Comment by aleph_minus_one
Comment by aleph_minus_one 2 days ago
> I live in a rural Red State, a place you'd expect less reading, and my kids, and many of their friends, read full books all the time and have since they were quite young.
> The curriculum in our public school regularly requires kids to read full books for class, and the kids you'd expect from the homes you'd expect read plenty.
Reading the expected books for school is very different from reading a lot privately at home.
I know quite many fellow pupils who read a lot privately, but detested reading the required books for school (they at best got some summaries somewhere, which in my opinion actually prepared you better for the tests since the people who write summaries typically know quite well which parts/topics of the books teachers consider to be important, and thus do quite some explanations on these).
On the other hand, I know fellow pupils who barely read anything in their free time (they had different interests), but for some reason actually liked (and liked reading) the books that you had to read for some classes.
I do not live in the US, but this was my experience as well. Actually having read the book made my grades worse, because I now disagreed with the claims the teacher wanted to hear. I was always like: no, I have also read the book and no the author doesn't say that.