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According to a National Endowment for the Arts press release today, reading trends amongst the American public, especially our children continue to deteriorate. The executive summary can be read here.

From the full report itself, here are the results of one study on the leisure time of American children ages 6-17. In this age group, children spend an average of 11 minutes a day reading for pleasure. Relative to reading, they spend 2x as much time on computer activities, 3x as much time on sports activities, 4x as much time on visiting and socializing, 5x as much time on playing, and 11x as much time on watching T.V.

Couple this result with the fact that only one half of 9 year olds, less than one of every three 13 year olds, and about one in five 17 year olds read for fun almost every day, and we have a disturbing scenario of our future generations being illiterate and uninformed, having to rely on talking heads for their information and knowledge of the world.

Now, lest we want to hide behind the fallacy that children are reading significantly more for school, check this out. For 9 year olds, only one in four students read more than twenty pages per day both in school and for homework; and for 13 year olds, only one in four students read more than twenty pages per day in school and for homework. For 17 year olds, who we  think would have significantly more students reading more than 20 pages, still only less than one in four students do, which is less than the number of 9 year olds who read more than 20 pages each day!

What the report shows in general, is that elementary students are doing better in reading, while middle school and high school students are declining. My thesis is that due to the forcing of schools to teach some phonics and the proliferation of  inane, manufactured, simplistic, common word books being mass produced specifically for boosting test scores in the lower grades, these elementary students only appear to be doing better. The reading results begin to deteriorate in 4th grade and then, accelerate as the proliferation of multi-syllable words and complex sentence structure intensify, with a complimentary lack of vocabulary development as class instruction naturally seeks the lowest common denominator of student ability.

Bottom line: Parents need to make sure their children receive exemplary reading instruction that carries them past basic phonics into instruction in more difficult syllabication skill, vocabulary development, and syntax. Orton-based Spalding reading instruction curricula, like The Writing and Spelling Road to Reading and Thinking, are among the best I've seen to give our children the most complete and comprehensive exposure to proper English language instruction.