Episode 159: Vanishing Books, Shrinking Minds

Books are quietly disappearing from American classrooms, and kids are paying the price. I dig into why excerpts have replaced full-length novels and plays, how that shift affects comprehension and attention, and what it means for students who deserve a rich, inclusive literacy diet. Drawing on research and classroom realities, I unpack the tension between teaching to high-stakes tests and building the deeper reading stamina that colleges and life demand.

I also relate the quality of the texts that middle school and high school students are reading to the surge in book bans. The numbers are stark: thousands of titles challenged or pulled, most often those by or about people of color and LGBTQ+ communities. That censorship doesn’t just limit shelves; it narrows imaginations, erases "mirrors and windows," and undermines the democratic promise of education. Finally, I connect the dots between policy, politics, and practice, and I talk plainly about who gets silenced when story choices are made out of fear.

This conversation isn’t just a diagnosis; it’s a roadmap for the future. I outline a balanced approach that pairs short texts with sustained reading of entire novels, plays, and nonfiction works. I share specific steps parents and educators can take: form curriculum committees, map reading across grades, set clear targets for long-form works, and advocate for diverse authors. If you’re ready to help your child become a stronger reader and protect inclusive libraries, you’ll leave with practical tools and a sense of agency.

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Chapters

• 1:27 Mission And Host Backstory
• 4:01 Are Books Disappearing From Classrooms
• 5:43 Excerpts Vs Whole Novels
• 9:11 Attention Spans And Anthologies
• 12:46 Common Core And Teaching To Tests
• 16:56 Reading Volume And Comprehension Research
• 20:10 Both-And Approach To Texts
• 22:32 Book Bans Surge And Stats
• 26:48 Who Gets Silenced And Why It Matters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights, Empowering Parents of Color Podcast. The podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics, and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager, turned education researcher, and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of motherwit wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less, and I'll provide insights on the latest trends, issues, and topics pertaining to this constantly evolving K-12 public education environment. Are books disappearing from American classrooms? From all the latest reports, it seems that long-form literature like books and novels are disappearing from middle school and high school classrooms. I mean, what happened to reading Shakespeare plays, novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens? These are the classics that used to be a staple in English classes across the country, but now the curriculum seems to include excerpts instead of whole books. I discussed why substituting excerpts of books and novels erodes reading comprehension, and I also address the quality of the literature being read and studied in middle school and high school, with particular emphasis on the detriments of book bands. Let's gain some insights on this. It seems that short excerpts from books rather than longer, more challenging books and novels is becoming a thing. The problem with this is that those short excerpts could weaken students' reading comprehension abilities, and students are getting a dwindling diet of lengthy, more challenging, and complete texts, especially novels in school. To compound this, many students in high school indicate that they've never read a book cover to cover. The reading brain needs to be exercised, and one of the major ways to exercise it is prolonged, denser reading that is continuous. Unfortunately, one thing is clear, according to the reading researchers, novels, as well as longer works in general, are powerful teaching tools for children in upper elementary school grades and beyond. As recently as 2023, one-fourth of teachers in grades 3 through 8 said that reading classrooms in their schools relied primarily on excerpts. About half of these educators said they used a mix of excerpts and other whole books, including novels, plays, memoirs, and nonfiction. Outside of school, the percentages of 9 and 13-year-olds reading for fun daily or weekly has steadily declined since the 1980s, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAPE. But even adults are reading fewer novels, which suggest a trend toward less reading that might transcend age. I think one of the reasons for this is that this society has gotten used to reading in sound bite lengths, influenced by social media posts, apps, and browser news feed headlines, with documented proof that the attention span of adults has decreased to 8.25 seconds, especially on the internet, it doesn't bode well for a society when we are not well read. To put that attention span into perspective, a goldfish has an attention span of about nine seconds. Think about that. Years ago, actually since the mid-19th century, the main reader that we had in the classroom was what was known as the basil reader, which is the type of anthology reader typically containing many excerpts. This old tool has now become one of the culprits that's blamed in contemporary debates about reading. These anthologies were specifically created to teach reading and generally featured excerpts from fiction and nonfiction books paired with skill and strategy questions. They have a long and controversial history in U.S. education. The excerpts were selected to teach morality and introduce students to cultural capital. Some classroom curricula are requiring older elementary students to read more novels and nonfiction books over the course of the year, while others are mostly shorter children's books and excerpts throughout elementary school. It's still hard to know exactly how any of these programs are being used, including excerpts into the reading curriculum provides exposure to multiple text types. However, reading from a whole book provides a deeper understanding of the text. If the reading habits of elementary and middle school students are still in conflict, the landscape is even murkier for high school students. Since the rollout of the Common Core State Standards over 10 years ago, educators and experts have warned that the academic guidelines focus on nonfiction reading could push out full-length texts in the classroom. Some high school classrooms don't even read Shakespeare anymore. What a tragedy. There's value in having students read and discuss books in class, but many English teachers indicate that Shakespeare is too steep of a struggle. My question is, why is it more of a struggle now than it was when