You finally have free time!  Kick back, relax, and … read a book?  Most Williston students say no.  With the juggling of classes, sports practices, clubs, extracurriculars, and social lives, it is easy to say that Williston students have little time to spare.  But when they do find spare time, many say that reading a book is the last thing they do.

So, are students nowadays reading fewer books? Why? Does it matter?

In the library, fewer books are being checked out. Mr. Rick Teller, a Williston librarian, observes, “There was definitely a corner that was turned, maybe six or seven years ago when it started to go the other way.  And it was significant, it wasn’t just an anecdotal drop-off in check-outs.” He adds, “Nobody wants to hear this, but you guys read far less than we did!”

Speaking with students seems to confirm this.

“I usually never have time to read outside of school,” says Anabelle Farnham ’18. Could the lack of recreational reading by students nowadays simply be due to the fact that they are overscheduled?  “I usually have a pretty packed schedule with dance, theatre, and homework, so it can be really hard to make time for anything else,” says Destiny Nwafor ’17.

Sam Canney ’16 says, “I find it hard to read for pleasure because of my schedule here at Williston. Even though I only have five classes for the first time this year, I’m always doing homework, sports, and using the little free time I have between those for socializing.”  Of the Williston students interviewed, most said that they wish they could read more but simply do not have the time due to their schedules.

However, Ms. Sawyer, a Williston English teacher, seems to disagree. She says, “No, I don’t think it’s due to their schedules and commitments, exactly, I think that there are a lot more things that compete for people’s time, mine included, that didn’t exist when I was growing up that are really ultimately just pointless.”

Could today’s technology be contributing to this shrinkage of recreational reading?

Kam Morgan ’18 says “I think I spend all my time that I’m not doing homework on my phone which is why I don’t read.”

Even the librarian himself, Mr. Teller, sees technology interfering with his own reading.  He says, “I think as electronic gadgets become ubiquitous, I mean, I know I’m reading less!”

The drop off in reading books is troubling because of the many things we have to gain by reading them.  Most people agree that reading books is vitally important.

Mr. Teller sums it up this way, “Recreational reading, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, it really does expand your horizons!  It increases your vocabulary, it develops your imagination!  It does that whether you’re reading serious literature or whether you’re reading volume 94 of the Hunger Games! And, as you do it, it makes you a stronger reader, it makes you a stronger thinker, and you develop empathies with the characters that translate to empathies with living and breathing human beings!  It just expands all of the tools you have to work with.”

Ms. Sawyer adds, “I think if students don’t read a lot, they don’t have a lot of access to a variety of grammatical structures and modes of expression that help them think better and express themselves better, and I think you can only get that from reading and from reading things of quality.”

How can Williston encourage students to read more?

Mr. Teller notes, “There are some people in the English department who have worked recreational reading into their class schedules, just to make people do it . . . . There’s that ‘Tea and Read’ thing in the library that some teachers do with Ms. Paige, and I think that’s great, but it also bothers me a little bit that we kind of have to force that issue.”

Whether it is due to technology, pointless distractions, or simply a busy schedule, it is pretty clear that Williston students are not reading books as often as they probably should.  Considering all the ways books help you grow, we would probably be better off spending more time as bookworms.