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Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
931
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 09:22 am: |   |
Here's a news report regarding the drop in book sales.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=487&ncid=762&e=13&u=/ap/20040513/ap_en_ot/publishing_declining_sales
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Perry Comer
Unity Member
Post Number:
1348
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 10:57 am: | |
What happened to the book market?? Kids do not know how to read and the parents are poor readers.
According to my wife - the sixth grade teacher - kids do not read. Of the 80 kids in her classes only three have read a Harry Potter book! A lot of the kids have the books but do not read them. Their parents read the books!
End of Grade testing for reading - 80 kids - 23% on grade level (grade level being the state average for sixth graders) She says her best students are reading at third grade level of students twenty years ago.
\
Until reading because more important to parents than the sports their kids play, book sales will continue to decline. Kids do not have time to read - practice or games consume their time. So does dance, karate and gymnastics. If a kid is not at one of these, he is playing the gameboy or sitting in front of the tv with a controller in hand.
WRITERS NEED TO PROMOTE READING OR THERE WILL BE NO READERS - parents need to read AND TEACH THEIR CHILDREN TO LOVE READING MORE THAN TV.
off my soapbox
http://www.pacwriter.netfirms.com/ |
Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
932
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 11:52 am: | |
I think you may be right, Perry. I am appalled at how my youngest child is being taught. We are being told now that learning the alphabet is a thing of the past. Children no longer need to learn to recognize letters or sound them out...instead, they should memorize words. Yeah, that'll work. At some point, I even heard a theory that if a child recognizes the first and last letter of a word, he'll accurately guess the word. Okay, "never" "neither" "nebechanezzer", "near", etc. all have the same 1st and last letter... How will that work? They stress writing stories so much at his school that it drives me crazy. No correction of punctuation, grammar, spelling in sight...that doesn't matter as long as it is a story. I see education like building blocks...right now, the education my child is getting is like a scattered playroom floor with a bunch of brightly colored blocks everywhere and nothing putting them together. I don't blame the teachers for this. I blame a bunch of curriculum changes that the really good teachers I have talked to are against. My son brought home a new way to do long division the other day. I don't know how to do it. He said his teacher either made it up or a woman she met somewhere did. It's crazy. It involves a square divided into about 16 triangles with different numbers written in each triangle and two on each side of the outside of the square. What was wrong with the old way to do long division? What if she's the only teacher he ever has who knows this way and he never learns to do it the right way? And how am I supposed to help him with it when I've never seen it before?
I have had kids in the public school system now for quite a few years. I have never had such horrible years as the last two. They have been a real struggle and I have seriously considered homeschooling my youngest next year in the hopes that he will have some sort of grasp on it by the time he enters junior high.
When my kids were small, we read all the time. Every day we read. Now, my oldest son hardly reads at all. My daughter (7th grade) read something like 75 books this school year. And my youngest son (4th grade) had to read 25 to pass and we barely managed that. He likes to read books about what he is interested in: animals, dinosaurs, reptiles, diving, surfing, skateboarding. Make believe stories just do not captivate him. Even television-wise the child likes nonfiction like the discovery channel, etc. In actuality, we read about 45 books this year (over 100 pages), only 25 of them counted --- we had read about five prior to the bus accident, however, they were in his agenda and since the teacher no longer had proof of them, they didn't count. She didn't count several of them because she felt they were below his reading level and the others I really have no idea why they didn't count except that maybe there were too many "nature" or nonfiction books -- they were supposed to diversify. Thank goodness, he read one 300 page book from Nat'l Geographic about Nat'l Parks -- it counted as 2 or 3 books and one 200+ page book about pirates.
To try to read something one isn't interested in is a total waste of time. I don't know if any of my kids have read the Harry Potter books. I think my oldest son did a few years ago. I think readers are bored with the same old, same old. I get tired of reading books that I think "haven't a read this before?" I think there is a lot of copycatting going on. Change a name, a location or whatever and here it is the same book, just the characters might have new names or occupations. I'm not talking about the old adage that there are only so many stories, I'm talking about the same story with a different title, different author, same almost everythign else.
My gosh, that is a long ramble.
Gloria |
Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
2978
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 01:25 pm: | |
I recently reviewed an author whose publishing history sounds like a who's who of New Your and LA publishers. He is a prolific writer who began his career in the late 1950s. I recently interviewed him for MBR and he contends that publishing as we have always known it is in chaos. He believes the world has to change along with the times and that the hallowed halls of New York publishing will soon be dusty tombs.
