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KLMNO EDUCATION Teens haven’t shelved reading for pleasure


Librarians, media specialists optimistic about kids’ habits despite online technology


BY DONNA ST. GEORGE T


eens read for pleasure, even in the digital age. That’s how it looks in a


Rockville library,where14- year-old Olivia Smith is propped in a comfy chair, deep into a Japanese novel


genrecalledmanga.Shehasbeenreading on the computer for an hour, and later, whenshetextsherfriends,shewill stillbe turning pages between messages. “I’m sort of a bookworm,” she said. Recreational reading has changed for


teens in an era of ebooks and laptops and hours spent online, but experts and me- dia specialists say there are signs of promise despite busy lives and research findings that show traditional book read- ing is down. “It’s not that they’re reading less;


they’re reading in a different way,” said KimPatton, president of the Young Adult Library ServicesAssociation. A detailed analysis into the trend on


reading for fun — in books, newspapers and magazines—comes from researcher Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland, who analyzed the daily time- use diaries of a nationally representative sample of children 12 to 18. Pleasure reading dropped 23 percent


from 2003 to 2008, from 65 minutes a week to 50 minutes a week — with the greatest falloff for those ages 12 to 14. Still, she said: “They could be reading on the cellphone, in games, on the Web, on the computer. It doesn’tmeanthey’re not reading, but they’re not reading using the printed page.” MichaelKamil,aneducation research-


er at Stanford, sees itmuchthe sameway, noting that teens “still read quite a bit but in different ways and for different rea- sons than the adults believe they should.” The question of what constitutes “reading” has been debated for decades, said Kamil, whose definition is broad: It includes not only just books, magazines, newspapers and blogs, but also text mes- sages, multimedia documents, certain computer games and many Web pages. “It’s all important,” he said. Recreational book reading looked


stronger in a January study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found more reading overall than theMaryland study. For kids 8 to 18, it reported a decline from 43 minutes a day to 38 minutes a day, entirely related to magazines and news- papers. At the same time, students re- ported online reading of those publica- tions—an average of two minutes a day. “The data say to me that kids have a


love of reading that is enduring, and that is different than other things teens do,” said co-author Victoria Rideout. Clearly, books still can create a phe- nomenon. Think “Harry Potter.” The “Twilight”


series. And lately, “TheHunger Games,” a science fiction trilogy that librarian Deb- orah Fry said has created “quite a waiting list” in her Loudoun County library branch inAshburn. “Even with all the distractions, even


with all the technology, there are books that break through,” said Deborah Taylor of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Balti- more, who has worked in the trenches of teen reading for more than 35 years. The way Taylor sees it, getting teens to


MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2010


PHOTOS BY SUSAN BIDDLE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Fourteen-year-old Olivia Smith, a ninth-grader at RichardMontgomeryHigh School, reads her favorite manga book at the Twinbrook Library in Rockville.


said. Told about an Edgar Allan Poe book eventhecouldhaveattendedthatday,the teen lit up. “For serious?” he asked, rat- tling off Poe works he has enjoyed. Hewouldhavegone,hesaid.“Oh,man,


I would’ve runmy mouth.” This sort of interest is what school


media specialists love to see. Sarah Way, who works at Wootton


High School inMontgomery County, said that there is a core group of studentswho use the library a lot and then others who do assigned reading there but don’t seem to browse. “I would like to see more carry that book around for the sheer joy of it,” she said. In Arlington County, a library book


The question of what constitutes readingmaterial has been debated for decades, education researcherMichael Kamil says.


read for fun has always been a challenge, but now, time is a bigger obstacle. Still, she said, technology “can also pull you together with people who like the books you like” on fan sites and in online forums. Patton, of the Young Adult Library


Services Association, said that sales for young adult books have outpaced those for adult books and that “The Hunger Games”series is as nearly big aphenome- non as “Twilight.” Teen favorites also include graphic novels, such as manga, that include illustrations or comic pan- els.


“No matter what teens are doing, we


need to show them they need to keep reading on their radar and make time for


it,” Patton said. Randi Adleberg, head of the high


school English programat Robinson Sec- ondary School in Fairfax County, said that overall, she thinks the trend is posi- tive. If reading online and in game-play- ing are taken into account, “I think the digital age has probably increased read- ing,” she said. For some students, traditional book


reading for pleasure is not a first choice because they equate reading with school- work.


