Many schools don't think students can read full novels any more. That's a tragedy [View all]

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.

One factor is the Common Core, a set of standards adopted by many states in the US more than a decade ago. Given those standards, many schools use curriculum products like StudySync, which uses an anthology approach to introducing students to literature.

The upshot is that many teens read far fewer full novels than in the past, teachers acknowledge. Some teachers, however, choose to rebel.

“Many teachers are secret revolutionaries and still assign whole books,” said Heather McGuire, a survey respondent who teaches English in New Mexico.

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