Why Aren’t Students Reading Books?

Last week, an English teacher sent me her school’s language arts curriculum, which is designed by the Savvas Learning Company. It includes a number of great essays, poems, and authors — The Most Dangerous Game, Robert Frost, speeches from American history — as well as a few questionable pieces of content for a high school English class — an opinion column by comedian and actor John Leguizamo and a brochure on zombie preparedness, for example.

The presence of one medium is notably sparse: complete books. Short works abound, as do excerpts from novels, but, by my count, across the ninth- through twelfth-grade curricula, there are in total four complete plays and one novella. The rest of the readings consist of passages, poems, essays, speeches, and other short works — a stew without meat and potatoes.

About the Author

Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Last week, an English teacher sent me her school’s language arts curriculum, which is designed by the Savvas Learning Company. It includes a number of great essays, poems, and authors — The Most Dangerous Game, Robert Frost, speeches from American history — as well as a few questionable pieces of content for a high school English class — an opinion column by comedian and actor John Leguizamo and a brochure on zombie preparedness, for example.

The presence of one medium is notably sparse: complete books. Short works abound, as do excerpts from novels, but, by my count, across the ninth- through twelfth-grade curricula, there are in total four complete plays and one novella. The rest of the readings consist of passages, poems, essays, speeches, and other short works — a stew without meat and potatoes.