He submitted his latest book to a POD publisher as an experiment. He believes POD publishing and e-books are to publishing now what "penny dreadfuls" and mass market paperbacks were to earlier times.
Now here is something interesting to contemplate.
I review mostly POD published books or small press books. Every few months I go through the books I have on hand and donate them to area libraries and the high school library. The librarians clamor to receive these books, especially the public libraries. Why?? Because - for the most part - these books are not the same old clones of best sellers. One librarian calls these donations an "infusion of fresh blood" and accepts each box of books with delight.
But yes Perry and Gloria, there are those who cannot read. But those who CAN read sometimes don't because they are bored with the books available to them.
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Perry Comer
Unity Member
Post Number:
1349
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 01:30 pm: | |
Good point Laurel - what is available is a factor
http://www.pacwriter.netfirms.com/ |
Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
933
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 02:01 pm: | |
You're right about that, Laurel. I think sometimes that someone is passing out "form manuscripts" much like form letters or the legal forms we use at work. They black out the names, location, some other minute details and let various authors have at them. In the end, not much has changed other than those few details that really don't make one book any different from the other. So maybe it's in a cold climate, maybe a warm one, maybe her name's Sandra, maybe it's Lisa. Maybe she has a dog, maybe a cat, maybe she has a canary (although that would be unique). None of that really amounts to a hill of beans when it comes right down to leaving an impression on the reader.
Writing with heart is what makes books different and letting your voice flow even if it doesn't sound like the voice of the bestsellers. Most of us knew that we could write a long time before we actually wrote a book. Why? Because at some point in our lives there was some positive feedback about things we wrote...from a teacher, a family member, a friend. They were touched by our words and our "voice". At some point in time, it seems writers tend to lose the joy they once found in writing and instead begin to bend to the demands that make their voice as homogenous and generic as everyone else's.
Don't know why I'm so wordy today. These men are freezing me out of the office. Maybe I'm typing so much so my fingers don't get frostbitten from the a/c.
Gloria |
Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
2979
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 02:38 pm: | |
If the men in the office were in Nebraska right now they would want the furnace blasting. We went from ninety degrees plus to thirty degrees and a cold wind.
Well, I know there are writers who don't agree with me, but I say a published manuscript is better than a manuscript gathering dust in my closet. The writer I mentioned above was in New York City during the days of Kerouac and his literary pals. Like Kerouac, some of them are icons now and most are long since dead. He knew them when they were struggling misfits, unable to fit in with the agents and publishers who called the shots. Deserved or not, the writers of that time made a name for themselves because they were not clones of everyone who had gone before. The work of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs shocked an entire generation.....and made them famous in the process. But they all started somewhere. They weren't born icons with major publishers at their beck and call. |
Todd Hunter
Unity Member
Post Number:
1516
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 04:29 pm: | |
"Until reading because more important to parents than the sports their kids play, book sales will continue to decline."
Not to be a devil's advocate, but until reading books becomes as potentially profitable as becoming a pro athlete, I don't see this changing...
Actually, Gloria, I grew up memorizing words (along with about everything else I learned) and seem to have come out relatively okay...it's all in how the brain is wired...some people can do so, others have to use other methods...the problem is in trying to use one method for everyone...
Funny you mentioned the new way they're teaching long division...
Back in my day, we had an algebra teacher who taught us a new way to factor out equations that obey the following form (please ignore the snores from the back of the class)...
AX^2 + BX + C = 0
He called it the 'spiral method', and no one I have ever come across since has ever heard of it...but yet, it's a great (and easy) way to do it, that I still remember to this day...and oddly enough, when I taught algebra in college, our professor in charge of the program saw me teach this to my class, and insisted I show all the others...it was pretty nifty...
I'm certain with the long division procedure, there's probably a mathematical basis behind it...it may seem odd at the time, but try to give it a shot first... |
Perry Comer
Unity Member
Post Number:
1350
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 04:44 pm: | |
the odds of earning a six figure income because you can READ and comprehend are greater than being drafted by the Dolphins or Mets.
http://www.pacwriter.netfirms.com/ |
Stacy Anderson
Awareness Member
Post Number:
29
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 14, 2004 - 01:23 am: | |
Compared to the decline of sales in the music business, video rental market and movie industry, book sales seem quite steady to me. With such a horrid economy it's no wonder why EVERYTHING is losing money...including sports. One thing is for sure books will always be around and needed. You can't say that for everything else.
www.stacy-deanne.net
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Todd Hunter
Unity Member
Post Number:
1519
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 14, 2004 - 05:44 am: | |
"the odds of earning a six figure income because you can READ and comprehend are greater than being drafted by the Dolphins or Mets."
