Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It Paperback - 2009

From the publisher

Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. Reading is dying in our schools. Educators are familiar with many of the factors that have contributed to the decline--poverty, second-language issues, and the ever-expanding choices of electronic entertainment. In this provocative book Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It, author and teacher Kelly Gallagher suggests it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools. In Readicide, Gallagher argues that American schools are actively (though unwittingly) furthering the decline of reading. Specifically, he contends that the standard instructional practices used in most schools are killing reading by:

• Valuing standardized testing over the development of lifelong readers
• Mandating breadth over depth in instruction
• Requiring students to read difficult texts without proper instructional support and insisting students focus on academic texts
• Ignoring the importance of developing recreational reading
• Losing sight of authentic instruction in the looming shadow of political pressures