Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2026 Poal.co

1.1K

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/many-schools-are-assigning-excerpts-of-novels-to-read-instead-of-full-books-why

From the post:

>Reading fiction has been such a joy for me that my heart broke a little to learn recently that many schools no longer assign full books to high school students. Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times. The reasons are many – including the belief that students have shorter attention spans, and schools’ efforts to teach students to perform well on standardized tests.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/many-schools-are-assigning-excerpts-of-novels-to-read-instead-of-full-books-why From the post: >>Reading fiction has been such a joy for me that my heart broke a little to learn recently that many schools no longer assign full books to high school students. Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times. The reasons are many – including the belief that students have shorter attention spans, and schools’ efforts to teach students to perform well on standardized tests.
You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (12).
[–] • 1 pt (edited )

That seemed to be a prevalent attitude with a lot of the previous generation. VoEd was where the "bad" kids went. I remember overhearing some of the high school teachers complaining that a student had chosen to exit 11th grade at the start of the year and attend Vocational. The term "we lost another one" was used.

Yeah, no shit there sherlock. Who wouldn't want to learn a skill they can use instead of sitting there in a class being made to memorize the opening scene of a boring book?

[+] [deleted] • 0 pt