Losing patience to read deeply?

[Veronica]

I think children will rise to the expectations you have for them. I'm constantly being told by my peers that I get "all the good kids." No, I just expect them to be the "good kids." Current project in my class is a Newberry book report.


Veronica

[Pax]

PS - I've never had the patience for Victorian or Edwardian novels. Not even 30+ years ago when I was studying Anglo-Saxon homilists.

After immersing myself in reading lots of current novels/websites and blogs/and magazines, I use pre-1900 literature as a jump start for a sluggish brain.

[Biciclista]

Pax, me too. And I love Dickens. The color!!!

[Pax]

Pax, me too. And I love Dickens. The color!!!

Yes! I love the way he painted a picture for his readers; before color photographs/TV/movies it took an excellent writer to put you in the story.

[Penny4]

I'm not sure it is any worse today than when I was in school 25 years ago. I would say the majority of my classmates (myself included) had to use Cliff Notes to get through the Scarlet Letter. WHile i found the plot interesting, I just couldn't wrap my head around the language. And the teacher never helped us with that part of it. Same with Chaucer, SHakespeare, etc...

[limewave]

I'm not sure it is any worse today than when I was in school 25 years ago. I would say the majority of my classmates (myself included) had to use Cliff Notes to get through the Scarlet Letter. WHile i found the plot interesting, I just couldn't wrap my head around the language. And the teacher never helped us with that part of it. Same with Chaucer, SHakespeare, etc...

My parents had subscribed/bought some series of children's abridged version of the classics. We had almost every children's versions of the novels on my AP reading list. It was AWESOME. The abridged version had all the important details without the old-english I couldn't understand. That with the Cliff Notes, I aced AP english. My reading comprehension is pretty low, I've always struggled with it. I have tried--forced myself--to be a better reader. I just don't have the aptitude for it. However, I love reading for pure entertainment.

[Crankin]

OK, I have more time to respond now.
I have always been a voracious reader, since age 5 when I learned, both fiction and non fiction. Both of my parents are (were) very intellectual, even though my mom only went to college for 2 years and my dad skipped that to do WW2. They were always, always gong to the library, or renting books from the local bookstore. And, Book of the month Club, along with getting 10 magazines, and doing Theatre Guild every month. No wonder I became an English teacher.
However, despite loving American Lit (Fitzgerald, Hemingway), I hated the obtuse language of Victorian, Renaissance writers, whether it was Old English, or something translated from the French or German. I used the Cliff notes in HS, but I do remember having 2 really good English Lit teachers in college. Then, after I got my master's in Special ed, and I was working on my English certification, I took a more advanced English lit. class. The whole thing was related to literature that was based on Christian allegories/New Testament, which,ah, was not in my brain. I got a B+, but I struggled.
DS #1 is just like me, but even smarter. I mean, frighteningly intellectual. He is the one who reads all of that "hard stuff" in the original, speaks a foreign language, and is a published writer. He collects old books now, as well as reading on a Kindle and print. He was very social as a kid and did all of the kid stuff, but he always was a reader and writer. So were all of his close friends. I even enjoy reading his reviews on Yelp.
My other son didn't read as much as a younger kid. He mostly read non-fiction, until HS and then, all of a sudden, became just like his brother. Despite no college degree, he is extremely well read, and he can do that hard stuff, too. He read 40 books on his first deployment! Now he just downloads the stuff to his Kindle.
DH, well, not a reader. He reads non fiction, about all of his technical and hobby interests (cycling, etc), magazines, work stuff. Every year, he reads one or two big long non- fiction books, usually biographies of presidents or other political figures. He said his goal this year is to read more, but he always said he didn't know what the heck the 3 of us were talking about, when we asked each other what genres we were reading.