it throughout their lives, because you will have limitations if you don't do
Lindsay Kemeny:
it. Yeah, that's true. And but and that we can control a little more the ability to read because they are they are going to have to read their entire lives different things, but they might not be reading for pleasure. But they, but we want them to be able to successfully read this contract or read this whatever from the company. You know what your work. You know the company you're working for. Purpose
Stacy Hurst:
and for purpose. Yeah, read the
Donell Pons:
purpose. Yeah, yeah. And you know, Stacy, this kind of comes full circle to at the beginning of this conversation when I said I would encourage somebody to go into the library and browse,
Stacy Hurst:
yeah, and just have an
Donell Pons:
experience, because that's really what it comes down to. Is unless you find a way where you're engaging in the way that you want to engage with reading and with reading material, no one can do that for you.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, that's true. You cannot outsource that for sure. Okay, just in in conclusion here, because I don't want to end with gloom and doom and the collapse of Western civilization. There are some statistics in here that are encouraging and hopeful? Here's something from the article: Those inclined to dismiss the present assault on reading point to this venerable tradition, decrying some new technology or medium as distracting and debasing the American people. But perhaps 126 years from now, this essay will seem like the latest such exercise in hand wringing. Looking back at these laments, I notice that the people most invested in the old modes are usually the quickest to predict that all will be lost. But here's some cool things: print book sales are higher than a decade ago. Print book sales are higher than a decade ago. I promised we'd talk about Barnes and Noble. Here we are. Barnes and Noble opened more than 60 stores last year. That's significant. Nearly 400 independent bookstores opened in 2025, and audio books are a billion-dollar industry. And
then this also from the article:
The optimists overlook a crucial thread in the data. Text is thriving among a dwindling proportion of the population. Just 20% of adults accounted for more than 80% of all the books read last year. It's becoming a kind of niche hobby like stamp collecting or growing orchids. Readers spend more time reading each day. Readers spend more time reading each day than they did two decades ago. They appear to be even more passionate about print than their predecessors. But the people devoted to text who derive cultural understanding and intellectual connection from the written word are now part of a subculture. 20% of adults account for more than 80% of all books read. So maybe the end of reading is actually the The wrong description is it disappearing or is it just becoming more polarized? Is this the Matthew effect in a new way? Those who like reading will read more and like it more, and those who don't like it won't read and won't like it even more. Like that, I don't know. What do you think?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, I don't. I think her title isn't the best title for this because it is does like to me after reading her beautifully written article. I mean, could we just say wow, she is a gifted writer? But it's not saying really the end of reading. But you know, I think it's a good call for us as educators. Like, what can I, what can I take away from this? You know, I am going to do all I can to make sure my students have the ability to read, and and because then they have the option to do that for pleasure. But if I and and you know if I if I can't get them to read, then of course they're not not going to read for pleasure. So we want that opportunity for them. So we're going to do all I can, and and we can't think of learning how to read ends in the lower grades because there's a lot more to it to understand to make these inferences. Like you were talking with Bleak House, and to think deeply, and we've got to get our students able to sustain their attention as they read longer texts. So, what can we do to help facilitate that? Things to think about.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, I love that. Some other statistics that she share have to do with controlling the environment in which we're responsible for, like schools have enacted school day cell phone restrictions or bans, and then in Dallas, apparently one district reported 200,000 more library checkouts after they enacted that policy, like 25% increase. So maybe those are some things that will happen in our environment. But to your point, Lindsay, like we can do some things differently too to make sure that we're addressing that.
Lindsay Kemeny:
You know, there was a headline I saw, which I'm. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna. I didn't read the whole thing. As I was scrolling on my phone, you know, talking about junior highs and high schools that have restricted phones, like they're not allowed. Once they did that, kids were checking more books out at the library. So where they had like bell to bell no phones, like not in between classes or anything, kids were checking out more books. And I thought, oh, that is awesome. So for a secondary, is that something we can be thinking about? Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:
and that that matches the statistic of that district in Texas. That that's a good encouraging thing. Okay, so we are just right up at the end of time. This is a longer episode than usual, so I think I'll close with the closing paragraph in the article, and this is it. But the threat of apathy remains. What we're losing is the ability and inclination to read those texts. An astonishing wealth of information and wisdom has been bequeathed to us. What we'll do with this inheritance is up to us. Oh man, no pressure. It's just up to us. And then as educators, you know, I think it's really up to us. So I guess the question is, what kind of choices are we going to make for ourselves and for our students? Any closing thoughts?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah, I would say, like I said earlier, do what you can, think about what you can and can't control, and try to also inspire that love of reading. But but yeah, but but focus on what you can control. I would say,
Donell Pons:
yeah, same. And I think it's interesting to have conversations like this, you know, amongst your friend groups, families, and discuss reading and your thoughts about reading. If you haven't done that, it might be an interesting conversation.
Stacy Hurst:
Okay, I'm going to close with the yes or no question. You only have two options: yes or no, and then we're going to end it there. So hopefully, this will give people something to think about. Is it the end of reading? Yes or no. Donelle,
Donell Pons:
no.
Stacy Hurst:
Lindsay, no. Okay, we're all three no's. That's hopeful. I feel like that's really hopeful. So that's good for us personally, for our students, and for the podcast because we talk a lot about literacy and reading. So we hope that you've enjoyed this episode. That this article gave you a lot of think to think about. We hope you'll find it and read it. We'll try to link it, but it is limited access, I think. And we really hope that you'll join us for the next episode of Literacy Talks.
Narrator:
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.
