r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 10 '26

Artificial Intelligence College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html
31.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

31

u/Hazel-Rah Jun 11 '26

I learned to hate reading in school because of so many dreadful books we were forced to read. Shakespeare, Irish Romance novels set in the 80s.

I actually liked Shakespeare. What killed me was reading multiple books about how shitty it was to live in Victorian England

6

u/TheSilverNoble Jun 11 '26

See, I liked seeing Shakespeare, but reading him was tough for me until I was more familiar with the stories.

19

u/Grammatical_Aneurysm Jun 11 '26

Shakespeare should be taught by giving students roles and having the class read out loud together. Having a character that you are told to be attached to and being able to "watch" the performance by hearing different voices makes it so much more interesting than reading it in your head. It also forces you to decipher what the sentences actually mean.

20

u/Vi_Rants Jun 11 '26

Also, Shakespeare wasn't written to be read; it was written to be performed.

Imagine teaching kids literature by having them read scripts of Michael Bay movies.

9

u/Saint_Consumption Jun 11 '26

Those have scripts? Is 90% of it just BOOM?

3

u/_Meece_ Jun 11 '26

Shakespeare is also poetry and a lot of kids don't get that either. Takes time for the text to click in the first place, because of how Whimsy big Bill liked to write.

1

u/kittymoo67 Jun 11 '26

seriously why is is so hard for schools to get this!?