In a recent doom-scrolling session, I came across a TikTok of an educator who asked his sophomores to write a 5-sentence paragraph. Quickly, he was met with unironic groans of disdain. One kid had lamented, “That’s like a whole test itself!” with another swiftly attempting to negotiate, “Can we only do 4 sentences?”
To me, it seems clear this is not just about writing. While I can respect that not everyone is an English department regular, my concern lies in what I believe to be a symptom of the systemically-incentivized decline in reading we have witnessed over the last decade. I have fallen into this trap myself, where I want to want to read. I will think about how much I miss reading, how much joy books have added to my life over the years. Then, I’ll smile fondly and sigh at the memory as I absently reach for my cell phone and let my eyes gloss over in the harsh blue light.
In our email interview, Sam Gautraud, a Fruitport High School English Teacher, opened up about his own experience in the high school reading scene. “I have students fill out an expectations form at the beginning of each year, and when it comes to their expectations of me, the majority of them put ‘be entertaining.’ Not ‘teach me something’, but ‘amuse me’. I think that sums it up well.”
In a world where many have had access to constant dopamine hits since infancy and no real need to develop their own regulation tools, teachers like Gautraud understand that 2025’s youth require a different approach to learning. Patience is key in trying to share information with one another, and while that has always been the case generationally, this is the first time in history that kids have grown up being exposed to so much unreliable information. It can be hard to know what to trust, and that can cause students to feel rightfully burnt out.
It can feel like fewer children and teenagers are draped in the same comfortable nostalgia in the presence of books. Their childhood memories are more likely to feature screens than they are pages, and our current education system promotes a culture of memorization and perfection rather than imagination and slow, intentional mastery. This is why passionate educators and institutions, like our very own Kent District Library, are taking steps to make reading accessible for everyone as early as possible.
“We invest heavily in early literacy starting at birth. A child’s brain doubles in size in their first year, and 90% of brain development happens before the age of five,” shared Randall Goble, KDL’s Director of Engagement, in an email response to my concerns. “This is why KDL provides Books for Babies, encouraging parents to read to their babies to help develop these important neural pathways and patterns for reading. This is also a critical time where babies and children pattern their behavior after their parents and caregivers, and why it’s so important that children see and hear them reading. Children model their behavior after the adults in their lives.”
For the adult readers who are navigating barriers to literacy, KDL partnered with the Literacy Center of West Michigan back in 2020 to bring the SPARK collection to the Grand Rapids community. This collection of roughly 90 titles is designed for beginners and advances progressively as the list goes on. KDL also provides a number of reading challenges and programs, such as 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten (1KB4K), Legacy Readers, and events like Summer Wonder, which help engage students in the off-season and prevent the dreaded “summer slide” without feeling like tedious homework.
In his own classroom, Gautraud has found that affording students the freedom to choose which literature they’re engaging with is the best way to drive participation.
“We set aside an hour a week for students to read an independent book of their choice… No book reports, no assignments, just reading for the sake of enjoyment,” wrote Gautraud. “We do ‘low-stakes’ writing…The prompts are usually creative, personal, and graded solely based on completion. And to be fair, I have students who love these activities. It may not be a huge group, but there are always a handful who write pages on one prompt and are angry with me when I cut off the time. We have students who check out dozens of books from the library each semester and who actually get in trouble for reading at inappropriate times in class.”
According to the Literacy Center of West Michigan’s 2023-2024 annual report, there are approximately 85,000 adults in Kent County alone facing their own unique barriers to literacy. Whether it’s an issue with language comprehension, disability, or even just a lack of interest and time, not everyone’s circumstances allow for reading as a central part of their routine. Rather than patronizing kids for their lack of engagement, we must hear them out (even when uncooperative and frustrating), so that we can understand what they need in order to regain their sense of curiosity, lest they become adults who see reading as something too daunting or exclusionary.
Reading is more than a hobby or an assignment. It’s a foundational skill that encourages free thinking. It allows us to share experiences, despite time or distance. Perhaps most importantly though, it’s something everyone has their own relationship to and is navigating at their own pace. To those interested in volunteering or those seeking support, visit the Literacy Center of West Michigan’s website for more information.
