to not force my teenager to read a book a week?

[milafawny]

My 15 year old daughters school have initiated a new reading scheme that states every child must read a book "for pleasure" each week and produce a written report on it for every Monday.

I have a few objections to this.

Firstly, this is not "reading for pleasure", this is enforced reading with follow up home work each week.

The selection of books isn't open, they have to read books provided on the app on their iPad, again, making it not "for pleasure" when they cant select the book.

The smallest book in the selection is 300 pages long. Most are longer. The largest has 1200+ pages. Expecting a book of that size to be finished weekly along with a completed report, on top of GSCE level homework, is a big ask.

Specifically regarding my daughter, she is diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD. She has already be informed in school that this scheme is expected of her too. Reading is not, nor has it every been, an activity she does for pleasure. Its takes her time, she gets frustrated and upset when she cant understand or stay focussed. We have tactics in place for when she has to read, usually breaking it into smaller sections but this doesn't allow for reading longer texts, but these tactics are not enough to have her motivated to read a different book every single week. She cannot read something aloud at all. She still find its difficult to focus attention long enough to watch a film. In something she has no interest in, namely reading, she's not even going to manage 5 minutes. I have bought her many many books over the years that are ones she has expressed an interest in - most are non-fiction biology books. Ive tried with books of things she has shown interest in, such as horrible history's that are more factual. None of the selection of books are like this, they are all fictional story based. We have tried harry potter and hunger games as we broke the films down and watched it as you would watch a tv show, i think she managed the first chapter of book 1 of harry potter in a month. She gets no enjoyment from it.

Would IBU to email school and state my daughter is not participating in the scheme, and expect this not to result in a weekly detention due to the reasons i have outlined?

I have been trying to get several young people to read books lately and it's hard work - they have no concentration span! It's a challenge finding them books they like but there's a lot of joy to be had when you do connect them with a book they enjoy and actually finish.

A book a week does sound a lot at that age though, especially if it's a book you don't want to read (though didn't we all have to read dreadful books at school?) It shouldn't put them off reading for life - I had to read some complete dirge at school (bloody John Steinbeck) but love reading to this day and still get through 2-3 books a week.

Quite.

I was going to suggest wildly sensational and melodramatic nonsense with zero moral value (What's the modern equivalent of "Flowers in the attic"?). Like having dance-heavy keep fit classes rather than circuits!

But if she has significant hearing and concentration problems...

What are they trying to achieve at the end of it all?
Obviously being able to read is essential.
But it sounds like she can read? She can navigate forms, instructions, information leaflets already?

What you get from novels is an insight into human behaviour and the different ways in which those stories can be told, to bring about different perceptions and emotions.

How stories are structured.

The interplay between words in the book and our own view of the world, our memories and imagination.

Literature study is one of the things people get a lot better at as we become adults and experience more of life. We can do it at any time. There's no rush!
I'm recently retired and have been reading a lot of Victorian books which I wouldn't have enjoyed at all in my younger days.

So pragmatically, I'd say you just want the easiest way of getting her through these fairly arbitrary requirements?

If the school remain intransigent, I'd be tempted to cheat, basically - pick a novel already summarised somewhere and spend 15 minutes a week together, rephrasing it into a "book report". That would practice the extremely useful life skill of plausibly half-arsing stuff as well :)

How to turn kids off reading!

@milafawny Speaking as someone with the same challenges as your daughter and who was encouraged to read and improve yes I do!

It was hard! It was frustrating. But was it worth it? Damn right it was! It's given me opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Being ND sucks at times. It makes our life infinitely harder than it might have been. But learning how to find some solutions or works arounds does sometimes help.

Would listening to things like audiobooks and recordings help?
Does reading each line or each sentence and taking a break help? She needs to work out what does work for her rather than avoiding the issue as much as possible.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's fair or that there any quick fixes for her. And if you reread my initial post i did say I think school are wrong here.

It's likely a subscription school pay for, rather than parents and pupils. School will pay and give pupils a log in to access it, like with many school/education apps.

I am a huge reader, a book blogger, and I'm really passionate about encouraging literacy and reading for pleasure, and even I think this is a bloody terrible idea.

First of all, if they're going to require this, they need to call it what it is, which is homework. If it really was 'reading for pleasure' they would have no right to enforce it because what their pupils do for pleasure in their spare time is none of the school's business. Reading for pleasure is a hobby and school should not be choosing their students' hobbies for them. Insisting someone read a book from a prescribed list and then making them write a report on it is absolutely not reading for pleasure. It's reading as homework.

Secondly, for a teen in year 11, that is a lot of reading to get through. I read one or two books a week, but I'm a child-free adult with enough time and headspace to do that, not a teenager with GCSE homework to do every night, extra-curricular activities and a healthy teenage social life.