we were in high school? In any case, teaching fewer long works leaves more time for shorter, informational texts focused on science and social studies, which align more with what students might see on an end-of-the-year standardized test, according to many educators. This means that they are teaching to the test, something that I'm radically opposed to, because it funnels limited information that a student ascertains to the moment of testing. It is not long-term knowledge. The gist of this argument for using quote-in-quote quick hit literature is one of whole text versus excerpts. The argument for using excerpts is in the high-stakes testing environment, and that if reading comprehension is measured by students' ability to make meaning of several paragraph-long selections, it makes sense for them to practice with texts of that length. There's a large body of research that demonstrates that students who read more are better readers, and that these traits are reciprocal, meaning that children with stronger reading abilities read more. And reading more, in turn, makes students even stronger readers. In fact, children who read more books in their leisure time have stronger reading comprehension, but that relationship doesn't hold true for magazine reading and reading ability. Also, digital reading was negatively correlated with reading comprehension. It seems that a both and approach might work best here. There are valid reasons to teach some shorter works like poems or short stories, and there's also evidence that whole class study and oral reading of longer books like novels, plays, and nonfiction could also provide benefits. Experiencing a novel as a class can give students a stronger connection to the written word than short form content could provide. Helping students grasp the main idea of a novel and make connections through the text over time requires intentional instruction, which benefits the teacher and the students. If students are required to read a variety of materials, either short form or long form, they should be exposed to the classics as well as new texts, especially those written by authors of color. But the book ban movement has seriously curtailed the variety of texts that students read. And just so you know, I discussed book bands in detail in episode 69 of my podcast. For this episode's discussion, I provide new insights on the book band situation. Book bans increased to an all-time high in 2022 after escalating for 18 months. The total number of books banned in 2022 across school districts in this country was 1,477 books. These are some of the books with the highest number of bands. The Handmaid's Tale, the graphic novel, banned sixteen times Sold Banned eighteen times. A Court of Mist and Fury banned eighteen times The Bluest Eye banned thirty two times Milk and Honey banned thirteen times. The topics of most of the band books included LBGTQIA characters or themes, characters of color, discussions of race and racism, themes of rights and activism, sexual content, physical abuse and violence, and characters in stories about religious minorities. It's worth noting that books that were banned predominantly get removed from school libraries, with only a small percentage of book bans impacting classrooms specifically. Most books are removed pending investigation, meaning that a book is removed whenever there is a challenge for review. Librarians as well as teachers are stuck in a precarious place when it comes to book selection. Many librarians hold the perspective that Americans have freedoms, and those freedoms need to be upheld. What Americans cannot do is make those choices for their neighbors, so it's important that we continue to uphold everyone's equal access, and that's through First Amendment rights. Most of the book bans happened in Texas and Florida, where in 2022, Texas had more than twelve hundred book challenges, and Florida had more than nine hundred. However, book bans have been recorded in at least thirty two states. Iowa and Missouri followed closely behind Texas and Florida. The question is, have book bans slowed down? Attempts to ban books in public schools are still prevalent, and efforts are still growing, according to data compiled by the American Liberty Association and Penn America, which found that book bans surged in 2023, roughly tripling in number from 2022. The American Liberty Association reported that there were challenges to 1,128 titles in 2024, with the majority of bands targeting books on race and gender and sexuality, particularly by or about people of color or LGBTQ plus people. On the one hand, it may be encouraging to see fewer bands and challenges, but it shouldn't be surprising to see that these bands continue to persist. More than 10,000 books were removed, at least temporarily, from public schools during the 2023-2024 academic year. This means that there is a chasm in the availability of variety of texts that students get to read. And that's a shame. It should be no surprise that book bans quickly take place in the majority Republican counties where GOP margins have been shrinking over the past two decades, suggesting that bookbans are proposed as a way to galvanize voters in those districts. The political messaging not only comes from the Republican Party, but from organizations like Moms for Liberty as well. Teachers often face a quandary because they want to be able to pick books that will engage their students. Either they can't pick certain books or they could, but they worry that a principal will come in and have a conversation with them, they'll be named at a school board meeting, or attacked on social media. All of these things have happened. Here's the thing. Bands are never reasonable, regardless of whether or not a book is returned to the library's shelf after being reviewed. The stories and histories depicted in these books deserve to be told without censorship. Book bands are a rising form of censorship being used to silence the voices and experiences of communities that have experienced oppression already based on race, class, and gender. A shared, honest understanding of the past bridges that divide that political players are trying to widen. At the end of the day, arguments that attempt to placate the American public to simply accept book bands are a thinly veiled attempt to take away the inclusive and comprehensive education all students deserve. These perspectives are shared by educational researchers Rollins and Bolton. Think book bands are for the good of all? Let me ask you this whose life experiences are being disappeared by book banning? One of the promises of education in a democratic society such as the United States is for students to be able to explore, imagine, think about, learn from, and analyze content by and about many different backgrounds represented