Madonna King: What’s happened to our kids? Why don’t they read books anymore?

It’s hardly a surprise our NAPLAN results are so alarming when many kids have an iPhone on their bedside table rather than a pile of books.

Macy Jeffrey loves books and is a much bigger reader than her dad ever was. Picture: Tony Gough

“The last book I read was when I was seven,’’ a boy told me this week. And for the 14-year-old, that was half a lifetime ago.

He’s not alone. Many children have transferred books from their bedside table to the book shelf, to make room for their smart phone – and the generational consequences of that are now writ large, across the globe.

On a smartphone screen, a story can be told in a picture, a few words, a comedic reel or even a meme, taking less time, less concentration and less effort than turning 280 pages.

“It just seems a bit of a chore, really,’’ another student told me, before explaining that her Nan still reads.

Writing is now old-fashioned and too time-consuming for many students; something to focus on only for the annual – and delightfully quaint – EKKA handwriting competition.

Books have been replaced by smart phones.

Everything – from birthday invitations to sporting scores – is now recorded in our pocket, on our phone. So why do we need to write that cursive stuff?

Revelations this week show a crisis in education. More than half of all boys in Queensland – 52.6 per cent – are failing basic year nine writing standards, and are unable to punctuate a sentence properly. And 44 per cent struggle with spelling and reading, finding it difficult to read a text and then answer questions.

That might indicate a problem with how boys are being educated, but girls are not far behind – with 36 per cent failing writing standards, 40 per cent struggling with punctuation, and more than one-in-three not meeting spelling and reading standards.

The results sounded a gender gap alarm with commentary centred on what needs to be done to lift the performance of male students. Was it an issue with behavioural standards? Class sizes? Cultural stereotypes.

But these results point to a problem across genders, and it would be foolhardy to be high-fiving performances that show 40 per cent of year nine girls cannot punctuate a sentence!

Several factors are at play here, including the tortuous way long texts are often examined at school. Ask any child preparing to sit ATAR literacy tests!

Who can enjoy The Poisonwood Bible, for example, when students are required to rip characters out of their context and drop them into other plots, to mathematically analyse the language, and even learn by rote 25 quotes?

A second factor might relate to parental role-modelling. When did the adults in your home last read a book? Many do – but between 25 and 30 per cent have not picked up a book in the past year. Monkey see, monkey do, my mother used to say.

But it’s the third – and biggest reason – that should cause more alarm than the findings this week: smart phones have now taken the place of both writing and reading, and are even influencing maths results.

A broad analysis of NAPLAN shows many high schoolers are writing at the standard of primary schoolers. Over the past two decades, students’ performances in Australia have also dropped significantly in reading, maths and science.

But the same story is unfolding around the world, except perhaps in Singapore, experts say. Finland, which is often held up as the best student on the block, has now recorded reading results worse than Australia.

Madonna King has questioned why kids of today don’t read books anymore.

And the reason, according to education experts, comes down to the influence of the smart phone on reading, writing and speaking. A fall in maths follows the same trend – when questions require a level of comprehension.

Children are now reading everything on screen, and texting simple words, or even just emojis. That’s become handwriting, circa 2025.

An OECD report this year found 15-year-olds who spent an hour each day digital learning in some subjects scored 14 points higher compared to those who did not – but that changed when devices were used for more than one hour.

So why do schools push digital learning for hours each day?

“That’s the million dollar question,’’ one senior adviser told me. Another suggested it was because of the need to prepare our children for a digital employment world.

But at what cost, if that means our children don’t learn the joy of losing hours reading a book? Or cannot see the elegance in handwriting, and the delight in receiving a handwritten card?

This is not an issue for the classroom. It’s about what is sitting on our children’s bedside table, at home.

A book. Or a smart phone.

Originally published as Madonna King: What’s happened to our kids? Why don’t they read books anymore?