To Read or Not to Read, That is the Question.

By Mattie Stinson, Stentorian Staff Writer

Roughly every other week I get a text from my mom asking if my classes require me to read full books. It is beyond me why she must ask so frequently, seeing as if I had read a book for a class then that wouldn’t have changed in the two weeks. Nevertheless, I soon realized why she was so concerned about my school required reading upon finding out that my brother (a rising junior at a traditional public school) had not read a school-required full length book in his entire time at high school. I was even more shocked to find out that this is the case for many highschoolers across the nation.

An alarming amount of students across the nation are having less and less reading requirements for school. Few are required to read “difficult” texts and even fewer are reading full length books. But why are schools requiring less reading? One theory is that it is because teachers recognize that their students either don’t contain the skill or interest to read longer texts. This theory would create a positive feedback loop with the rise in use of AI in students. As more and more students use AI to synthesize summaries for texts, the more they lose the skill to analyze and think critically about texts without the help of AI. In result, this difficulty to analyze texts entices them to further use online summaries. 

As a modern highschool student in the age of ever developing AI, I am definitely no stranger to the various ways in which it could be used to help with schoolwork. However, there is such a big difference and yet such a thin line between using it for assistance and using it as a dependence. In an age where media literacy is declining, critical thinking is rare, and analytical skills aren’t being taught in the same way as generations before, maintaining one’s ability to read (and actually digest) difficult texts is unbelievably important. 

So, dearest Stentorian readers, for the sake of our generation’s literacy, actually read the books our humanities teachers assign. And if you’re in Dr Cantrell’s Rex-Hum, I promise you, Edgar Huntly isn’t bad enough to lose your reading skills over.