Thirdly, if they want kids to be enthused about reading fiction, they shouldn't be dictating the pool of books they can choose from. They should be letting them choose whatever they want, whether that's War & Peace or a quick and easy thriller.

Fourthly (sorry, I'm getting into my stride now) there are other ways to encourage literacy and boost vocabulary than forcing people to read fiction. As I said before, reading for pleasure is a hobby, a form of entertainment. It's not morally superior to any other pastime. Some of the brightest brains out there belong to people who don't read fiction. I have a relative who is a bona fide genius, the world's leading expert in his scientific field, holds professorships at multiple prestigious universities and has written the definitive study texts for students of his particular discipline. Last time I saw him, the subject of long-haul travel cropped up (he does a lot of it) and I mentioned reading on planes. He remarked that he hasn't read a novel for sixty years.

People learn vocabulary and literacy not just by reading books but also by reading news articles, internet content, social media, magazines and journals, and also by talking and listening. If kids want to read, that's fantastic - it's certainly enriched my life, and if it can do the same for others, I'm delighted. But forcing them to read and calling it 'reading for pleasure' is not the way to encourage that, and if they don't enjoy reading books, it really is not the end of the world.

You said yourself theres no quick fixes, so participating in this scheme is impossible for her to do.

She wears hearing aids so cant listen via headsets or in ear pods as its sensory overload. We have tried via the echo dots etc but she zones out and cant stay listening to them. I have suggested doing another activity such as colouring whilst listening to see if that helps, but im not certain it will unless its something that she is 100% interested in.

Her interest as far as fictional tv shows, are greys anatomy, chicago med, the resident, criminal minds, NCIS, House, etc. These kid of medical/murder mystery stories are not in the set list of stories. So even if i could get something age appropriate (i was considering Tess Gerritsen Rizolli and Isles series as i have these audio books already but I'm not sure they're ideal for a 15 year old) they wouldnt ness be approved by the school.

Reading currently, she has overlays. I reprint stuff off n smaller paragraphs. Again, i cant do this with books.

YANBU, who’s going to read and mark these essays? What would constitute as a bad essay? What’s stopping a child submitting the same essay just tweaked every Sunday night?
The school really haven’t thought this through

I firmly believe children should be read to for an hour every day from five years old to sixteen. Every day. And as the teacher reads, the words should appear on a screen, so they can follow (if they want to). Stories tap into something primal. Even the worst behaved kids will often sit spellbound at a good story. They can’t help it. It’s as natural to us as sex and hunting. We were sitting round a fire telling stories 40,000 years ago.

I’d start them off with The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, The BFG, etc. By 14 or 15 I would have them on Dickens and Hardy. I’m sure they could cope with Dickens. We underestimate children, especially when it comes to stories.

That's beside the point. There is no shortage of books available freely or very cheaply. Lets not bring in pointless whataboutery about people not being able to afford it. That's the least of the issues.

As well as from the school, or from council libraries or charity shops, donations or swapping between friends and family, endless informal free libraries (Little Free Library, many supermarkets and convenience stores etc).

Plus the schools could organise book swaps. Part of the project could be raising awareness of how to read for free or hardly anything, and they could make it that the point absolutely is not about buying new books.

Have I understood correctly that if they don't produce the book report each week they will get detention?

I'm all for schools trying to encourage reading for pleasure and to improve standards of reading generally but this is just totally over the top. It's too much to expect kids to read a book a week and write a report when they are in their GCSE years. Also I think it's restrictive that they have to read from the app. Why can't they read their own choice of books? If it's reading for pleasure than they should be able to choose whatever they want to read. So there should also be non-fiction books available on the app.

I read a lot, love books, but I would struggle to read a book week in and week out with everything else I've got going on and having to write a book report would be the nail in the coffin. I would absolutely hate that.
Teenagers have a lot going on too, school work, many do sports or music or volunteering or whatever and they also need to have down time and sleep.

Then we have your daughter's specific case. They have to provide reasonable adjustment. How on earth do they expect a person with ADHD and dyslexia to complete this? If she managed one book a half term that would be something to praise. Or if she was allowed to listen to audio books. Or watch a film of a novel and write a review of that.

I think you should definitely email the school and ask for reasonable adjustments say she is not doing it, for the reasons you have listed, make some suggestions of what would be achievable etc.

If they won't back down I would make a complaint.