Ross Vincent, 16, wishes he had more


time to read but said he’s sidelined by other endeavors—homework, marching band and orchestra, a job, a girlfriend. “I findmy time is spent in other places,” he


club for high-schoolers has seen its ranks swellfrom13 or 14a couple of years agoto 26, said Maria Gentle, a youth services librarian in the county. “I think we have many, many kids who still read for plea- sure,” she said, recalling that last spring, two teens hit the book club en route to prom, fancy dresses and all. At Gaithersburg High School, media


specialist Catharine Chenoweth sees a declining interest in nonfiction books — with so much of that material available online — while fiction still gets readers. At least certain kinds of fiction. “Classics are not read as much as the


more contemporary fiction,” she said. Then there are the Olivia Smiths of the


world. The ninth-grader at Richard Mont-


gomery High School has been reading voraciously since she was young.Her two sisters read the same way. When Olivia really likes a book, as with the last of the “Twilight” series, she rereads—maybe20 times.


stgeorged@washpost.com


“They could be reading on the cellphone, in games, on the Web, on the computer. It doesn’t mean they’re not reading, but they’re not reading using the printed page.”


—Sandra Hofferth, researcher at the University of Maryland, who found that reading for fun dropped 23 percent from 2003 to 2008 among young people.


The Answer Sheet VALERIE STRAUSS


Excerpt from voices.washingtonpost.com/answersheet A recent poll getting a lot of attention


says that half of the students in our high schools admit to having bullied someone in the past year. That’s hard to believe. The survey was conducted by the Los


Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics, and results were gleaned from 43,321 students. The margin of error is said to be less than 1 percent. The teens were asked, according to


the institute’sWeb site,whether they had “bullied, teased or taunted someone” (at least once in the past 12months.) Fifty percent said they had. Forty-sev-


en percent said they had been physically abused, teased or taunted in a way that seriously upset them. The institute’s president, Michael Josephson, was re-


l Jay Mathews is away. His column will return.


THE DAILY QUIZ How can PostPoints members


earn points? (Hint: check the FAQ section of the PostPoints website)


EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.


ported as saying that the study proves that more bullying is going on in high school than previously thought. Here’s the problem with the survey:


The question about bullying asked stu- dentswhether they had “been a bully” at least once in the previous year. Bullying is not a single action. One fight on the playground does not


qualify. Pushing someone in line once or twice doesn’t cut it, either. There is such a thing as childhood nastiness that is unfortunate but not pathological. The question is also too broadly


drawn: It lumps bullying and teasing in the same question, indicating a distinct misunderstand of the differences in behavior. Teasing can be mean — and part of a bully’s repertoire — but it can also just be in fun. As a result, the answer to a very


open-ended question gets reported in a very narrow way. “Half of tons said they


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bullied someone,” when, in fact, this poll doesn’t prove that at all. Here’s the definition, according to the


Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, developed by Dan Olweus, considered the father of research on bullies and their victims. (The programis a compre- hensive school effort that involves every person in the school and teaches kids not to be bystanders but to get help when someone is being bullied.) A person is bullied when he or she is


exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself.


This definition includes three impor-


tant components: 1. Bullying is aggressive behavior that


involves unwanted, negative actions. 2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.


3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength.


Bullying can take onmany forms: 1. Verbal bullying, including deroga-


tory comments and bad names. 2. Bullying through social exclusion


or isolation. 3. Physical bullying such as hitting,


kicking, shoving and spitting. 4. Bullying through lies and false


rumors. 5. Having money or other things


taken or damaged by studentswho bully. 6. Being threatened or being forced to


do things by students who bully. 7. Racial bullying. 8. Sexual bullying. 9. Cyberbullying (via cellphone or


Internet). In a recent survey by the Olweus


programof 524,054 students in grades 3 through 12, 17 percent of the kids reported being bullied two to three times amonth ormore within a school semes- ter.


Statistics on bullying are especially


relevant in the wake of suicides by several young gay men who had been


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bullied. The deaths prompted the Education


Department to issue an advisory to schools on howcivil rights lawapplies to bullying situations that in some cases have led victims to commit suicide. It threatened that federal funds could be withheld if schools are not serious about this issue. And President Obama is expected to help promote the initiative. Some folks said the department was


essentially bullying schools into compli- ance, but nevermind. And the department could have start-


ed its campaign by calling for an end to corporal punishment, which is legal in 22 states.Hundreds of thousands of kids get whacked by teachers or administra- tors every year. Here’s the bottom line: If half of all


high school students really are bullies, which I distinctly doubt, then we have a bigger education crisis than we think. Instead of obsessing on standardized


tests and how to use the results to evaluate teachers, we would need to consider that we are raising a nation of sadists. Even to someone as pessimistic as I can be, this just doesn’t seemright. straussv@washpost.com


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