in this nation. When students connect to worlds like their own, with familiar language and depictions of people, neighborhoods, and home life that reflect their own experiences, this helps them connect to learning. It's also important for students to learn about environments that are different from theirs because this helps them to gain not only knowledge, but understanding and empathy. Schools can be laboratories in a way for a democratic society, but that doesn't happen when the very few or the politically motivated dictate the learning experiences of the many. That's what makes book banning so dangerous. At a time when this country continues to become increasingly diverse, the removal of stories, struggles, histories, and experiences that are unique to people of color in other marginalized communities should be a concern for everyone. Excluding books about marginalized groups from school libraries is essentially omitting life experiences that are all too real for countless adults and children in the United States and beyond. Students need to learn about these experiences so that they can fight all forms of discrimination and prejudice. Book banning is proven to be one of the biggest threats to inclusive education that has occurred over the past 20 years. This harms students in a number of ways. One, students are denied the truth about U.S. history. Two, students are prevented from learning. About the current realities and experiences of groups who face hardship. And three, students are deprived of an understanding of the challenges these groups have had to overcome to make this democracy better. Education researchers indicate that literature needs to be a window and mirror for students, such that students see themselves depicted in what they read, this is the mirror, but also get to learn about the histories and experiences of others. This is the window. Students from dominant demographic groups have always found their mirror in books, but they have suffered from the lack of availability of books about others. All students need books that will help them understand the multicultural nature of the world they live in, as well as their connections to all other humans. This is the essence of education in a democracy where students learn in the community of diverse peers with different experiences. Now is the time for teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents, and parents to speak out and stand up against politically motivated book banning because our students, our children, and this nation deserve better. To put it simply, the banning of books must stop. So what can you do about the information I just shared? Here are the action steps you can take regarding books disappearing from American school classrooms and book banning. You have more power than you think. Get involved in your children's schools so that you have a voice in the curriculum that's being taught. It's important that you understand whether what they're reading is short form or long form, and the quality of the reading materials that are being used in the classroom, notably the variety of books being read. If you object to the subject matter of some of the reading materials, let your opinions be known. If your child's school does not have a curriculum committee in which parents can participate, create one. This type of committee helps to ensure that the curriculum meets the needs of all students and families. Convene a committee of teachers, counselors, librarians, and parents to plan a core reading curriculum that spans all grade levels in middle school and high school. The goal of this type of committee would be to ensure that children get exposure to long-form literature and a variety of reading texts written by authors of color. This may involve setting a goal of reading two long-form texts and three short form texts for each grade level per academic year. The intent is not to add more to the teacher's plate for what they should cover each week, but it is intended for middle school and high school teachers to give your children a well-rounded reading curriculum in preparation for those who plan to attend college or university. Sound doable? Well, nothing beats a failure but a try. The problem with this is that those short excerpts could weaken students' reading comprehension abilities, and students are getting a dwindling diet of lengthy, more challenging and complete texts, especially novels in school. Some classroom curricula are requiring older elementary students to read more novels and nonfiction books over the course of the year, while others are mostly delving into shorter children's books and excerpts throughout elementary school. Including excerpts into a reading curriculum provides exposure to multiple texts. However, reading from a whole book provides a deeper understanding of the text. If students are required to read a variety of materials, either short form or long form, they should be exposed to the classics as well as new texts, especially those written by authors of color. But the book ban movement has seriously curtailed the variety of texts that students read. Bookbands are a rising form of censorship being used to silence the voices and experiences of communities that have experienced oppression based on race, class, and gender. A shared, honest understanding of the past bridges that divide that political players are trying to widen. At the end of the day, arguments that attempt to placate the American public to simply accept book bans are a thinly veiled attempt to take away the inclusive and comprehensive education all students deserve. Now is the time for teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents, and parents to speak out and stand up against politically motivated book banning because our students, our children, our grandchildren, and this nation deserve better. To put it simply, the banning of books must stop. What are your thoughts about books disappearing from the classroom or the politicalization of book banning? Voice your concerns and let me know what you're thinking by leaving me a text comment on my podcast website, K12Education Insights.budsprout.com. Here's how you leave that text comment. Go to the episode description page and click on Send Me a Text Message link. Again, it's K12Education Insights.budsprout.com. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from my catalog? It could take as little as 15 minutes of your day. And remember, new episodes come out every Tuesday. And before I forget, would you do me a favor? Go online or send a text right now and share this episode with one friend who you think will love it. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back for more insights on K 12 educational topics that impact you and your children. Until next time, learn something new every day.