Perhaps after many many years (and with certain employment opportunities)...but in this world, we generally look for immediate satisfaction...
How much does a rookie baseball player (or any other sport) make compared to a recent college graduate in say, english literature?
I don't disagree with the idea that reading needs to be the most important thing...I wholeheartedly agree with it...just giving my opinions as to why the public doesn't... |
Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
936
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 14, 2004 - 08:23 am: | |
They do point out in the article that college textbooks may account for a big drop in sales as people are buying them used. Can you blame them? When you're spending just as much or more on books as you are for tuition, it gets ridiculous.
Todd, as far as learning by memorization we all do that to an extent and some things more that way than others, but like a said, everything should build on each other and right now, we're lacking the foundation. He can't explain the math to me, because once he's home he doesn't remember how to do it.
I really think time is moving much faster than it used to. For years, kids have played sports, taken dancing lessons, etc. We used to take dancing lessons twice a week and play outside until dark every afternoon after school, yet we still had time for homework and reading. My kids don't take any lessons and this year haven't played in any sports and we have no time at all it seems.
My honest feelings are you can't make someone be a reader. Either they like to read or they don't. I don't care what you do to kids, as a reward or punishment, many of them are never going to want to read. My sister has read my book. As far as I know, that is the only book she has ever read. She just doesn't enjoy reading books...she never has. My youngest sister reads a lot...she always has. I would rather read than almost anything else...I always have. I just think forcing kids to read makes them like it even less. I read constantly in high school, but the only two books I ever read that were required reading were "Ethan Frome" and "The Scarlet Letter". I guess it was my one little form of rebellion in an otherwise uneventful and nonrebellious youth.
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Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
2982
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 14, 2004 - 09:47 am: | |
I believe it is the world around us - more than anything now - that creates a dearth of reading. I'll use my own family as an example.
When I was a young child of grade school age, there was no TV. Very few people had TV. From before kindergarten age on I was encouraged to read. In the evening we listened to the radio news and radio programs much like people watch TV now, but in between times I read books.
I received books for birthdays and Christmas. First it was little golden books, then books for older children, then young adult. By the time my younger siblings came along, we had TV.
Several cousins in my family have university educations and PhDs. They rarely read unless it is a textbook. Golf, swimming, and other outdoor activities fill their leisure time.
In my family, I am the only person in my generation who was encouraged to read and who reads with any regularity. The only books anyone in my family purchases or reads these days are my published books. |
Todd Hunter
Unity Member
Post Number:
1521
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 14, 2004 - 02:09 pm: | |
I never liked to read when it was required...
Incentives helped (such as the 'Book It' program)...but most times, if it wasn't something I wanted to read for personal enjoyment, I despised reading it, and would try my hardest not to read any of it... |
Jarocal (Unregistered Guest)
Work-in-progress guest
Posted From: 216.37.225.56
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 04:41 pm: | |
I agree with the post above mentioning the basic building blocks of education are no longer being taught in many instances. I personally know a lot of carpenters that can measure a wall using the 3-4-5 or 6-8-10 method but are at a total loss if asked what the Pythagorian Theorum is. They are able to use the formula without knowing it, but they are unable to apply it it in a situation that will not conform to the conditions of shortcut they were taught instead of being taught the actual equation.
Most people will agree that learning equations in Mathematics is boring. But these people in the carpentry trade use the very thing many of them talk about being boring in school and holding no relevant amount of applicability to the real world. Did some Vocational technologies teacher do them a favor by teaching them that shortcut without explaining the equation behind it?\
As far as not liking the required reading in school, the student is that, the student and the curriculim is there for a reason even if they do not understand after they have completed the assigned tasks. Contrary to what many of the 'professional educators' are trying to assert now, learning cannot and will not always be fun and interesting for our children. As Pt Barnum said "you cannot please all of the people all of the time". there are things about education that will be boring,not everything nor all of the time, but that is a price of learning. Eventually each student will come across something that they will not be interested in and will find the ost miserable experience of their short educational career.
