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By Harper Hall
From Curious George to The Hunger Games to Jayber Crow, I have read an insurmountable number of books in my nineteen years of life. I learned to read at the ripe age of four, and once I realized that words on a page could take me anywhere in the world, I was unstoppable. I devoured books from my school library, often visiting before the scheduled time for my class because I needed another fixation. Reading sparked my love of learning, through acting as a stepping stone for seeking more knowledge.
Today, fewer and fewer children are reading books. A study from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted in 2023 found that only 14% of teens say they read for fun daily, compared to 27% in 2012. Additionally, an article from the New York Times published in 2025 found that most high school students are only assigned to read one to two full books a year. Students are often being assigned excerpts from novels or short articles instead of full books, largely because of the curriculum products schools have purchased from major publishers.
I am extremely grateful to have attended institutions that prioritized reading full books for my educational experience. My middle school required daily independent reading, and through my high school’s International Baccalaureate Program, I studied many books over two years and participated in in-depth seminars on each. What I am most grateful for is the breadth of subjects and perspectives I was able to engage with through these assigned readings. From Hanif Abdurraqib to Toni Morrison to Manuel Puig to James Baldwin, these authors and their works expanded my perspective and contributed significantly to the development of my critical thinking skills. At the McConnell Center, I have had the privilege of reading various works from political philosophers such as Plato, Cicero, and Thomas Paine. These readings have allowed me to deeply examine the structure of government and society and analyze the moral foundations of political systems. Reading is essential for children and teens to develop critical thinking skills, challenge traditional patterns of thought, and expand their perspectives, and it is extremely concerning that students are not being required to read full books in school. Reading allows individuals to imagine what society ought to look like and develop an understanding of what responsibilities they hold in creating that change. For this reason, it is essential that children and teens are actively engaged in reading throughout their educational experience.