I've read a few threads this week on MN, maybe I've missed them in the past, but schools seem to be getting more extreme in their schemes and demands. I know they are trying to raise standards, improve discipline etc and provide opportunities but somehow it all seems very punitive and over the top and not achievable for a lot of children for various reasons.
Then you get the posters saying support the school, why won't you back the school up and so on and so forth. But sometimes it comes to a point where the things are not achievable and are only going to cause stress.
Crazy things I've seen this week are the school shoes one, the free school meals child has to buy a violin or be excluded from class music (illegal), school confiscating phone for a week despite kid needed it on way to and from school and then this one.
It's my opinion (former teacher here) that schools are now overstepping the mark in a lot of ways.

I would quite frankly, tell the school to get fucked.

I agree with PPs that having to write a report on anything takes the pleasure out of it.

Who the hell has time to read a book a week? Kids have GCSE work to be doing and hobbies to do.

Many of us happily enjoy books at our leisure and have perfectly fine spelling and vocab without reading a book a week.

Yeah this would encourage me even less to do this if I had to read boring crap like Dickens.

(Again another example of being put off books I had to study for GCSE!).

I love reading but in my country we had to read books from a list for our language exams. I had to read a total of 35 books, about half I had already read for pleasure but I absolutely hated reading the other half. I hated the timeframe and I hated the list. I didn't read for pleasure for at least two years after that. What are they thinking? No teen is going to love reading by forcing them.

What an absurd idea! As others have said, what a way to ensure that reading isn't for pleasure.

On a purely practical note, if the school won't back down then I'm sure ChatGPT could write a book report to a GCSE standard - wouldn't advocate this for work that has value, but sometimes with silly schemes like this playing the game is the path of least resistance...

I think this a great idea as it encourages them to develop a love of reading.

But not in year 11 when she has homework, coursework and revision to do.

I would say actually if schools scraped normal homework and set this as homework up to year 10, I would be fully for it.

I don’t think it’s great that there are only certain books to choose from, as this is how I didn’t start reading for pleasure until my late 20s, as I was put off by the books I’d read in school and thought they were boring.
But I do sort of understand why they’re doing it as I’m sure some will try and find the worst of the worst books lol.

Possibly someone didn’t think this through. Its sounds good on paper, but in practice only the most avid readers could accomplish it, leaving the rest to feel like failures.

Also, nothing like a book report to take the joy out of reading. My daughter has dyslexia too, loves stories and has just discovered podcasts. To sit down and go through that much text a week would end in tears.

I didn't read much between the ages of 12-16 other than absolutely what I had to read for school. Other than that it was magazines, the odd trashy novel. Being told I had to read in this manner would not have encouraged me. I was an avid reader before and ever since, it was just that this was the age for doing, and living life, not reading about it and there was just so much going on I wasn't interested in reading. I even write my own stuff now.

There are enough demands placed on them by secondary school these days as it is, this is just more homework, basically.

Even primary school reading demands were too stringent and put my two off reading. I read to and shared books with them from being babies and took them to the Hay Festival. Eventually they may become avid readers but it won't be because of school initiatives like this, it will be in spite of them.

We had to do this when I was that age and it counted towards our course work grades. But the expectation was 6 books over the year and we had more freedom over choosing them. One book a week is going to be unrealistic for about 90 of her year I’d imagine.

It gets worse! Shes come home from school and showed me the lists of books, and the following books are mandatory, not even optional in amongst the library available...

A Ghost of Heaven
A Visit from the Goon squad
The Catcher in the Rye
The Colour Purple
Wide Sargasso Sea
Crime and Punishment
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
Catch-22
The Count of Monte-Cristo
The Poet X
We Were Liars
All the Pretty Horses
Sawkill Girls
A Diamon in my Pocket
Little Fires Everywhere
The Secret Countess
Pet
Hollow Earth
Bridge of Clay

Both DD and I are very rapid and enthusiastic readers. We can, quite regularly, get through 2 or three books per week, each. But that's not guaranteed every week, not being followed up with a written report, not without being able to choose the books. And, for DD, also dyslexic, not on a bloody I-pad, either!

I say all this, because we'd both be capable of it without too much stress, and I still think it's a ridiculous ask.

Yes, kids need to be reading far more than they often are in the run-up to their GCSE's if they want to do well. Lots of the exams, and especially the English lang./lit exams, need strong, quick reading skills to have a hope of doing well, but this just isn't the way to get them.

I'd push back - not to opt her out completely, but to adjust it suitably.

Crime and Punishment - that would take me about two months to read.

Someone's having a laugh aren't they?

Crime and Punishment and the Count of Monte Cristo are really long.

Yes, six books a year - one per term - sounds more realistic.

The Catcher in The Rye (to take one at random) is the biggest bunch of tripe i ever was forced to read at school.

I would also be asking: who is marking these reports? is this in addition to their teaching/marking/lesson Prep/other work? have they agreed.

I would be telling the school that i would continue to encourage and support my daughter with the things that are achievable. The rest? no way.