To Laurel Johnson,
I agree that reading is not encouraged anywhere near enough which is why I will not purchase any gift for a child or teenager that is a cd, dvd, computer or other electronic game. I feel they have enough other people in their lives that give them these types of items that I always, always, give books away. Even if they are only picture books to children that are too small to read, they can enjoy the colors and pictures while imprinting in them at a young age that books can be fun. To parents out there who do rightfully complain that the educational system is failing our youth. How often do you give your children books instead of the latest playstation game? Parents often times confuse giving children what they want as giving them what they need. Most people do not have unlimited budgets for gift giving and how many do you think have decided against giving books in exchange for that latest video game or name brand clothing their child has been whinning for. I am not saying never buy them those things, but look at how those things now automatically win out over things that would help the child to develop educationally. |
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
1253
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 05:49 pm: | |
Jarocal,
Don't know hwo you are, but you wrote and stated a mouth full of truth in your post. Good for you for seeing it and in your own way, however limited, for doing something about it in your daily life. I.e., the books for kids instead of games, etc. Anyway, how ever you are able to get a kid to enjoy a book or a drawing, it is much better than looking at a computer game that is all about the latest action hero game.
Claudia |
Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
3023
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 07:07 pm: | |
Yes Jerocal. I also give books and always have. If they go unread, so be it, but I try to choose books so intriguing to whatever age group therecipient is that they will read it. My nieces and nephews learned very earliy in life not to ask Aunt Laurel for video games or DVDs.
We all have to take a stand somewhere, and that is one of my small stands for literacy. |
Jarocal (Unregistered Guest)
Work-in-progress guest
Posted From: 216.37.225.158
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 11:35 pm: | |
Claudia,
The premise that children will be less happy without the video games, the dvds, or whatever the latest fad, is a marketing ploy by advertising. If you buy a three year old a really large toy for christmas, after unwrapping the present and looking at it for a while they will play happily with the box until the parent takes it away or pushes the toy back in front of them. The ability to learn and read frequently is not a mystery, it is simple discipline and habit. If a child learns at an early age to brush their teeth everyday, that habit generally is carried on later in life. If a child is taught at an early age that it is better to read proficiently, speak coherently, and be able to do basic mathematics without a calculator, then chances are that child will learn to do so as long as the parents stay disciplined in their habits of providing a proper example.
The child who sees Mom and Dad sitting on the couch lauhing at a sitcom is not going to think of reading as a delight when reading something challenging. Parents need to set an example and set aside time for reading the same way they expect the child to spend time reading in order to learn. A 1/2 hr period out of the parents day everyday with no distractions reading a book would do much towards the child's attitude about spending time reading and doing schoolwork. The parent would also be losing one sitcom a day.
The parents need to read the book on the schools required reading list around the same time the child is so they can have discussions about the book. Those discussions should not include comments by the parent like, 'yes I hated it when I was in school to but I had to do it', ' I know it's kinda boring but we need to get this done' or any other thing that would detract from the child thinking it necessary to finish the project. Look for the subtle themes in the book that the child may not pick out, discuss the themes and ideas the child brings up and then discuss the subtle themes they may not have noticed.
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Todd Hunter
Unity Member
Post Number:
1552
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 24, 2004 - 05:21 am: | |
"If a child is taught at an early age that it is better to read proficiently, speak coherently, and be able to do basic mathematics without a calculator, then chances are that child will learn to do so as long as the parents stay disciplined in their habits of providing a proper example."
Yikes, my wife and I were watching our nephew (age 6) this weekend, and it was utterly horrible the way in which he's being taught (or not taught) the English language...
It's painful to listen to, even more painful to realize I'm the only person who attempts to correct him... |
Steven Shrewsbury
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
795
Registered: 04-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 24, 2004 - 05:46 am: | |
My 6 year old is really into books, telling stories, and making up elaborate scenarios when he does play with his action figures or building lego stuff...huh...wonder where he gets that...
The other day I heard Batman threatening the Joker saying "JOKER YOU SHOT A MAN IN RENO JUST TO WATCH HIM DIE!"
Hey, could be worse. He could be lsitening to gangsta rap instead of Johnny Cash...
If anything, an active mix of things makes a child's mind see mroe possibilities. I see alot of folks let the TV or video game machine be the baby sitter. Go spend time with yer kid and it will be ok. My son wants books as much as he desires new toys or games.
www.stevenshrewsbury.com |
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