Week 16 Prompt

When I was in elementary school reading was not really encouraged. When we had "Reading" as a subject, we only ever read out of our textbook, which contained short stories of age-appropriate reading level. Usually they were way below my reading level and of no interest to me. Plus, they were very contrived because they had to use oi/oy words, or whatever this week's unit covered. While we were reading the teacher would ask questions over the story. Then we had to fill out workbook pages over the phonetic element of the week. I was always in a hurry to be done so I could read a little in my book before we had to start the next subject. If my teacher had said it was time to find a comfortable spot in the classroom and read our library books for 30 minutes, I wouldn't have known what to think. It would have been too good to be true! I was always getting in trouble because I was reading instead of following along in our social studies book. I couldn't wait for school to be out every day so I could go home and finish my book.

From Kindergarten to 4th grade, the only books I had access to in school were in the very small classroom libraries my teachers had, which we had access to but I don't remember ever having "library time" where we were encouraged to browse for reading material. It was only expected that we have a book to read at our desks so we had something to do if we finished our work and others were still working.  I had the public library and a big collection of books at home, but the schools I went to in two small towns did not have libraries. So I would say reading has definitely changed a lot since I was a girl. Now schools put a great deal of emphasis on reading books, not just the reading textbook. I haven't always agreed with the methods used to encouraged reading, but I believe the best way to learn to love reading is by being read to as early as possible, and by lots of practice reading real books.

It seems that reading has increased in popularity with adults as well, although my life is full of people who love reading now, instead of being full of other kids who do not. So my view on this may be a little askew.

Ereaders may have a part to play in this, as well as audiobooks. The new technologies may make reading more accessible to busy people, and may make it more appealing to technophiles. I don't think the advent of ebooks will make books obsolete, anymore than the popularity of television made going to movie theaters obsolete. It's just another medium to give people choices. You could argue that television made radio obsolete, but only in some ways. TV did replace radio shows like "The Jack Benny Show" and "The Lone Ranger", but we still have radio. The programming just took a different form. So maybe Kindle, Nook, etc. will have a similar effect somehow on books and the publishing world.

I have really enjoyed this class and reading everybody's blogs! Good luck in the future!