The Atlantic – Erica Reischer
“Children who read regularly for pleasure, who are avid and self-directed readers, are the holy grail for parents and educators. Reading for pleasure has considerable current and future benefits: Recreational readers tend to have higher academic achievement and greater economic success, and even display more civic-mindedness. But recreational reading is on the decline…To ensure that kids are spending at least some time every day reading, classrooms across the country have instituted student reading logs, which typically require kids to read for a certain amount of time—about 20 minutes—each night at home and then record the book title and number of pages read…The goal of these logs is to promote the habit of recreational reading, or at least to create the appearance of it…Unfortunately, this well-intentioned strategy may have serious pitfalls.”(more)