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Peoples Attitudes About Reading:

-Carlos-

-Carlos-

New Member
People, in my estimation, do not like to read - most folks that is - because they do not possess the right attitude. Most people I've spoken with hate (strong word) reading. I tell them to try to adjust there attitude into a more positive outlook and to read a genre they enjoy, as well as to read slowly with an x number of pages per day.

But attitude, in my book, is everything.

What do you think? Why do people hate reading?

_
 
I suppose that it is because reading requires effort. Unlike TV, it is not a passive activity.

I have never asked a non-reader why they don't read. Have you?
 
Kurt Vonnegut:

Pity the readers. They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school--twelve long years.
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sparkchaser said:
I suppose that it is because reading requires effort. Unlike TV, it is not a passive activity.

I have never asked a non-reader why they don't read. Have you?
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On occasion a bonehead would ask me, why I read so much so I wonder why do you not read at all? It's all in the attitude they uphold. It's not work or being lazy, It's about attitude - that learning is worth the effort of reading. If reading was, to such ones, a FUN undertaking, then boom, more avid readers would be born into a world of illiterates. It would be time to buy more Barnes & Noble/Amazon.com shares in the market.
 
Like spark said, it takes effort and there's no instant gratification. I think most people would love to read if they were to have that one great experience with a book. Sort of like winning on your first try at the horse track... you're hooked from then on.
 
Perhaps our fast-paced culture finds reading takes too much time away from all the other things we could be doing on our electronic gadgets. Why should people read when they could be Twittering trivial information or watching television, for example? We obviously don't have enough time in the day to do everything because we are texting while operating motor vehicles!

I believe that despite all that schooling we have to do, most people were sadly not exposed to the right book that could have sown the seeds for a potentially avid reader. The only book I can remember where a lot of people seemed excited by our required reading over winter vacation was Capote's In Cold Blood, which is a departure from the usual classics that school assigns.
 
Recently a fairly prominent Australian writer spoke about the spark being lit for her son in regards to reading and how she now needed to blow very gently and then fan it into flames. She described it so much more eloquently and I have repeated it very badly, but I think you get the gist. I read that and just thought, wow, what a great way to describe it. When people don't read I think that the spark didn't happen, or there was no one there fanning it. Pity for them.
 
I have a few friends who are non-readers. They do say that they "hate" reading as it takes time. I point out that it doesn't take time to watch CSI or other shows they like. They mentioned that if you were to write those stories down, you would have a book of a decent size to read for an evening, so why not make it more compact? I found that insight to be interesting. Then again, they aren't exactly "non-readers" in the strict sense of the word. These people have their M.A. and have to make decisions based on detailed reports and specialized criteria which are used by them to do their job. They are some of the most intelligent people I know.
 
I totally agree that most people hate reading because it's not instant gratification in the same sense television is, but also because they associate it with work instead of pleasure. Kids are forced to read and dissect books in school, and that doesn't usually result in a love for the written word. Most people also don't sit around solving math problems for fun.
 
I read because it's a form a exercise for the brain. I also read to gain knowledge and pretend to be smarter than more people around me. It gives me power! haha
 
dele said:
Kids are forced to read and dissect books in school, and that doesn't usually result in a love for the written word. Most people also don't sit around solving math problems for fun.
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I think you hit the nail right on the head. Kids should be introduced to reading through rich and enchanting stories, not drills and practice exercises. I became a reader because I had some wonderful teachers who read out loud to the class.
 
mmyap said:
I think you hit the nail right on the head. Kids should be introduced to reading through rich and enchanting stories, not drills and practice exercises. I became a reader because I had some wonderful teachers who read out loud to the class.
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Oh yeah, I can still see and hear Mrs. Schoech reading A Wrinkle in Time to us in the fifth grade. She used different voices for the 'witches'.
I agree, drills and study questions are not the way to create readers who live to read.


Mrs. Schoech also read us Trouble River and The Golden Impala. The other Fifth grade teacher read us Summer on The Salt Fork. She might have read some other books to us, but I can't remember them.
 
When we read A Midsummer Night's Dream I was really putting emotion into my voice as I read and most of my classmates thought it was a dumb thing to do, those monotone readers!
 
Fantasy Moon said:
When we read A Midsummer Night's Dream I was really putting emotion into my voice as I read and most of my classmates thought it was a dumb thing to do, those monotone readers!
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I'm not a passionate reader, but I get annoyed when basic inflection is not used by someone who is reading. When every sentence with a question mark or exclamation point is read in a monotone manner, I think it ruins what the speaker is intending to say and that you lose a special meaning that the author intended.
 
I think it helps if people's parents were readers. My parents were both avid readers, and had me in books before I hit kindergarten. The television was mostly a dust-collector.

I've got a few friends who don't read, mainly because of having boring, non-relevant books forced on them throughout school. I think schools should focus on getting kids to read, period - not just getting kids to read 'good literature' or 'accepted curriculum'. No one really wants to read A Day No Pigs Would Die or A Separate Peace when they're 10 or 11. A comic book may not be classic literature, but it's still written words on paper - and some of the stories are just as epic.
 
I think school might have something to do with people disliking reading. Most of the required stuff in school is designed to make you think, hard... so it becomes associated with work. Then, when given a choice to relax, people shy away from what they perceived as work.

Also, there's so much out there good and bad that it's hard to find just the right thing that interests you.
 
The school thinks you need to read past work to be a good reader. If I wanted to read something from them,I would. I'm not sure about the school,but I prefer Micheal Connelly or King over people like Poe,Shakespeare and Achebe.

I got to a high level of reading through books I like to read,of course I still have some problems understanding other books(Red Dragon for example).

Long story short,The school's taste in literature is utter crap on the highest levels.
 
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